Court Opinion

ID: 9633467
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:48:26.219431+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:26:59.694512
License: Public Domain

Justice ERICKSON
respectfully dissenting:
Certiorari was granted to review Bock v. Westminster Mall Co., 797 P.2d 797 (Colo. App.1990), on the following issue: “Whether article II, section 10 of the Colorado Constitution prevents the private owner of an enclosed shopping mall from excluding citizens engaged in non-violent political speech from the common areas of the mall.” We are not called upon to decide whether the United States Constitution extends protection to the petitioners in this case. As the majority notes, the first and fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution do not extend to the distribution of political literature inside a privately owned shopping mall. Maj. op. at 56 n. 1 (citing Hudgens v. NLRB, 424 U.S. 507, 518, 96 S.Ct. 1029, 1035-36 (1976)). The freedom of speech clauses of the Colorado Constitution protect individuals against unwarranted intrusion by the state. Because Westminster Mall is not an entity of the state nor clothed with state authority, I respectfully dissent and would affirm the judgment of the court of appeals.
I
Westminster Mall opened for business in 1977. Respondent Westminster Mall Company (mall) derives its profit from leasing space to mall stores and taking a percentage of gross sales from the stores. The common areas of the mall, including the interior corridors connecting the stores, are privately owned by the mall. Mall security is provided by a private security firm and a few Westminster police officers who patrol the mall during business hours. Since March 1987, the City of Westminster (Westminster) has operated a small police substation to respond to citizen complaints. As part of an expansion project, the mall made various street and drainage improvements that were later paid for by Westminster with funds obtained from municipal bonds.
The mall maintains a policy prohibiting the solicitation of shoppers and the distribution of leaflets and handbills. In addition, the mall has instituted a permit procedure for noncommercial activities whereby it evaluates each application by various factors, including the kind of activity and its purpose, the number of participants, the risk of injury, and the risk of unreasonable interference with mall tenants. Under this procedure, the mall has approved certain community and charitable activities, including an antique car show, a rare breed dog show, a Jefferson County voter registration drive, a Salvation Army Christmas fund drive, a salute to law enforcement and the armed forces, and a Boy Scout pine wood derby.
In July 1985, petitioners Nelson Bock and Patricia Lawless-Avelar, members of The Pledge of Resistance, sought permission to hand out literature and solicit signatures for the following pledge:
If the U.S. invades, bombs, sends combat troops, or otherwise significantly escalates its intervention in Nicaragua or El Salvador, I pledge to join others in nonviolent public protest at U.S. federal facilities and other appropriate places in order to prevent or halt further death and destruction in Central America.
*64The mall denied petitioners permission to either leaflet or solicit signatures inside the mall. Petitioners filed a complaint in the Jefferson County District Court seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, alleging that they had a protected right to hand out political and public interest leaflets under the Colorado Constitution. After discovery, both parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment. The district court denied the petitioners’ motion and granted the mall's motion dismissing the case with prejudice. On appeal, the court of appeals affirmed the summary judgment issued in favor of the mall. In my view, summary judgment was properly entered by the district court. Accordingly, the court of appeals should be affirmed.
II
The first two clauses of article II, section 10, of the Colorado Constitution state: “No law shall be passed impairing the freedom of speech; every person shall be free to speak, write or publish whatever he will on any subject, being responsible for all abuse of that liberty....” Petitioners Bock and Lawless-Avelar contend that these two clauses are independent and that the state action requirement found in the phrase, “No law shall be passed,” does not carry over to the second clause. Thus, petitioners reason, the second clause applies to private behavior.
