Court Opinion

ID: 9423707
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:08:51.323029+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:45.666365
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
concurring.
Picketing on the public walkways and parking area in respondents’ shopping center presents a totally different question from an invasion of one’s home or place *326of business. While Logan Valley Mall is not dedicated to public use to the degree of the “company town” in Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U. S. 501, it is clear that respondents have opened the shopping center to public uses. They hold out the mall as “public” for purposes of attracting customers and facilitating delivery of merchandise. Picketing in regard to labor conditions at the Weis Supermarket is directly related to that shopping center business. Why should respondents be permitted to avoid this incidence of carrying on a public business in the name of “private property”? It is clear to me that they may not, when the public activity sought to be prohibited involves constitutionally protected expression respecting their business.
Picketing is free speech plus, the plus being physical activity that may implicate traffic and related matters. Hence the latter aspects of picketing may be regulated. See Bakery Drivers Local v. Wahl, 315 U. S. 769, 776-777 (concurring opinion); Hughes v. Superior Court, 339 U. S. 460, 464-465; Building Service Union v. Gazzam, 339 U. S. 532, 536-537. Thus, the provisions of the injunction in this case which prohibit the picketers from interfering with employees, deliverymen, and customers are proper. It is said that the picketers may be banished to the publicly owned berms, several hundred feet from the target of their criticism. But that is to make “private property” a sanctuary from which some members of the public may be excluded merely because of the ideas they espouse. Logan Valley Mall covers several acres and the number of picketers at any time has been small. The courts of Pennsylvania are surely capable of fashioning a decree that will ensure noninterference with customers and employees, while enabling the union members to assemble sufficiently close to Weis’ market to make effective the exercise of their First Amendment rights.