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Pruneyard Shopping Center
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The PruneYard Shopping Center is a sprawling 250,000 square foot (23,000 m²) shopping center located in Campbell, California at the intersection of Campbell Avenue and Bascom Avenue, just east of State Route 17. It also features three office towers, one of which is the tallest building in the area outside of downtown San Jose, an inn, and a movie theater. It was built in 1964 and renovated in 1994.
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In the late 1970s, the PruneYard was involved in a free speech dispute with local high school students that was ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 9, 1980.[1][2] In American constitutional law, the PruneYard is famous for its role in establishing two important rules:
- under the California Constitution, individuals may peacefully exercise their right to free speech in parts of private shopping centers regularly held open to the public, subject to reasonable regulations adopted by the shopping centers
- under the U.S. Constitution, states can provide their citizens with broader rights in their constitutions than under the federal Constitution, so long as those rights do not infringe on any federal constitutional rights
This holding was possible because California's constitution contains an affirmative right of free speech which has been liberally construed by the Supreme Court of California, while the federal constitution's First Amendment contains only a negative command to Congress to not abridge the freedom of speech. The Supreme Court rejected the shopping center's argument that California's free speech right amounted to a "taking" of the shopping center under federal constitutional law.
The vote to uphold the California decision was unanimous, although three justices disagreed with part of the reasoning in Justice William Rehnquist's opinion for the majority. Justices Thurgood Marshall, Byron White, and Harry Blackmun filed separate concurring opinions.
Because of the Pruneyard case, people who visit shopping centers in California may regularly encounter people seeking money or attention for various causes, including charitable solicitations, qualifying petitions for amendments to the state constitution, voter registration drives, and sometimes a beggar. In turn, many shopping centers have posted signs to explain that they do not endorse the views of people exercising their right to free speech, and that if patrons do not give them money, the speakers will go away.
Although 39 other states have free speech clauses in their constitutions that look like California's — indeed, California borrowed its clause from a similar one in the New York Constitution — at least 13 of those states have declined to follow California in extending the right of free speech into private shopping centers.[3] In refusing to follow Pruneyard, the state supreme courts of New York and Wisconsin both attacked it as an unprincipled and whimsical decision.[4] Only New Jersey, Colorado, and Massachusetts have followed California, albeit with some reservations.
In the two decades since, the Supreme Court of California has become much more conservative, especially after three liberal justices (including Chief Justice Rose Bird) were removed by the electorate in 1986 for their opposition to the death penalty.[5]
In 2001, a 4-3 majority of the Court significantly narrowed Pruneyard by holding for a variety of reasons that California's free speech right does not apply to private apartment complexes — yet, they also refused to overrule Pruneyard.[6] Thus, California's right of free speech in private shopping centers still survives.
Naturally, the shopping center industry strongly "detests" Pruneyard and has frequently appealed cases to try to get it overturned or limited.[7] Since Golden Gateway, decisions by the intermediate Courts of Appeal have generally limited the scope of the Pruneyard rule to the actual facts of the original case. For example, starting in 1997, the parking lots of many Costco warehouse club stores in California became sites of conflict involving a large number of political activist groups who had gradually become aware of their rights under Pruneyard. In 1998, Costco's management imposed several restrictions, including a complete ban on soliciting at stand-alone stores, a rule that no group or person could use Costco premises for free speech more than 5 days out of any 30, and the complete exclusion of solicitors on the 34 busiest days of the year.
These restrictions were upheld as reasonable by the Court of Appeal for the Fourth Appellate District, and the Supreme Court of California denied review.[8] Costco's stand-alone stores lacked the social congregation attributes of the multi-tenant shopping center at issue in Pruneyard. As for the restrictions on the stores in shopping centers, they were held to be reasonable because Costco had developed a strong factual record at trial which proved that hordes of unwanted solicitors had significantly interfered with its business operations — they had damaged its reputation, obstructed access to its stores, and traumatized Costco employees.
- ^ See Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, .
- ^ Linda Greenhouse, "Petitioning Upheld at Shopping Malls: High Court Says States May Order Access to Back Free Speech," New York Times, 10 June 1980, A1.
- ^ Josh Mulligan, Finding A Forum in the Simulated City: Mega Malls, Gated Towns, and the Promise of Pruneyard, 13 Cornell J. L. & Pub. Pol'y 533, 557 (2004). This article is an excellent overview of Pruneyard's progeny.
- ^ See SHAD Alliance v. Smith Haven Mall, 488 N.E.2d 1211 (N.Y. 1985) and Jacobs v. Major, 407 N.W.2d 832 (Wis. 1987).
- ^ John H. Culver, "The transformation of the California Supreme Court: 1977-1997," Albany Law Review 61, no. 5 (Mid-Summer 1998): 1461-1490.
- ^ Golden Gateway Ctr. v. Golden Gateway Tenants Ass'n, 26 Cal. 4th 1013 (2001).
- ^ Joseph R. Grodin, Calvin R. Massey, and Richard B. Cunningham, The California State Constitution: A Reference Guide (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), 26.
- ^ Costco Companies, Inc. v. Gallant, 96 Cal. App. 4th 740 (2002).
- http://www.pruneyard.com/ - The PruneYard's official Web site
- Cornell University Collection - U.S. Supreme Court decision
- California Continuing Education of the Bar Collection - California Supreme Court decision
- California Constitution from Official California Legislative Information Site - Article 1, Declaration of Rights (of which Section 2 was challenged in Pruneyard)