PRUNEYARD SHOPPING CENTER ET AL. v. ROBINS ET AL.
No. 79-289
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 18, 1980—Decided June 9, 1980
447 U.S. 74
Max L. Gillam argued the cause for appellants. With him on the briefs were James W. Daniels, William C. Kelly, Jr., and Thomas P. O‘Donnell.
Philip L. Hammer argued the cause and filed a brief for appellees.
Elinor Hadley Stillman argued the cause for the United States as amicus curiae urging affirmance. With her on the brief were Solicitor General McCree and Deputy Solicitor General Wallace.*
MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST delivered the opinion of the Court.
We postponed jurisdiction of this appeal from the Supreme Court of California to decide the important federal constitutional questions it presented. Those are whether state constitutional provisions, which permit individuals to exercise free speech and petition rights on the property of a privately owned shopping center to which the public is invited, violate the shopping center owner‘s property rights under the Fifth
I
Appellant PruneYard is a privately owned shopping center in the city of Campbell, Cal. It covers approximately 21 acres—5 devoted to parking and 16 occupied by walkways, plazas, sidewalks, and buildings that contain more than 65 specialty shops, 10 restaurants, and a movie theater. The PruneYard is open to the public for the purpose of encouraging the patronizing of its commercial establishments. It has a policy not to permit any visitor or tenant to engage in any publicly expressive activity, including the circulation of petitions, that is not directly related to its commercial purposes. This policy has been strictly enforced in a nondiscriminatory fashion. The PruneYard is owned by appellant Fred Sahadi.
Appellees are high school students who sought to solicit suрport for their opposition to a United Nations resolution against “Zionism.” On a Saturday afternoon they set up a card table in a corner of PruneYard‘s central courtyard. They distributed pamphlets and asked passersby to sign petitions, which were to be sent to the President and Members of Congress. Their activity was peaceful and orderly and so far as the record indicates was not objected to by PruneYard‘s patrons.
Soon after appellees had begun soliciting signatures, a security guard informed them that they would have to leave because their activity violated PruneYard regulations. The guard suggested that they move to the public sidewalk at the PruneYard‘s perimeter. Appellees immediately left the premises and later filed this lawsuit in the California Superior Court of Santa Clara County. They sought to enjoin appellants from denying them access to the PruneYard for the purpose of circulating their petitions.
The Superior Court held that appellees were not entitled under either the Federal оr California Constitution to exercise
The California Supreme Court reversed, holding that the California Constitution protects “speech and petitioning, reasonably exercised, in shopping centers even when the centers are privately owned.” 23 Cal. 3d 899, 910, 592 P. 2d 341, 347 (1979). It concluded that appellees were entitled to conduct their activity on PruneYard property. In rejecting appellants’ contention that such a result infringed property rights protected by the Federal Constitution, the California Supreme Court observed:
“‘It bears repeated emphasis that we do not have under consideration the property or privacy rights of an individual homeowner or the proprietor of a modest rеtail establishment. As a result of advertising and the lure of a congenial environment, 25,000 persons are induced to congregate daily to take advantage of the numerous amenities offered by the [shopping center there]. A handful of additional orderly persons soliciting signatures and distributing handbills in connection therewith, under reasonable regulations adopted by defendant to assure that these activities do not interfere with normal business operations (see Diamond [v. Bland, 3 Cal. 3d 653, 665, 477 P. 2d 733, 741 (1970)]) would not markedly dilute defendant‘s property rights.’ ( [Diamond v. Bland, 11 Cal. 3d 331, 345, 521 P. 2d 460, 470 (1974)] (dis. opn. of Mosk, J.).)” Id., at 910-911, 592 P. 2d, at 347-348.
