Court Opinion

ID: 9629320
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:40:38.904474+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:17.883491
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
concurring in part and concurring in the result.
I join Parts I and II of the Court’s opinion, but not Part III. The plurality’s cursory discussion of what for me are difficult First Amendment issues presented by this case fails to *617take account of the effect of this Court’s decision in Police Department of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U. S. 92 (1972), on the question whether the National Labor Relations Act’s content-based ban on peaceful picketing of secondary employers is constitutional. The failure to take Mosley into account is particularly ironic given that the Court today reaffirms and extends the principles of that case in Carey v. Brown, ante, p. 455.
In NLRB v. Fruit Packers, 377 U. S. 58, 76 (1964), Mr. Justice Black wrote a concurring opinion in which he concluded that § 8 (b) (4) (ii) (B) of the National Labor Relations Act “abridges freedom of speech and press in violation of the First Amendment.” He said:
“In short, we have neither a case in which picketing is banned because the picketers are asking others to do something unlawful nor a case in which all picketing is, for reasons of public order, banned. Instead, we have a case in which picketing, otherwise lawful, is banned only when the picketers express particular views. The result is an abridgement of the freedom of these picketers to tell a part of the public their side of a labor controversy, a subject the free discussion of which is protected by the First Amendment.” 377 U. S., at 79. (Emphasis in original.)
These views, central to Mr. Justice Black’s vision of the First Amendment, were, one would have supposed until today, “accepted” by the Court in Mosley. See 408 U. S., at 98.
I have never been fully comfortable with Mosley’s, equating all content selectivity in affording access to picketers with censorship. See Mosley, 408 U. S., at 102 (concurring statement). For this reason, I join today in Me. Justice Rehnquist’s dissenting opinion in Carey v. Brown. I concur in the result in this case, however, only because I am reluctant to hold unconstitutional Congress’ striking of the delicate balance between union freedom of expression and the ability *618of neutral employers, employees, and consumers to remain free from coerced participation in industrial strife. My vote should not be read as foreclosing an opposite conclusion where another statutory ban on peaceful picketing, unsupported by equally substantial governmental interests, is at issue.