We have recently held that the purpose of article II, section 10 is to “ ‘guard the press against the trammels of political power, and secure to the whole people a full and free discussion of public affairs.’ ” People v. Ford, 773 P.2d 1059, 1066 (Colo. 1989) (quoting Cooper v. People, 13 Colo. 337, 362, 22 P. 790, 978 (1889)) (emphasis added). The holding in Ford was arrived at after we specifically noted that “[o]ur constitution contains two provisions which protect the freedom of expression.” Id. at 1065. Therefore, whether the first two clauses are read as separate or joint guarantees of freedom of speech, the requirement still exists that the state, or a private entity with a sufficiently close nexus with the state, see Jackson v. Metropolitan Edison Co., 419 U.S. 345, 351, 95 S.Ct. 449, 453-54, 42 L.Ed.2d 477 (1974), be an actor in the deprivation of these rights before liability will attach. We recognized this fact when we characterized article II, section 10 as a “limitation upon the power of state officials.” In re Hearings Concerning Canon 35 of the Canons of Judicial Ethics, 132 Colo. 591, 592, 296 P.2d 465, 467 (1956).1
Our cases have not explored the degree of involvement required to turn a private actor into a state actor for the purposes of article II, section 10. The United States Supreme Court, on the other hand, has reviewed this issue numerous times in the context of the state action requirement of the first and fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution.2 The Supreme Court’s analysis of this issue is pertinent, thorough, and, I believe, persuasive.
*65The Supreme Court has emphatically stated that the federal Constitution’s guarantees of free speech only protect against governmental intrusion:
It is, of course, a commonplace that the constitutional guarantee of free speech is a guarantee only against abridgment by government, federal or state. See Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. v. Democratic National Comm., 412 U.S. 94, 93 S.Ct. 2080, 36 L.Ed.2d 772 [1973]. Thus, while statutory or common law may in some situations extend protection or provide redress against a private corporation or person who seeks to abridge the free expression of others, no such protection or redress is provided by the Constitution itself.
Hudgens v. NLRB, 424 U.S. 507, 513, 96 S.Ct. 1029, 1033 (1976). Hudgens reviewed the relevant cases relating to whether a shopping center fell under the “company town exception” to the state action doctrine. The Court first recognized that there was an exception to the state action requirement in its first amendment jurisprudence in Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501, 502, 66 S.Ct. 276, 277 (1946), where it defined a company town as a privately owned area having “all the characteristics of any other American town.” Over the vigorous dissent of Marsh’s author, Justice Black, the Court in Amalgamated Food Employees Union v. Logan Valley Plaza, 391 U.S. 308, 318, 88 S.Ct. 1601, 1608 (1968), extended the company town doctrine to a shopping center by stating that a shopping center was the “functional equivalent” of the business district of a company town. Justice Black felt that the majority had misunderstood the essential elements of a company town:
But Marsh was never intended to apply to this kind of situation. Marsh dealt with the very special situation of a company-owned town, complete with streets, alleys, sewers, stores, residences, and everything else that goes to make a town_ I can find very little resemblance between the shopping center involved in this case and Chickasaw, Alabama. There are no homes, there is no sewage disposal plant, there is not even a post office on this private property which the Court now considers the equivalent of a “town.”
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The question is, Under what circumstances can private property be treated as though it were public? The answer that Marsh gives is when that property has taken on all the attributes of a town, i.e., “residential building, streets, a system of sewers, a sewage disposal plant and a ‘business block’ on which business places are situated.” 326 U.S., at 502, 66 S.Ct. at 277. I can find nothing in Marsh which indicates that if one of these features is present, e.g., “a business district, this is sufficient for the Court to confiscate a part of an owner’s private property and give its use to people who want to picket on it.”
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To hold that store owners are compelled by law to supply picketing areas for pickets to drive store customers away is to create a court-made law wholly disregarding the constitutional basis on which private ownership of property' rests in this country.
Hudgens, 424 U.S. at 516-17, 96 S.Ct. at 1034-35 (quoting Logan Valley, 391 U.S. at 330-33, 88 S.Ct. at 1614-16 (Black, J., dissenting)) (footnotes and citations omitted).