The California Supreme Court thus expressly overruled its earlier decision in Diamond v. Bland, 11 Cal. 3d 331, 521 P. 2d 460 (Diamond II), cert. denied, 419 U. S. 885 (1974), which had reached an opposite conclusion. 23 Cal. 3d, at
II
We initially conclude that this case is properly before us as an appeal under
III
Appellants first contend that Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U. S. 551 (1972), prevents the State from requiring a private shopping center owner to provide access to persons exercising their state constitutional rights of free speech and petition when adequate alternative avenues of communication are available. Lloyd dealt with the question whether under the Federal Constitution a privately owned shopping center may prohibit the distribution of handbills on its property when the handbilling is unrelated to the shopping center‘s operations. Id., at 552. The shopping center had adopted a strict policy against the distribution of handbills within the building complex and its malls, and it made no exceptions to this rule. Id., at 555.3 Respondents in Lloyd argued that because the shopping center was open to the public, the
Our reasoning in Lloyd, however, does not ex proprio vigore limit the authority of the State to exercise its police power or its sovereign right to adopt in its own Constitution individual liberties more expansive than those conferred by the Federal Constitution. Cooper v. California, 386 U. S. 58, 62 (1967). See also 407 U. S., at 569-570. In Lloyd, supra, there was no state constitutional or statutory provision that had been construed to create rights to the use of private property by strangers, comparable to those found to exist by the California Supreme Court here. It is, of course, well established that a State in the exercise of its police power may adopt reasonable restrictions on private property so long as the restrictions do not amount to a taking without just compensation or contravene any other federal constitutional provision. See, e. g., Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U. S. 365 (1926); Young v. American Mini Theatres, Inc., 427 U. S. 50 (1976). Lloyd held that when a shopping center owner opens his private property to the public for the purpose of shopping, the
IV
Appellants next contend that a right to exclude others underlies the
This case is quite different from Kaiser Aetna v. United States, supra. Kaiser Aetna was a case in which the owners of a private pond had invested substantial amounts of money in dredging the pond, developing it into an exclusive marina, and building a surrounding marina community. The marina was open only to fee-paying members, and the fees were paid in part to “maintain the privacy and security of the pond.” Id., at 168. The Federal Government sought to compel free public use of the private marina on the ground that the marina became subject to the federal navigational servitude because the owners had dredged a channel connecting it to “navigable water.”
The Government‘s attempt to create a public right of аccess to the improved pond interfered with Kaiser Aetna‘s “reasonable investment backed expectations.” We held that it went “so far beyond ordinary regulation or improvement for navigation as to amount to a taking . . . .” Id., at 178. Nor as a general proposition is the United States, as opposed to the several States, possessed of residual authority that enables it to define “property” in the first instance. A State is, of course, bound by the Just Compensation Clause of the
There is also little merit to appellants’ argument that they have been denied their property without due process of law. In Nebbia v. New York, 291 U. S. 502 (1934), this Court stated:
“[N]either property rights nor contract rights are absolute. . . . Equally fundamental with the private right
is that of the public to regulate it in the common interest. . . . . . . [T]he guaranty of due process, as has often beеn held, demands only that the law shall not be unreasonable, arbitrary or capricious, and that the means selected shall have a real and substantial relation to the objective sought to be attained.” Id., at 523, 525.
See also Railway Express Agency, Inc. v. New York, 336 U. S. 106 (1949); Exxon Corp. v. Governor of Maryland, 437 U. S. 117, 124-125 (1978). Appellants have failed to provide sufficient justification for concluding that this test is not satisfied by the State‘s asserted interest in promoting more expansive rights of free speech and petition than conferred by the Federal Constitution.8
V
Appellants finally contend that a private property owner has a
Wooley, however, was a case in which the government itself prescribed the message, required it to be displayed openly on appellee‘s personal property that was used “as part of his daily life,” and refused to permit him to take any measures to cover up the motto even though the Court found that the display of the motto served no important state interest. Here, by contrast, there are a number of distinguishing factors. Most important, the shopping center by choice of its owner is not limited to the personal use of appellants. It is instead a business establishment that is open to the public to come and go as they please. The views expressed by members of the public in passing out pamphlets or seeking signatures for a petition thus will not likely be identified with those of the owner. Second, no specific message is dictated by the State to be displayed on appellants’ property. There consequently is no danger of governmental discrimination for or against a particular message. Finally, as far as appears here appellants can expressly disavow any connection with the message by simply posting signs in the area where the speakers or handbillers stand. Such signs, for example, could disclaim any sponsorship of the message and could explain that the persons are communicating their own messages by virtue of state law.
Appellants also argue that their
Tornillo struck down a Florida statute requiring a newspaper to publish a political candidate‘s reply to criticism previously published in that newspaper. It rests on the principle that the State cannot tell a newspaper what it must print. The Florida statute contravened this principle in that it “exact[ed] a penalty on the basis of the content of a newspaper.” 418 U. S., at 256. There also was a danger in Tornillo that the statute would “dampe[n] the vigor and limi[t] the variety of public debate” by deterring editors from publishing controversial political statements that might trigger the application of the statute. Id., at 257. Thus, the statute was found to be an “intrusion into the function of editors.” Id., at 258. These concerns obviously are not present here.
