CA Supreme Court - Malls now OK for Pamphleteers

Good news! California shopping malls will no longer be able to prohibit peaceful political activity on the premises (see message below). This may not be strict libertarian orthodoxy, but I think the freedom movement has a strong pragmatic interest in making sure that when it comes to exercising basic rights, people who want to exercise those rights are given a great deal of leeway.

  On a moral level, it can be argued that rent-seekers who receive large public subsidies of their facilities should not be able to deny members of the public the ability to exercise their basic rights in these facilities. Shopping malls are the kind of large-scale developments that often benefit from government handouts of this type (see http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-dougkaplan25apr25,0,3373590.story ).

  New Jersey's Supreme Court apparently made a similar ruling in 1994 (see http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F05E7DB1038F932A15751C1A962958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all ). Not sure about the status of other states.

Love & Liberty,
        ((( starchild )))

Dear Everyone;

Just a little clarification on the news item about leafletting
activities at shopping malls.

The case revolved around a teamsters union going to a shopping mall
and asking mall patrons to not shop at a store which advertised in
the newspaper the union was having a beef with and to call the
newspaper executive. The mall said adios teamsters and vamanos!

Malls still have the right which was not changed by the decision to
ban or limit protesting during holidays and restrict the location of
the activities and also require no disrupting of the business or to
physically interfere with store shoppers.

Starchild and Terry Graham - those malls which did not and do not
receive public subsidies and thus are not rent-seekers and built the
facility with private funds the property is private property and
private property owners have the right to restrict access to their
private property even when it is a shopping mall open to the public.

Malls do this by rightfully restricting access to SHOPPERS. If you
come to the mall for activites other than SHOPPING you are trepassing
and guilty of conspiracy to trepass with aforethought.

Once again this is an egregious case of the Government in the guise
of the State Superior Court being the worst enemy of private property
and private property ownersship.

I put this case in the same light as those idiot supervisors who
passed a law forbidding downtown hotels from turning some of their
rooms into luxury condos because there would be less hotel taxes
against the property taxes on the condos but of course no study was
down about this just claims and against their being less jobs for
SEIU workers at the hotels leaving out the cleaning services which
would call for hotel workers for the condo residents.

The hotels are private property not City property!

Where do you draw the line as it were of the camels nose coming into
the tent when it comes to private property rights and the rights of
private property owners?

There can be no compromise about the rights of private property
owners just because you can leaflet for Ron Paul.

Ron Getty
SF Libertarian

  Good news! California shopping malls will no longer be able

to

prohibit peaceful political activity on the premises (see message
below). This may not be strict libertarian orthodoxy, but I think

the

freedom movement has a strong pragmatic interest in making sure

that

when it comes to exercising basic rights, people who want to

exercise

those rights are given a great deal of leeway.

  On a moral level, it can be argued that rent-seekers who

receive

large public subsidies of their facilities should not be able to

deny

members of the public the ability to exercise their basic rights

in

these facilities. Shopping malls are the kind of large-scale
developments that often benefit from government handouts of this

type

(see http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-
dougkaplan25apr25,0,3373590.story ).

  New Jersey's Supreme Court apparently made a similar ruling

in 1994

(see http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?

res=9F05E7DB1038F932A15751C1A962958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all ).

Not sure about the status of other states.

Love & Liberty,
        ((( starchild )))

> From: Terry Graham <teegra22@...>
> Date: December 26, 2007 10:45:21 AM PST
> To: ronpaul-568-announce@...
> Subject: [ronpaul-568] ALERT: Malls now OK for Pamphleteers
> Reply-To: ronpaul-568@...
>
> WE CAN NOW PASS OUT INFO ON RON PAUL AT SHOPPING MALLS ON

PRIVATE

> PROPERTY!
>
> Today's (12-26-07) SF Chronicle editorial "Where Only The Speech

is

> Free", announces a HIGHLY significant CA Supreme Court ruling

last

> Monday which allows peaceful political activity to take place on
> private land Shopping Centers/Malls. THIS MEANS RON PAUL

ACTIVIST

> MAY PASS OUT LITERATURE at malls like Northgate, The Village,

Town

> Center, Stonestown, etc, throughout California just as we would
> public squares, post offices, etc. as we promote Ron Paul to

voters.

