Court Opinion

ID: 9794850
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:12:51.670576+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:21:17.052857
License: Public Domain

Hunter, C. J.
This is an appeal by the city of Tacoma, and David D. Rowlands as Tacoma city manager, from a judgment of the Pierce County Superior Court requiring specific performance of a contract made and entered into between the plaintiff, Hillside Community Church, Inc., and the defendant, Washington Transit Advertising Company, acting as agent for the defendant, city of Tacoma.
On August 2, 1965, a committee from the Hillside,Community Church contracted with the city of Tacoma, by and through its agent, the Washington Transit Advertising Company, for the display of 20 exterior display signs upon Tacoma transit buses. These signs bore copy relating to ending the war in Vietnam.
The signs in question read: “End war in Vietnam . . . Now! by peaceful negotiations. Urge use of resources for peace.” The signs included print indicating that the Peace Committee of the Hillside Community Church was the sponsoring organization.
The signs were actually installed on the buses on or about August 5, 1965, but were ordered removed therefrom on or about August 9, by the defendant David Rowlands, acting as Tacoma city manager. The defendants have refused to allow the signs to be redisplayed on the buses, and the plaintiff began legal action to enforce the contract.
The city’s actions were based upon the following provision in their contract with the Washington Transit Advertising Company, whereby the latter was entitled to sell advertising space on Tacoma transit buses: “Any advertisement objectionable to the City shall, upon written request of the City acting through its duly authorized representatives, be promptly removed by the advertising company.”
*65The contract entered into by the defendant Washington Transit Advertising Company and the plaintiff contained, among other things, the following provision: “The form, wording and illustrations of cards shall not be of a kind or character objectionable to the transit companies in whose equipment cards are to be displayed.”
The trial court held that the refusal of the defendants to permit the display of said signs constituted an unconstitutional abridgment of the plaintiff’s right to free expression protected by the first and fourteenth amendments to the constitution of the United States, as well as the constitution of the state of Washington, and a denial to the plaintiff of equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the fourteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States, as well as the constitution of the state of Washington. The trial court, therefore, entered a judgment enjoining the defendants from interfering with the performance of the contract, and ordering specific performance of said contract. The city of Tacoma and its city manager, David D. Rowlands, appeal.
The defendants contend that the trial court erred in holding that their actions in removing the signs from the buses constituted a violation of the plaintiff’s state and federal constitutional rights. The defendants argue that Tacoma operates its transit system in a proprietary or private capacity, as opposed to a governmental capacity. As such, they argue that they are subject to the same burdens, responsibilities and liabilities as a private corporation or individual acting in the same capacity and, therefore, have the sole and absolute discretion to publish or refuse to publish particular advertisements.
The general rule of the law is that a state or municipality cannot avoid the constitutional limitations upon state action by claiming the shield afforded proprietary functions. Trenton v. New Jersey, 262 U.S. 182, 67 L. Ed. 937, 43 S. Ct. 534, 29 A.L.R. 1471 (1923); St. Petersburg v. Alsup, 238 F.2d 830 (5th Cir. 1956), cert. denied 353 U.S. 922 (1957). In the latter case, involving an abuse of civil rights whereby *66Negroes were denied the right to use a municipal beach and swimming pool, the court said:
A state cannot, by judicial decision or otherwise, remove any of its activities from the inhibitions of the Fourteenth Amendment. See Nixon v. Condon, 286 U.S. 73, 88, 52 S.Ct. 484, 76 L.Ed. 984. It is doubtful whether a municipality may ever engage in purely private action that would not be action of the state. See In re Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 3 S.Ct. 18, 27 L.Ed. 835; Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60, 38 S.Ct. 16, 62 L.Ed. 149.
