Private Business Districts and the First Amendment: From Marsh to Tanner (original) (raw)

1974, Urban Law Annual ; Journal of Urban and Contemporary Law

Washington University Open Scholarship URBAN LAW ANNUAL that her distribution of religious handbills on the sidewalk of a company-owned town's "business block" violated notices posted by the company against solicitation. 3 In an opinion by Justice Black, the Supreme Court reversed the conviction, holding: "Ownership does not always mean absolute dominion. The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it." 4 The Court emphasized the totality of ownership by the Gulf Shipbuilding Corporation, 5 and in particular, the role of the "business block" as the town shopping center: The "business block" serves as the community shopping center and is freely accessible and open to the people in the area and those passing through. The managers appointed by the corporation cannot curtail the liberty of press and religion of these people consistently with the purposes of the Constitutional guarantees .... 6 The Court explained that because the town served a "public function"7 it was subject to the restrictions of the first amendment,8 which in constitutional law occupies a "preferred position" O when balanced 517 (1946), concerned the arrest of a Jehovah's Witness in a federal government-owned town. 3. 326 U.S. at 503. 4. Id. at 506. 5. The Court explained: The town, a suburb of Mobile, Alabama, known as Chickasaw, is owned by the Gulf Shipbuilding Corporation. Except for that it has all the characteristics of any other American town. The property consists of residential buildings, streets, a system of sewers, a sewage disposal plant and a "business block" on which business places are situated. A deputy of the Mobile County Sheriff, paid by the company, serves as the town's policeman. Merchants and service establishments have rented the stores and business places on the business block and the United States uses one of the places as a post office from which six carriers deliver mail to the people of Chickasaw and the adjacent area.