Court Opinion

ID: 9419234
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:47:48.547776+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:16.501352
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Reed
dissenting:
The Texas court enjoined petitioners, a labor union of carpenters and joiners, another union of painters, and all of their members from picketing the restaurant of the respondent, E. R. Ritter, plaintiff below, doing business under the trade name of Ritter’s Cafe, at 418 Broadway, in Houston, “and from carrying banners peacefully and in any other manner upon the sidewalks in front” of the restaurant. There had been no violence. Only two pickets, one from each union, walked back and forth, carrying placards which before the injunction issued were modified to read, “The Owner of This Cafe Has Awarded a Contract to Erect a Building to W. A. Plaster Who is Unfair to the *733Carpenters Union 213 and Painter Union 130, Affiliated with the American Federation of Labor.”
Plaster, a building contractor, was putting up a structure for respondent, Ritter, in the 2800 block of Broadway, under a contract which did not require Plaster to employ union labor. The record does not show whether or not this new building is to be used in the restaurant business. He was employing non-union workers. The restaurant, however, was unionized, its employees being members of Hotel and Restaurant Employees’ Local 808. They quit on the day the picketing began, union drivers refused to deliver supplies, and the business slumped sixty per cent. The court found petitioners’ conduct an invasion of respondents’ right to conduct a legitimate business and an attempt to interfere illegally with a contract with third parties.
The injunction was issued by the Texas court because such invasion or attempt at invasion of the rights of a business man was held “to create restrictions in the free pursuit” of business, contrary to the Texas anti-trust laws. Tex. Rev. Civ. Stat. (Vernon, 1936) Arts. 7426, 7428; Tex. Penal Code (Vernon, 1936) Arts. 1632, 1634, 1635. 149 S. W. 2d 694. The petitioners’ challenge to the validity of the injunction is based on the constitutional right of free speech, guaranteed them by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Schneider v. State, 308 U. S. 147, 160.
This challenge involves two particularly delicate relationships. These are that between the federal and state governments, and that between a state and labor unions within its borders. So far as the injunction depends upon the action of the Texas court in construing its anti-trust statutes to forbid such interference with the restaurant business, the order is unassailable here. But if such an interpretation denies to Texans claimed rights guaranteed to them by the federal Constitution, the state authority must *734accommodate its orders to preserve that right. Cf. International Harvester Co. v. Kentucky, 234 U. S. 216; Lindsey v. Washington, 301 U. S. 397, 400; Minnesota v. Probate Court, 309 U. S. 270, 273.
Recent cases in this Court have sought to make more definite the extent and limitations of the rights of free speech in labor disputes. For some time, there has been general acceptance of the fundamental right to publicize “the facts of a labor dispute in a peaceful way through appropriate means.” One of the recognized means is by orderly picketing with banners or placards. Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U. S. 88, 104. In Carlson v. California, 310 U. S. 106, 113, we said: “For the reasons set forth in our opinion in Thornhill v. Alabama, supra, publicizing the facts of a labor dispute in a peaceful way through appropriate means, whether by pamphlet, by word of mouth or by banner, must now be regarded as within that liberty of communication which is secured to every person by the Fourteenth Amendment against abridgment by a State.” The desire of both sides in labor controversies to gain advantages for themselves and limit similar opportunities for their opponents has led each to seek to expand or contract the constitutionally protected area for picketing operations as suits their respective purposes. Recognition of the basic right to picket made the location of lines beyond which picketing could not be employed an important objective of those who suffer from its use.
In the Carlson and Thornhill cases, legislation forbidding picketing for the purpose of interfering with the business of another was invalidated because it was an unconstitutional prohibition of the worker’s right to publicize his situation. It was not thought of sufficient importance in either case to mention in the opinion whether the picket was an interested disputant with those picketed or an utter stranger to the controversy and the industry. In those *735carefully phrased decisions the possibility of state control of socially menacing evils, flowing from industrial disputes, was recognized, but those general evils were not of the kind which were considered to warrant interference with free speech by peaceful picketing.1 We said:
“It is true that the rights of employers and employees to conduct their economic affairs and to compete with others for a share in the products of industry are subject to modification or qualification in the interests of the society in which they exist. This is but an instance of the power of the State to set the limits of permissible contest open to industrial combatants. See Mr. Justice Brandeis in 254 U. S. at 488. It does not follow that the State in dealing with the evils arising from industrial disputes may impair the effective exercise of the right to discuss freely industrial relations which are matters of public concern. A contrary conclusion could be used to support abridgment of freedom of speech and of the press concerning almost every matter of importance to society.”2
An instance of state control over peaceful picketing soon appeared. In Drivers Union v. Meadowmoor Co., 312 U. S. 287, this Court, though not without dissent, upheld Illinois’ ruling that, where “acts of picketing in themselves peaceful” are enmeshed in violence, immediate future peaceful picketing may be enjoined. This decision compelled a less extreme result in Hotel & Restaurant Employees’ Alliance v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Board, ante, p. 437. In the latter case, the order approved “forbids only violence” and “permits peaceful picketing.” Nothing more than the validity of prohibitions against violence was decided as to the constitutionality of the Wisconsin Employment Peace Act.
*736On the same day that Meadowmoor was handed down, A. F. of L. v. Swing, 312 U. S. 321, was decided. In Swing’s case a union of beauty shop workers picketed a beauty parlor. They were not and had not been employees of the establishment. We stated the issue thus:
“More thorough study of the record and full argument have reduced the issue to this: is the constitutional guarantee of freedom of discussion infringed by the common law policy of a state forbidding resort to peaceful persuasion through picketing merely because there is no immediate employer-employee dispute?”3
There was nothing in the opinion to intimate that the answer would have varied, if the union had been a local of the teamsters or painters. The injunction granted by Illinois was set aside with these words:
“Such a ban of free communication is inconsistent with the guarantee of freedom of speech. That a state has ample power to regulate the local problems thrown up by modern industry and to preserve the peace is axiomatic. But not even these essential powers are unfettered by the requirements of the Bill of Rights. The scope of the Fourteenth Amendment is not confined by the notion of a particular state regarding the wise limits of an injunction in an industrial dispute, whether those limits be defined by statute or by the judicial organ of the state. A state cannot exclude workingmen from peacefully exercising the right of free communication by drawing the circle of economic competition between employers and workers so small as to contain only an employer and those directly employed by him. The interdependence of economic interest of all engaged in the same industry has become a commonplace. American Steel Foundries v. Tri-City Council, 257 U. S. 184, 209. The right of free communication cannot therefore be mutilated by denying it to work*737ers, in a dispute with an employer, even though they are not in his employ. Communication by such employees of the facts of a dispute, deemed by them to be relevant to their interests, can no more be barred because of concern for the economic interests against which they are seeking to enlist public opinion than could the utterance protected in Thornhill’s case. ‘Members of a union might, without special statutory authorization by a State, make known the facts of a labor dispute, for freedom of speech is guaranteed by the Federal Constitution.’ Senn v. Tile Layers Union, 301 U. S. 468, 478.” 4
Today this Court decides Bakery & Pastry Drivers & Helpers Local 802 v. Wohl, post, p. 769. In this case the union picketed manufacturing bakers who sold to, and threatened to picket grocers and retail bakers who bought from, peddlers. The peddlers purchased bakery goods and sold them to the trade. The labor controversy was the effort of the unions to compel the peddlers to hire a union driver one day a week. The state forbade the picketing of the manufacturers and of the retailers, regardless of whether the picketing placards were directed at the product or the general business of the retailers.* 5 Although there is no possible labor relation between the peddlers and their customers, or between the grocers and retail bakers, and the union, we decline to permit New York to take steps to protect the places of business of those who dealt with the peddlers against picketing. It seems obvious that the selling of baked products, distributed by *738the peddlers, is a minor part of the grocery business. Recent cases illustrate the present tendency of state courts to permit workers outside the industry picketed to publicize their labor disputes with others.6 To permit the Wohl injunction, without evidence of special embarrassment to peace and order, would, we hold, go beyond permissible limitations on free speech.
We are of the view that the right of free speech upheld in these decisions requires Texas to permit the publicizing of the dissatisfaction over Mr. Ritter’s contract for his new building. Until today, orderly, regulated picketing has been within the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment. Such picketing was obviously disadvantageous to the business affected. In balancing social advantages it has been felt that the preservation of free speech in labor disputes was more important than the freedom of enterprise from the burdens of the picket line. It was a limitation on state power to deal as it pleased with labor disputes; a limitation consented to by the state when it became a part of the nation, and one of precisely the same quality as those enforced in Carlson, Thornhill and Swing.
We are not here forced, as the Court assumes, to support a constitutional interpretation that peaceful picketing “must be wholly immune from regulation by the community in order to protect the general interest.” We do not doubt the right of the state to impose not only some but many restrictions upon peaceful picketing. Reasonable numbers, quietness, truthful placards, open ingress and egress, suitable hours or other proper limitations, not *739destructive of the right to tell of labor difficulties, may be required. The Court limits its holding to the peculiar circumstances of this case. All decisions necessarily are so limited, but from the decisions rules are drawn. By this decision a state rule is upheld which forbids peaceful picketing of businesses by strangers to the business and the industry of which it is a part. The legal kernel of the Court’s present decision is that the “sphere” of free speech is confined to the “area of the industry within which a labor dispute arises.” This rule is applied, in this case, even though the picketers are publicizing a labor dispute arising from a contract to which the sole owner of the business picketed is a party. Even if the construction contract covered an attached addition to the restaurant, the Court’s opinion would not permit picketing directed against the restaurant. To construe this Texas decision as within state powers and the Wohl decision as outside their boundaries, plainly discloses the inadequacy of the test presumably employed, that is, the supposed lack of economic “interdependence” between the picketers and the picketed.
The philosophy behind the conclusion of the Court in this case gives to a state the right to bar from picket lines workers who are not a part of the industry picketed. We are not told whether the test of eligibility to picket is to be applied by crafts or enterprises, or how we are to determine economic interdependence or the boundaries of particular industries. Such differentiations are yet to be considered. The decision withdraws federal constitutional protection from the freedom of workers outside an industry to state their side of a labor controversy by picketing. So long as civil government is able to function normally for the protection of its citizens, such a limitation upon free speech is unwarranted.