We conclude that neither appellants’ federally recognized property rights nor their
Affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN jоins the opinion of the Court except that sentence thereof, ante, at 84, which reads: “Nor
MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL, concurring.
I join the opinion of the Court, but write separately to make a few additional points.
I
In Food Employees v. Logan Valley Plaza, 391 U. S. 308 (1968), this Court held that the First and Fourteenth Amendments prevented a state court from relying on its law of trespass to enjoin the peaceful picketing of a business enterprise located within a shopping center. The Court concluded that because the shopping center “serves as the community business block” and is open to the general public, “the State may not delegate the power, through the use of its trespass laws, wholly to exclude those members of the public wishing to exercise their First Amendment rights on the premises.” Id., at 319. The Court rejected the suggestion that such an abrogation of the state law of trespass would intrude on the constitutionally protected property rights of shopping center owners. And it emphasized that the shopping center was open to the public and that reasonable restrictions on the exercise of communicative activity would be permitted. “[N]o meaningful claim to protection of a right of privacy can be advanced by respondents here. Nor on the facts of the case can any significant claim to protection of the normal business operation of the property be raised. Naked title is essentially all that is at issue.” Id., at 324.
The Court in Logan Valley emphasized that if the property rights of shopping center owners were permitted to overcome the
In Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U. S. 551 (1972), the Court confined Logan Valley to its facts, holding that the First and Fourteenth Amendments were not violated when a State prohibited petitioning that was not designed to convey information with respect to the operation of the store that was being picketed. The Court indicated that a contrary result would constitute “an unwarranted infringement of property rights.” 407 U. S., at 567. And in Hudgens v. NLRB, 424 U. S. 507 (1976), the Court concluded that Lloyd had in fact overruled Logan Valley.
I continue to believe that Logan Valley was rightly decided, and that both Lloyd and Hudgens were incorrect interpretations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. State action was present in all three cases. In all of them the shopping center owners had opened their centers to the public at large, effectively replacing the State with respect to such traditional
II
In the litigation now before the Court, the Supreme Court of California construed the California Constitution to protect precisely those rights of communication and expression that were at stake in Logan Valley, Lloyd, and Hudgens. The California court concluded that its State “[C]onstitution broadly proclaims speech and petition rights. Shopping centers to which the public is invited can provide an essential and invaluable forum for exercising those rights.” 23 Cal. 3d 899, 910, 592 P. 2d 341, 347 (1979). Like the Court in Logan Valley, the California court found that access to shopping centers was crucial to the exercise of rights of free expression. And like the Court in Logan Valley, the California court rejected the suggestion that the
Appellants, of course, take a different view. They contend that the decision below amounts to a constitutional “taking” or a deprivation of their property without due process of law. Lloyd, they claim, did not merely overrule Logan
Earlier this Term, in Martinez v. California, 444 U. S. 277 (1980), the Court was also confronted with a claim that the abolition of a cause of action previously conferred by state law was an impermissible taking of “property.” We responded that even if a pre-existing state-law remedy “is a species of ‘property’ protected by the Due Process Clause . . ., it would remain true that the State‘s interest in fashioning its own rules of tort law is paramount to any discernible federal interest, except perhaps an interest in protecting the individual citizen from state action that is wholly arbitrary or irrational.” Id., at 281-282. Similarly, in the context of a claim that a guest statute impermissibly abrogated common-law rights of tort, the Court оbserved that the Due Process Clause does not forbid the “creation of new rights, or the abolition of old ones recognized by the common law, to attain a permissible legislative object.” Silver v. Silver, 280 U. S. 117, 122 (1929). And in Munn v. Illinois, 94 U. S. 113 (1877), the Court upheld a statute limiting the permissible rate for the warehousing of grain. “A person has no property, no vested interest, in any rule of the common law. . . . Rights of property which have been created by the common law cannot be taken away without due process; but the law itself, as a rule of conduct, may be changed at the will . . . of the legislature, unless prevented by constitutional limitations. Indeed, the great office of statutes is to remedy defects in the
Appellants’ claim in this case amounts to no less than a suggestion that the common law of trespass is not subject to revision by the State, notwithstanding the California Supreme Court‘s finding that state-created rights of expressive activity would be severely hindered if shopping centers were closed to expressive activities by members of the public. If accepted, that claim would represent a return to the era of Lochner v. New York, 198 U. S. 45 (1905), when common-law rights were also found immune from revision by State or Federal Government. Such an approach would freeze the common law as it has been constructed by the courts, perhaps at its 19th-century state of development. It would allow no room for change in response to changes in circumstance. The Due Process Clause does not require such a result.