In Trenton v. New Jersey, supra, the United States Supreme Court stated at 187:
A municipality is merely a department of the State, and the State may withhold, grant or withdraw powers and privileges as it sees fit. However great or small its sphere of action, it remains the creature of the State exercising and holding powers and privileges subject to the sovereign will. See Barnes v. District of Columbia, 91 U.S. 540, 544, 545.
The United States Supreme Court, speaking in Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 17, 3 L. Ed. 2d 5, 78 S. Ct. 1401 (1958), also asserted:
“ . . . The constitutional provision [of the Fourteenth Amendment], therefore, must mean that no agency of the State, or of the officers or agents by whom its powers are exerted, shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Whoever, by virtue of public position under a State government, . . . denies or takes away the equal protection of the laws, violates the constitutional inhibition; and as he acts in the name and for the State, and is clothed with the State’s power, his act is that of the State. This must be so, or the constitutional prohibition has no meaning.” Ex parte Virginia, 100 U.S. 339, 347. Thus the prohibitions of the Fourteenth Amendment extend to all action of the State denying equal protection of the laws; whatever the agency of the State taking the action, . . .
(Citations omitted.)
We therefore hold that the defendant city of Tacoma, although acting in a proprietary capacity when accepting advertising for its transit system, is within the ambit of *67constitutional guarantees and is thereby bound by said guarantees.
The defendants further contend, however, that there is no overriding constitutional right or privilege compelling the defendants to accept the advertising in question. The defendants argue that they have never accepted advertisements of an abstract political nature nor have they thwarted any attempt of the plaintiff to advertise by conventional means.
The general rule of law in this respect is that while a state is under no duty to make its public facilities available for private purposes, if it elects to do so, it must make them available on a nondiscriminatory basis and with due regard to the constitutional right of freedom of expression. East Meadow Community Concerts Ass’n v. Board of Education of Union Free School Dist. 3, 18 N.Y.2d 129, 219 N.E. 2d 172 (1966); Danskin v. San Diego Unified School Dist., 28 Cal. 2d 536, 171 P.2d 885 (1946). In the latter case the court held at 545:
The state is under no duty to make school buildings available for public meetings. (See 86 A.L.R. 1195, 47 Am. Jur. 344.) If it elects to do so, however, it cannot arbitrarily prevent any members of the public from holding such meetings. (Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337, 349 [59 S.Ct. 232, 83 L.Ed. 208]; see Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 [66 S.Ct. 276, 280, 90 L.Ed.-].)
In a case very similar to the instant case, which involves anti-war posters on publicly owned buses in California, the Supreme Court of California, in Wirta v. Alameda-Contra Costa Transit Dist., 68 Cal. 2d 51, 55, 64 Cal. Rptr. 430, 433, 434 P.2d 982 (1967) held:
Our problem, therefore, is reduced to a situation in which a governmental agency has refused to accept an advertisement expressing ideas admittedly protected by the First Amendment for display in a forum which the agency has deemed suitable for the expression of ideas through the medium of paid advertisements. This refusal is based on the ground that the agency’s policy is to accept only advertisements for the sale of goods or services and certain types of political advertising at limited times. We conclude that defendants, having opened *68■a forum for the expression of ideas by providing facilities for advertisements on its buses, cannot for reasons of administrative convenience decline to accept advertisements expressing opinions and beliefs within the ambit of First Amendment protection.
As the court in Wirta asserted at 56:
The vice is not that the district has preferred one point of view over another, but that it chooses between classes of ideas entitled to constitutional protection, sanctioning the expression of only those selected, and banning all others. Thus the district’s regulation exercises a most pervasive form of censorship.
Not only does the district’s policy prefer certain classes of protected ideas over others but it goes even further and affords total freedom of the forum to mercantile messages while banning the vast majority of opinions and beliefs extant which enjoy First Amendment protection because of their noncommercialism. No statistical data is required to demonstrate that in the totality of man’s communicable knowledge, that which bears no relationship to material value preponderates.
