Court Opinion

ID: 9682230
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 08:08:10.296549+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:38.245464
License: Public Domain

SPECTOR, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in the judgment of the Court dismissing this mandamus proceeding as moot but do not join in the Court’s opinion for the reasons set out below.
I.
Today, the majority attempts to explain— in a broad interpretation of our Texas Constitution — why the Republican Party was entitled to deny the Log Cabin Republicans a booth and advertisement at the Party’s state convention. The majority’s opinion holds that state action is required for equal rights, free speech, and due course of law claims under the Bill of Rights of the Texas Constitution. The majority further concludes that the Republican Party’s state convention is not sufficiently related to the electoral process to render the Party’s exclusion of the Log Cabin Republicans state action.
II.
I first disagree with the majority’s over-broad rationale for adopting a state action requirement for equal rights, due course of law, and free speech claims under the Texas Constitution. In the hundred and fourteen years since the United States Supreme Court first recognized a state action requirement under the federal Fourteenth Amendment, *95see The Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 23, 3 S.Ct. 18, 30, 27 L.Ed. 835 (1883), this Court has never found a proper occasion to determine whether any provision of our state Bill of Rights contains a similar limitation. See Diamond Shamrock Ref. & Mktg. Co. v. Mendez, 844 S.W.2d 198, 203 n. 1 (Tex.1992) (Gonzalez, J., concurring and dissenting). The majority purports to “rely heavily on the constitution’s literal text” and to consider “the purpose of the constitutional provision, the historical context in which it was written, the collective intent, if it can be ascertained, of the framers and the people who adopted it, our prior judicial decisions, the interpretations of analogous constitutional provisions by other jurisdictions, and constitutional theory.” 940 S.W.2d at 89. Yet today, without reference to the individual language, history, or purpose of article I, sections 3, 8, 13, and 19, the majority concludes that a state action requirement for equal rights, due course of law, and free speech claims is virtually self-evident.
The majority’s heavy reliance on federal state action doctrine under the federal Fourteenth Amendment and the portions of the Bill of Rights incorporated through that amendment is misplaced. Both the Fourteenth Amendment and the First Amendment, by their plain language, pertain only to governmental actions. See U.S. Const. amends. I (“Congress shall pass no law ...”), XIV (“[N]or shall any state ... ”). The Texas Bill of Rights contains nothing comparable to this strong language: to the extent that it is regarded as having any meaning at all, article I, section 29 has previously been read to strengthen — not to limit — the other provisions of the Bill of Rights. See 1 GEORGE D. BRAden, The Constitution of the State of Texas: An Annotated and Comparative Analysis 85-86 (1977). Further, the federal state action requirement is a product of the twin concerns of federalism and separation of powers within the federal government. Lau-renoe H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law § 18-2, at 1691 (2d ed. 1988). These concerns relate differently to our state constitution than to the federal constitution.
The majority disregards significant differences between the language of the Texas and federal constitutions. For example, the federal Due Process Clause has a limited reach because it “is phrased as a limitation on the State’s power to act, not as a guarantee of certain minimal levels of safety and security.” DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dept. of Social Services, 489 U.S. 189, 195, 109 S.Ct. 998, 1000, 103 L.Ed.2d 249 (1989). Like other state courts that have applied state free speech provisions to the acts of private parties, however, this Court has repeatedly drawn attention to the affirmative right conferred by article I, section 8:
Rather than a restriction on governmental interference with speech such as that provided by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, Texans chose from the beginning to assure the liberties for which they were struggling with a specific guarantee of an affirmative right to speak.
Davenport v. Garcia, 834 S.W.2d 4, 7-8 (1992) (emphasis added); see also Ex parte Tucci, 859 S.W.2d 1, 5 (Tex.1993) (plurality opinion); O’Quinn v. State Bar of Texas, 763 S.W.2d 397, 402 (Tex.1988). The majority discounts persuasive decisions by other state courts interpreting similar state constitutional provisions, merely because the Log Cabin Republicans “never alleged that [they were] entitled to a temporary injunction on the basis that the Texas Constitution’s free speech guarantee applied on private property.” 940 S.W.2d at 90 n. 5. Here, of course, such a claim would have been inappropriate because the Party’s convention took place on public property at San Antonio’s Alamo-dome.1
III.
Even assuming a state action requirement should apply to the Log Cabin Republicans’ claims, the majority does not offer a satisfactory justification for finding an absence of state action here. In construing the federal state action requirement, the United States Supreme Court has recognized that even an entirely private person may be considered a *96state actor, when the person acts in conjunction with or obtains significant aid from the state. See Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., 457 U.S. 922, 941, 102 S.Ct. 2744, 2755, 73 L.Ed.2d 482 (1982). “Only by sifting facts and weighing circumstances can the nonobvious involvement of the State in private conduct be attributed its true significance.” Burton v. Wilmington Parking Auth., 365 U.S. 715, 722, 81 S.Ct. 856, 860, 6 L.Ed.2d 45 (1961) (citation omitted).
Whether sufficient state action exists here must turn on the extent to which the Party’s state convention implicates the state’s authority and the electoral process. The majority recognizes that the behavior of political parties has risen to the level of state action in various circumstances. 940 S.W.2d at 92-93. Today’s opinion, however, does not articulate any standard or principle that determines where the threshold for state action lies.
Based only on the facts brought to light in a brief hearing on the temporary injunction, the trial court observed that a symbiotic relationship exists between the state and a major political party, and concluded that the Log Cabin Republicans could probably demonstrate a sufficient degree of state involvement to prevail on their constitutional claims. On the same limited record, this Court reaches the opposite conclusion.
IV.
Political speech, the type of speech that the Log Cabin Republicans sought to exercise at the Party’s convention, is integral to our democratic form of government and receives the broadest protection under the First Amendment to assure an open debate on political issues. Cf. McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm’n, 514 U.S. 334, -, 115 S.Ct. 1511, 1518-19, 131 L.Ed.2d 426 (1995). I cannot join an opinion that precipitately cuts off such a debate.

. Neither the Party nor the Log Cabin Republicans ever addressed the implications of the fact that the Party’s convention took place at a public facility rather than on private property, though this fact could have been weighed in a state action analysis on a fully developed record.