The Supreme Court reached a different conclusion from that in Logan Valley in the later case of Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U.S. 551, 92 S.Ct. 2219 (1972). The facts at issue in Lloyd are similar to the case before this court. Lloyd involved an attempt, in 1968, by five persons to distribute, in a Portland, Oregon, shopping center, handbills protesting the involvement of the United States in Vietnam. Security guards asked the handbillers to leave. They complied and subsequently brought suit. The Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit’s affirmance of the trial court’s ruling that the Constitution protected the distribution of handbills at a shopping center. After noting that “it must be remembered that the First and Fourteenth Amendments safeguard the rights of free *66speech and assembly by limitations on state action, not on action by the owner of private property used nondiscriminatorily for private purposes only,” Lloyd, 407 U.S. at 567, 92 S.Ct. at 2228, the Court observed:
Respondents contend ... that the property of a large shopping center is “open to the public,” serves the same purposes as a “business district” of a municipality, and therefore has been dedicated to certain types of public use. The argument is that such a center has sidewalks, streets, and parking area which are functionally similar to facilities customarily provided by municipalities. It is then asserted that all members of the public, whether invited as customers or not, have the same right of free speech as they would have on the similar public facilities in the streets of a city or town.
The argument reaches too far. The Constitution by no means requires such an attenuated doctrine of dedication of private property to public use. The closest decision in theory, Marsh v. Alabama, supra, involved the assumption by a private enterprise of all of the attributes of a state-created municipality and the exercise by that enterprise of semi-official municipal functions as a delegate of the State. In effect, the owner of the company town was performing the full spectrum of municipal powers and stood in the shoes of the State. In the instant case there is no comparable assumption or exercise of municipal power.
Hudgens, 424 U.S. at 519, 96 S.Ct. at 1036 (quoting Lloyd, 407 U.S. at 568-69, 92 S.Ct. at 2228-29). The Supreme Court explicitly stated in Hudgens that Lloyd overruled the rationale in Logan Valley. Id. at 518, 96 S.Ct. at 1035-36.
The import of the thorough and exhaustive review of cases in Hudgens is that, although there still exists a company-town exception to the federal free speech state action requirement, a shopping center does not come under this exception. Therefore, a shopping center is outside the safeguards framed in the first amendment. This, I believe, is the proper approach to the interpretation of the Colorado Constitution in the case before us. The Westminster Mall, as a private shopping center, is not within the ambit of article II, section 10.
Ill
The majority has taken a different tack to this case. Although it does not directly address whether there is a state action requirement inherent in the free speech clauses of article II, section 10, the majority analyzes the case as though one existed. Because there are varying instances of city and county involvement in the mall and its development, the majority concludes that there is sufficient state action to invoke the Colorado Constitution. While the majority, after citing the United States Supreme Court decision in Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 365 U.S. 715, 81 S.Ct. 856 (1961), see maj. op. at 60, concludes that “the historical connection between the market place of ideas and the market for goods and services is not severed because goods and services today are bought and sold within the confines of a modern mall,” id. at 62, it does so without fully examining the elements of the federal state action doctrine.
The fundamental issue in the Supreme Court’s state action calculus is the degree of state involvement. “As a general matter the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment do not extend to ‘private conduct abridging individual rights.’ ” National Collegiate Athletic Ass’n v. Tarkanian, 488 U.S. 179, 190-91, 109 S.Ct. 454, 461, 102 L.Ed.2d 469 (1988) (quoting Burton, 365 U.S. at 722, 81 S.Ct. at 860). The Court framed the issue in the following manner:
In the typical case raising a state action issue, a private party has taken the decisive step that caused the harm to the plaintiff, and the question is whether the State was sufficiently involved to treat that decisive conduct as state action.... Thus in the usual ease we ask whether the State provided a mantle of authority that enhanced the power of the harm-causing individual actor.
*67Id. at 192-93, 109 S.Ct. at 462. See also Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co., — U.S.-,-, 111 S.Ct. 2077, 2082 (1991) (“Although the conduct of private parties lies beyond the Constitution’s scope in most instances, governmental authority may dominate an activity to such an extent that its participants must be deemed to act with the authority of the government and, as a result, be subject to constitutional constraints.”).