 Evidently the conception was that of “imminent and aggravated danger,” A. F. of L. v. Swing, 312 U. S. 321, 325.

 310 U. S. 88, 103-104.

 312 U. S. 321, 323.

 312 U. S. 321, 325-326.

 “It is hereby ordered, . . . that the defendants, . . . are perpetually restrained and enjoined:
(a) From picketing the places of business of manufacturing bakers who sell to the plaintiffs . . . because of the fact that said manufacturing bakers sell to these plaintiffs; and
(b) From picketing the places of business of customers of these plaintiffs because such customers purchase baked products from these plaintiffs; . , , ”

 People v. Harris, 104 Colo. 386, 91 P. 2d 989 (May, 1939); Byck Bros. & Co. v. Martin, 4 C. C. H. Labor Cases ¶ 60,430 (Ky. Cir. Ct., March, 1941); Ellingsen v. Milk Wagon Driver's Union, 377 Ill. 76, 35 N. E. 2d 349 (June, 1941); People v. Muller, 286 N. Y. 281, 36 N. E. 2d 206 (July, 1941); Maywood Farms Co. v. Milk Wagon Drivers’ Union, 313 Ill. App. 24, 38 N. E. 2d 972 (January, 1942); Mason & Dixon Lines v. Odom, 18 S. E. 2d 841 (Ga., February, 1942).