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First-Amendment Rights of Solicitors
A California Court of Appeal recently affirmed the right of a shopping center owner to limit the First Amendment rights of citizens from being exercised near store entrances.
Citizens seeking charitable donations entered an outdoor shopping center and solicited donations near store entrances. The plaintiff, who controls the outdoor shopping center, had a written policy prohibiting solicitation of donations on the shopping center property. He asked the solicitors to leave, but they refused. The plaintiff called the police to have the solicitors removed, but the police would not remove them without a court order.
The plaintiff obtained a preliminary injunction enjoining the solicitors from soliciting donations or engaging in other expressive activities on sidewalks adjacent to the store entrances; however, the injunction order permitted such activities in a public forum area of the shopping center that excluded the areas adjacent to storefront entrances, as designated in a diagram that was attached to the injunction order. The defendants appealed, contending that the areas adjacent to store entrances are public forum areas in which expressive activities cannot be prohibited.
The key issue was whether the sidewalks adjacent to the store entrances, where the solicitors were soliciting donations, was a public forum. Under California law, speech in a public forum may be limited only by reasonable time, place and manner restrictions that are content-neutral, narrowly tailored, and leave ample alternative means of communication of the information: “[t]o be a public forum under the state Constitution's liberty of speech provision, an area within a shopping center must be designed and furnished in a way that induces shoppers to congregate for purposes of entertainment, relaxation, or conversation, and not merely to walk to or from a parking area, or to walk from one store to another ' .”
Stephanie J. Kim is Of Counsel at Pircher, Nichols and Meeks.
A California Court of Appeal recently affirmed the right of a shopping center owner to limit the First Amendment rights of citizens from being exercised near store entrances.
Citizens seeking charitable donations entered an outdoor shopping center and solicited donations near store entrances. The plaintiff, who controls the outdoor shopping center, had a written policy prohibiting solicitation of donations on the shopping center property. He asked the solicitors to leave, but they refused. The plaintiff called the police to have the solicitors removed, but the police would not remove them without a court order.
The plaintiff obtained a preliminary injunction enjoining the solicitors from soliciting donations or engaging in other expressive activities on sidewalks adjacent to the store entrances; however, the injunction order permitted such activities in a public forum area of the shopping center that excluded the areas adjacent to storefront entrances, as designated in a diagram that was attached to the injunction order. The defendants appealed, contending that the areas adjacent to store entrances are public forum areas in which expressive activities cannot be prohibited.
The key issue was whether the sidewalks adjacent to the store entrances, where the solicitors were soliciting donations, was a public forum. Under California law, speech in a public forum may be limited only by reasonable time, place and manner restrictions that are content-neutral, narrowly tailored, and leave ample alternative means of communication of the information: “[t]o be a public forum under the state Constitution's liberty of speech provision, an area within a shopping center must be designed and furnished in a way that induces shoppers to congregate for purposes of entertainment, relaxation, or conversation, and not merely to walk to or from a parking area, or to walk from one store to another ' .”
Stephanie J. Kim is Of Counsel at
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