The Court found state action on the part of a private party exercising a peremptory challenge in Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co. In Edmonson, the Court used a two-part test to evaluate state action: “[F]irst[,] whether the claimed constitutional deprivation resulted from the exercise of a right or privilege having its source in state authority; and second, whether the private party charged with the deprivation could be described in all fairness as a state actor.” — U.S. at-, 111 S.Ct. at 2082-83 (citing Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., 457 U.S. 922, 102 S.Ct. 2744, 73 L.Ed.2d 482 (1982)) (citations omitted). The first prong was satisfied because the peremptory challenges at issue in Edmonson were exercised pursuant to a federal statute. The second test — whether a private party could fairly be deemed a state actor — was based on three factors: “[1] the extent to which the actor relies on governmental assistance and benefits; [2] whether the actor is performing a traditional governmental function; and [3] whether the injury caused is aggravated in a unique way by the incidents of governmental authority.” Id. at -, 111 S.Ct. at 2083 (citations omitted). Since peremptory challenges cannot exist without the overt and significant participation of the government, the Court held that the second prong was also satisfied. Id. at-, 111 S.Ct. at 2083-84.
The question before this court is not whether “governmental entities or public moneys are shown ... to subsidize, approve of, or encourage private interests.” See maj. op. at -. Rather, we must determine whether this subsidization, approval, or encouragement rises to a significant level, transforming the act of a private entity into that of the state. On the record before us, I believe the state has not sufficiently clothed the mall in a mantle of state authority.
While I agree with the majority that a determination of state action must be made on a case by case basis, see maj. op. at 60, the type of governmental involvement triggering such a determination must be narrowly construed. As the Supreme Court has said,
although the factual setting of each case will be significant, our precedents indicate that a State normally can be held responsible for a private decision only when it has exercised coercive power or has provided such significant encouragement, either overt or covert, that the choice must in law be deemed to be that of the State.
Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 U.S. 991, 1004, 102 S.Ct. 2777, 73 L.Ed.2d 534 (1982) (emphasis added). The same analysis should be used to impute state action to a private party.
In Yaretsky, the court of appeals held that state action was present when medical discharge decisions were made by physicians and nursing homes because New York adjusted the patient’s Medicaid benefits accordingly. The Supreme Court rejected this characterization, reasoning:
That the State responds to such actions by adjusting benefits does not render it responsible for those actions. The decisions about which respondents complain are made by physicians and nursing home administrators, all of whom are concededly private parties. There is no suggestion that those decisions were influenced in any degree by the State’s obligation to adjust benefits....
Id. Simple action by the state in accordance with the alleged constitutional violation is, therefore, insufficient to turn the actions of a private party into state actions. There must be a nexus between the coercion or encouragement taken by the state and the action that is the subject of the complaint.
The factual setting of Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority is instructive in evaluating the degree of state involve*68ment with private parties that may give rise to state action. In Burton, a restaurant practicing racial discrimination was located in a parking building owned and operated by a state agency. The parking authority constructed the facility, placed official signs on the building indicating its public character, and flew state and national flags from the mastheads on the roof. 365 U.S. at 718, 720, 81 S.Ct. at 858, 859. In addition, the land and building were publicly owned and the building itself was dedicated to “public uses.” Id. at 723, 81 S.Ct. at 861. The Court thought it would be “irony amounting to grave injustice that in one part of a single building, erected and maintained with public funds by an agency of the State to serve a public purpose, all persons have equal rights, while in another portion, also serving the public, a Negro is a second-class citizen.” Id. at 724, 81 S.Ct. at 861.
Such is not the case here. Westminster Mall was built by private funds and has never been held out as a public building. Apparently, the majority believes a private facility becomes public if it is “develop[ed] and operated] in a manner such that it performs a virtual public function.” Maj. op. at 60. Such a rule would impose state action based solely upon the use of a facility rather than the actions of the government. As a result, private businesses would become state actors whenever their activities seem “public” to a court of law. This conflicts with the stricter requirement of coercive power or significant encouragement in Yaretsky.