>
> The Supremes decision was 4-3. "The justices were divided over
> whether private property rights should trupmpthe opportunity for
> peaceful political activities. The judges got it right: Until

[the

> malls] start requiring invitations or tickets at the

door,shopping

> malls fit the definition of a public place. Customers who

consider

Ron,

  I respectfully disagree. I think the California justices were correct in determining that a shopping mall is essentially a public space. It's kind of like if you had an open street with stores on it, and someone bought the road and put a roof over it and made it a pedestrian area, but still let everybody just walk in and patronize the various different privately owned areas accessible via this common area. I can understand why you would say otherwise, but I think it's a matter of scale as well as usage. If malls were tiny, like the size of ordinary residences, or if they were just single large stores, it might be different. But they are both relatively large *and* contain sort of artificial town-square type environments. It's really kind of a question of at what point an entity starts to resemble a government and becomes obligated to respect certain rights.

  The U.S. government maintains large tracts of land as military bases that may have restrictions on freedom of movement, free speech, the right to keep and bear arms, and other rights. Sometimes these bases include commercial establishments and residential dwellings. Can they legitimately, as the landowner, abridge the basic constitutional rights of non-military employees who come onto these tracts of land? Doesn't it depend how large the area is, and for what various purposes it's being used? What if when the U.S. government bought Alaska from the Russian government, it said "We're going to maintain this area as a special military zone where no free speech is allowed, even though people will be allowed to open businesses there and live there to work at those businesses?"

  Would that be different because it's the government, which is supposed to represent all of us? If it had been a private company that bought Alaska and put forth the same terms as described above, would that make it OK? I say no. I think it's unacceptable for fundamental rights to be abridged in an area that large, no matter who the "owner" is. Now of course there is a huge difference between Alaska and a shopping mall. But the mall's equivalent, and what it has largely replaced, is the town square or Main Street of yesteryear, areas in which members of the public could exercise free speech and be seen and heard by other members of the public. I realize that the traditional libertarian position calls for privatizing areas such as those as well. I used to agree unconditionally, but in recent years I have come to feel that this is desirable only if the new private owners are required to allow for the exercise of basic rights. Imagine living in a San Francisco where nothing much had changed except that all the streets were now privately owned and maintained, so that virtually anywhere in the city outside of your own residence you could be forbidden to engage in free speech such as putting up signs or leafletting, you could be subject to random searches by private security personnel, etc.

  Shopping malls seem to me to be a more limited, but growing, version of just such a trend. It's true that they don't search people randomly (only those suspected of shoplifting), but they do, I believe, require shirts and shoes, and if the traditional libertarian conception were followed they would be free to impose whatever dress codes or search policies they desired. Of course such policies would likely not be noticed as a significant inconvenience by the majority -- but isn't that the usual way of government tyranny as well, that its direct effects are largely felt only by a freedom-loving minority? I remember reading an article (perhaps posted here) about a number of interviews conducted in post-Nazi Germany shortly after WWII, in which virtually all of the respondents said they had felt free the whole time living under Hitler's regime.

  If you still think privately-owned artificial environments like malls should be able to be ignore any basic rights they choose, do you think there is a point in size or usage of a privately owned area at which that is no longer true? What about an environment the size of Disneyland? What about an environment the size of San Francisco? What about an environment that includes individual residences (tenants, not owners of course)? What if some or all of these tenants live virtually their whole lives in this environment? Then would you agree that denial of rights starts to become a problem? What about a private conglomerate, or association of private enterprises, owning and operating an area the size of the United States? Don't assume such a thing could never happen -- how many people a couple hundred years ago could have conceived of Disneyland or shopping malls? At what point do you draw the line, and why?

Love & Liberty,
        ((( starchild )))