Free speech at the mall

[S-T]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-mallprotest30dec30,0,713088.story

So how do mall picketers and shopping center activists compete? In California at least, they get a little help from the state Supreme Court, which has ruled that the Fashion Valley Mall in San Diego cannot prevent protesters on its property from urging a boycott of one of its tenants. At issue was a 1998 incident during which picketers from the San Diego Union-Tribune began distributing leaflets inside the mall, describing their grievances against the newspaper and singling out the Robinsons-May store as a Union-Tribune advertiser. After about 15 minutes, mall officials arrived and removed the picketers to a public space outside the mall entrance.

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The issue lies in how much power a mall actually has, and whether it enjoys any speech rights of its own. Before it is what Moreno calls a "public forum where people may reasonably exercise their right to free speech," a mall is an apartment building for stores. Both the landlord and the tenants have rights and responsibilities in this arrangement -- among them the responsibility not to drive away business. No sensible mall owner would allow employees of the Apple store to demonstrate for a boycott of the Microsoft store. Why should that privilege apply to visitors, who aren't even paying the rent on the place?

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In these conflicts, we tend to side with speech, in the conviction that freewheeling debate, in the park or in the mall, elevates us all.

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This is just plain stupid. The First Amendment was never intended to regulate what a property owner can allow on land or in a building he/she (or in the case of a corporation, it) owns. If someone calls you an obscene name in your house, that person's "free speech" rights are not violated by an order to leave the building.

The government cannot restrict free speech, except in very limited regulations on time, place and manner. Private property owners can do whatever they wish.

If Kalifornia wants to establish this precedent, then why can't it apply to Internet message boards hosted run by people inside the state? After all, a popular message board is as much of a "public place" for numerous opinions as a shopping mall. Rhino, do you plan on submitting your moderation decisions to a judge should you move to Kalifornia?

[Rhino]

The legal decision seems somewhat different from the editorial that was linked to.

http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S144753.PDF

They weren't really picketing. They were handing out leaflets that urged a boycott of the store. And the question was not about whether or not they could picket anyway. It was about whether or not the permit process at the mall could exclude anyone urging a boycott. It seems the mall allows other stuff, but not the urging of a boycott. That difference seems to be what got them in trouble. The major stumbling block here is that Kalifornia requires property owners to allow the "exercise of speech and petitioning in private shopping centers, subject to reasonable time, place, and manner rules". That was a ruling they made back in 1980. In other words, private property is not so private in California. This particular ruling is about minutiae in a permit process, and is not the problem. The problem is the ruling from 1980.

I'll never move back to Kalifornia. Three years was far more than enough for me.