Furthermore, the mall fails both prongs of the Edmonson test. First, there is no specific statutory authority, other than trespass laws, for the mail’s refusal of petitioners’ application to distribute leaflets. Second, the mall cannot fairly be described as a state actor. Even though the mall has obtained some governmental assistance in the form of street and drainage improvements and the provision of police officers to patrol the mall, there is nothing in the record to suggest that the mall relies on this assistance. More significantly, the mall neither performs a traditional governmental function nor was petitioners’ injury aggravated by the incidents of state authority. Unlike the peremptory challenges at issue in Edmonson, the mall can exist without the overt and significant participation of government. Thus, on balance, the mall fails the second part of Ed-monson.
At the heart of the United States Supreme Court reasoning is the long held fact that “ ‘[individual invasion of individual rights is not the subject-matter of the [fourteenth] amendment,’ ... and that private conduct abridging individual rights does no violence to the Equal Protection Clause unless to some significant extent the State in any of its manifestations has been found to have become involved in it.” Burton, 365 U.S. at 722, 81 S.Ct. at 860 (quoting the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 3 S.Ct. 18, 27 L.Ed. 835 (1883)). I believe the same reasoning applies to article II, section 10 of our state constitution.
IV
The record presents no facts showing that Westminster exercised its power over the mall when the mall made its decision to reject the petitioners’ permit application. There are, on the other hand, a few facts that might raise the issue of whether Westminster significantly encouraged the mall in a manner that could convert the mall into a state actor.
First, after the mall made street and drainage improvements, Westminster paid for these improvements with municipal bonds. This, however, shows a general, rather than a significant, encouragement of economic development in Westminster. It is noteworthy that these civic improvements benefitted the city as well as the mall. I would not hold that mere encouragement of private enterprise through subsidization or tax breaks turns a business into a state actor. Moreover, there is no nexus between the street and drainage projects and the mail’s alleged deprivation of speech rights.
Second, Westminster has a police station in the mall and provides police officers to patrol the mall during business hours. *69Were these officers responsible for ejecting the petitioners from the mall, this might be deemed significant encouragement of the mall’s speech policies. When the petitioners, however, requested a permit to pass out leaflets, it was the mall administration, not the Westminster police, who rejected the application. There is no evidence in the record to support a nexus between the existence of the police station and officers and the complained of abuse of free speech. The majority only notes a possibility that the mall’s policies could be enforced by the Westminster officers. See maj. op. at 61. A mere possibility of state action, however, is insufficient to turn the mall into a state actor.
Finally, the mall allowed a Jefferson County voter registration drive. By using county action in addition to city action to reach its conclusion of state action on the part of the mall, see maj. op. at 62, the majority blurs the line of just what “state” is acting. Under this analysis, one could throw Colorado and federal connections into the same mix. This lack of specificity in applying the state action doctrine would create an unwarranted and undesirable expansion of the law.
Because the record is void of any evidence showing a nexus between Westminster’s actions and those listed in the petitioners’ complaint, the mail’s actions belong to it alone as a private party and are not converted to those of the state. Accordingly, the free speech clauses of the Colorado Constitution do not reach the acts of the mall, and summary judgment in its favor was proper.
ROVIRA, C.J., and VOLLACK, J., join in this dissent.

. Although In re Cannon 35 was technically the report of a referee, we specifically approved and adopted the report in its entirety. See 132 Colo, at 605, 296 P.2d at 473.

. The fourteenth amendment provides, in relevant part:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
U.S. Const, amend. XIV, § 1. Note that this portion of the fourteenth amendment has three clauses. The first two clauses contain the word "State” but the third, the Equal Protection Clause, does not. The federal state action doctrine developed, however, with equal protection cases. See, e.g., Burton v. Wilmington Parking Auth., 365 U.S. 715, 81 S.Ct. 856, 6 L.Ed.2d 45 (1961); Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 U.S. 991, 102 S.Ct. 2777, 73 L.Ed.2d 534 (1982). Thus, the state action component of the amendment carries over into a clause lacking specific words of state action. Of course, the second clause of the Colorado Constitution freedom of speech clauses begins with "every person shall” rather than the conjunction "nor” which is used in the federal Constitution to relate back to the prior clauses. Essentially, Colorado’s second clause is a definition of the term "freedom of speech” as used in the first clause. It is a natural and reasonable construction, therefore, to read the second clause as a modifier of the first.