That court at 56 also quoted its earlier decision in Danskin v. San Diego Unified School Dist., supra, that “It is not for the state to control the influence of a public forum by censoring the ideas, the proponents, or the audience. ...” The United States Supreme Court has been both clear and firm in its protection of the right of the individual to freedom of speech. As stated in Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1, 4-5, 93 L. Ed. 1131, 69 S. Ct. 894 (1949):
[A] function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea. That is why freedom of speech, though not absolute ... is nevertheless protected against censorship or punishment, unless shown likely to produce a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest . . . There is no room under our *69Constitution for a more restrictive view. For the alternative would lead to standardization of ideas either by legislatures, courts, or dominant political or community groups.
(Italics ours.) See, Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516, 89 L.Ed. 430, 65 S. Ct. 315 (1945); Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47, 63 L. Ed. 470, 39 S. Ct. 247 (1919); see also, Schneider v. State, 308 U.S. 147, 84 L. Ed. 155, 60 S. Ct. 146 (1939); Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 536, 13 L. Ed. 2d 471, 85 S. Ct. 453 (1965). Once a municipality or public body enters the field of advertising, therefore, the law requires that a showing of a “clear and present” danger must be made in order to limit such advertising without conflicting with guarantee of freedom of speech under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. See, citations above; Wirta v. Alameda-Contra Costa Transit Dist., supra; Kissinger v. New York City Transit Authority, 274 F. Supp. 438 (S.D. N.Y. 1967).
In Kissinger, the court disposed of issues virtually identical to the ones posed in this appeal. The defendants to that action also argued that there was no violation of constitutional rights because they had limited the advertising they would accept to (a) commercial advertising for the sale of goods, etc., (b) public service announcements; and (c) political advertising at the time of and in connection with elections. However, the court did not agree with this contention and held only a showing of a clear and present danger would justify the refusal. The court stated at 442:
Absent a showing that the posters would present a “clear and present” danger (see, e. g., Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47, 52, 39 S.Ct. 247, 63 L.Ed. 470 (1919)), the guarantee of freedom of speech under the First and Fourteenth Amendments extends to plaintiffs’ posters (see, e. g., Cantwell v. State of Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 60 S.Ct. 900, 84 L.Ed. 1213 (1940); Schneider v. State of New Jersey, 308 U.S. 147, 60 S.Ct. 146, 84 L.Ed. 155 (1939)), and although it may be that the Authority and the Advertising Company could refuse to accept all posters for display in the subways . . . [citations omitted] , the Authority and the Advertising Company cannot accept some posters and refuse the plaintiffs’ for reasons *70that conflict with the First Amendment guarantee of the right to freedom of speech.
(Citations omitted.)
The action against the city of Tacoma, in the instant case, is much stronger than that which existed against the New York City Transit Authority in the Kissinger case. The New York posters, which also opposed the war in Vietnam, carried the picture of a child burned by napalm bombs and were politically much more controversial than those used in Tacoma. Moreover, in Tacoma the contract was entered into and acted upon, whereas in New York, the plaintiffs sought a declaratory judgment requiring the defendants to accept the posters for display. Although that court denied the plaintiffs’ motion for a summary judgment, it did so because issues of clear and present danger were raised which the court held could be resolved only at trial.
We find the reasoning of the Kissinger and Wirta cases to be sound and applicable to the present case. There being an absence of any substantial showing in this record of a clear and present danger caused by the display of the posters, we hold that the defendants’ actions were unconstitutional. We find that the said actions, which were based upon the contract provision authorizing the defendants to reject “objectionable material,” were clearly acts of censorship. This was a violation of the plaintiff’s right to free expression as guaranteed by the first and fourteenth amendments to the constitution of the United States, as well as the constitution of the state of Washington, and denied the plaintiff the equal protection of the laws as guaranteed by the fourteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Washington.
The judgment of the trial court is affirmed.
Hill, Weaver, Rosellini, Hale, and McGovern, JJ., concur.