On the other hand, I do not understand the Court to suggest that rights of property are to be defined solely by state law, or that there is no federal constitutional barrier to the abrogation of common-law rights by Congress or a state government. The constitutional terms “life, liberty, and property” do not derive their meaning solely from the provisions of positive law. They have a normative dimension as well, establishing a sphere of private autonomy which government is bound to resрect.2 Quite serious constitutional questions might be raised if a legislature attempted to abolish certain
That “core” has not been approached in this case. The California Supreme Court‘s decision is limited to shopping centers, which are already open to the general public. The owners are permitted to impose reasonable restrictions on expressive activity. There has been no showing of interference with appellants’ normal business operations. The California court has not permitted an invasion of any personal sanctuary. Cf. Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U. S. 557 (1969). No rights of privacy are implicated. In these circumstances
I join the opinion of the Court.
MR. JUSTICE WHITE, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I join MR. JUSTICE POWELL‘S concurring opinion but with these additional remarks.
The question here is whether the Federal Constitution forbids a State to implement its own free-speech guarantee by requiring owners of shopping centers to permit entry on their property for the purpose of communicating with the public about subjects having no connection with the shopping centers’ business. The Supreme Court of California held that in the circumstances of this case the federally protected property rights of appellants were not infringed. The state court recognized, however, that reasonable time and place limitations could be imposed and that it was dealing with the public or common areas in a large shopping center and not with an individual retail establishment within or without the shopping center or with the property or privacy rights of a homeowner. On the facts before it, “[a] handful of additional orderly persons soliciting signatures and distributing handbills . . . would not markedly dilute dеfendant‘s property rights.” 23 Cal. 3d 899, 911, 592 P. 2d 341, 347-348 (1979).
I agree that on the record before us there was not an unconstitutional infringement of appellants’ property rights. But it bears pointing out that the Federal Constitution does not require that a shopping center permit distributions or solicitations on its property. Indeed, Hudgens v. NLRB, 424 U. S. 507 (1976), and Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U. S. 551 (1972), hold that the First and Fourteenth Amendments do not prevent the property owner from excluding those who would demonstrate or communicate on his property. Insofar as the Federal Constitution is concerned, therefore, a State may
The Court also affirms the California Supreme Court‘s implicit holding that appellants’ own free-speech rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments were not infringed by requiring them to provide a forum for appellees to communicate with the public on shopping center property. I concur in this judgment, but I agree with MR. JUSTICE POWELL that there are other circumstances that would present a far differеnt
MR. JUSTICE POWELL, with whom MR. JUSTICE WHITE joins, concurring in part and in the judgment.
Although I join the judgment, I do not agree with all of the reasoning in Part V of the Court‘s opinion. I join Parts I-IV on the understanding that our decision is limited to the type of shopping center involved in this case. Significantly different questions would be presented if a State authorized strangers to picket or distribute leaflets in privately owned, freestanding stores and commercial premises. Nor does our decision today apply to all “shopping centers.” This generic term may include retail establishments that vary widely in size, location, and other relevant characteristics. Even large establishments may be аble to show that the number or type of persons wishing to speak on their premises would create a substantial annoyance to customers that could be eliminated only by elaborate, expensive, and possibly unenforceable time, place, and manner restrictions. As the Court observes, state power to regulate private property is limited to the adoption of reasonable restrictions that “do not amount to a taking without
I
Restrictions on property use, like other state laws, are invalid if they infringe the freedom of expression and belief protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. In Part V of today‘s opinion, the Court rejects appellants’ contention that “a private property owner has a First Amendment right not to be forced by the State to use his property as a forum for the speech of others.” Ante, at 85. I agree that the owner of this shopping center has failed to еstablish a cognizable
The State may not compel a person to affirm a belief he does not hold. See Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U. S. 705 (1977); West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624 (1943). Whatever the full sweep of this principle, I do not believe that the result in Wooley v. Maynard, supra, would have changed had the State of New Hampshire directed its citizens to place the slogan “Live Free or Die” in their shop windows rather than on their automobiles. In that case, we said that “[a] system which secures the right to proselytize religious, political, and ideological causes must also guarantee the concomitant right to decline to foster such concepts.” 430 U. S., at 714. This principle on its face protects a person who refuses to allow use of his property as a marketplace for the ideаs of others. And I can find no reason to exclude the owner whose property is “not limited to [his] personal use . . . .” Ante, at 87. A person who has merely invited the public onto his property for commercial purposes cannot fairly be said to have relinquished his right to decline “to be
As the Court observes, this case involves only a state-created right of limited access to a specialized type of property. Ante, at 87, 87-88. But even when no particular message is mandated by the State,
The selection of material for publication is not generally a concern of shopping centers. But similar speech interests are affected when listeners are likely to identify opinions expressed by members of the public on commercial property as the views of the owner. If a state law mandated public access to the bulletin board of a freestanding store, hotel, office, or small shopping center, customers might well conclude that the messages reflect the view of the proprietor. The same would be true if the public were allowed to solicit or distribute pamphlets in the entrance area of a store or in the lobby of a private building. The property owner or proprietor would be faced with a choice: he either could permit his customers to receive a mistaken impression or he could disavow the messages. Should he take the first course, he effectively has been compelled to affirm someone else‘s belief. Should he choose the second, he has been forced to speak when he would prefer to remain silent. In short, he has lost control over his freedom to speak or not to speak on certain issues. The mere fact that he is free to dissociate himself from the views expressed on his property, see ante, at 87, cannot restore his “right to refrain from speaking at all.” Wooley v. Maynard, supra, at 714.
A property owner also may be faced with speakers who wish to use his premises as a platform for views that he finds morally repugnant. Numerous examples come to mind. A minority-owned business confronted with leaflet distributers from the American Nazi Party or the Ku Klux Klan, a church-operated enterprise asked to host demonstrations in favor of abortion, or a union compelled to supply a forum to right-to-wоrk advocates could be placed in an intolerable position if state law requires it to make its private property available to anyone who wishes to speak. The strong emotions evoked by speech
The pressure to respond is particularly apparent when the owner has taken a position opposed to the view being expressed on his property. But an owner who strongly objects to some of the causes to which the state-imposed right of access would extend may oppose ideological activities “of any sort” that are not related to the purposes for which he has invited the public onto his property. See Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 431 U. S. 209, 213, 241 (1977). To require the owner to specify the particular ideas he finds objectionable enough to compel a response would force him to relinquish his “freedom to maintain his own beliefs without public disclosure.” Ibid.3 Thus, the right to control one‘s own speech may be burdened impermissibly even when listeners will not assume that the messages expressed on private property are those of the owner.4
II
One easily can identify other circumstances in which a right of access to commercial property would burden the owner‘s First and Fourteenth Amendment right to refrain from
On the record before us, I cannot say that customers of this vast center would be likely to assume that appellees’ limited speech activity expressed the views of the PruneYard or of its owner. The shopping center occupies several city blocks. It contains more than 65 shops, 10 restaurants, and a theater. Interspersed among these establishments are common walkways and plazas designed to attract the public. See ante, at 77, 83. Appellees are high school students who set up their card table in one corner of a central courtyard known as the “Grand Plaza.” App. to Juris. Statement B-2. They showed passersby several petitions and solicited signatures. Persons solicited could not reasonably have believed that the petitions embodied the views of the shopping center merely because it owned the ground on which they stood.
Appellants have not alleged that they object to the ideas contained in the appellees’ petitions. Nor do they assert that some groups who reasonably might be expected to speak at the PruneYard will express views that are so objectionable as to require a response even when listeners will not mistake their source. The record contains no evidence concerning the numbers or types of interest groups that may seek access to this shopping center, and no testimony showing that the appellants strongly disagree with any of them.
Because appellants have not shown that the limited right of access held to be afforded by the California Constitution burdened their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights in the circumstances presented, I join the judgment of the Court. I do not interpret our decision today as a blanket approval for state efforts to transform privately owned commercial property into public forums. Any such state action would raise substantial federal constitutional questions not present in this case.