Opinion

Hudgens v. National Labor Relations Board

  • 424 U.S. 507
  • 91 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2489
  • 96 S. Ct. 1029
  • 47 L. Ed. 2d 196
  • 1976 U.S. LEXIS 5
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Filed
Mar 3, 1976
Status
Published
Author
White
On the bench
Stewart, Burger, Blackmün, Powell, Rehnquist, White, Marshall, Brennan, Stevens
Cited by
580 cases
Authority
More cited than 24.1%

holding that a private person may exclude certain speakers from his or her property without violating the First Amendment

How later courts described this case

  • holding that a private person may exclude certain speakers from his or her property without violating the First Amendment
  • holding that Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U.S. 551, 92 S.Ct. 2219, 33 L.Ed.2d 131 (1972), implicitly overruled Amalgamated Food Employees Union Local 590 v. Logan Valley Plaza, 391 U.S. 308, 88 S.Ct. 1601, 20 L.Ed.2d 603 (1968)
  • holding that federal constitution did not protect employees’ right to picket inside shopping center
  • stating that “the constitutional guarantee of free expression has no part to play” in incidents involving speech activities on private property unless the property has been wholly “dedicat[ed] . . . to public use”

Written by the judges who cited it.

Distinguished

  • Distinguished by Seattle-First National Bank v. National Labor Relations Board, 651 F.2d 1272 (1980)

    The petitioner also argues that Hudgens is inapposite because picketing in an office building is different than picketing in a shopping center mall.
    Court of Appeals for the First CircuitNov 25, 1980Read it

The opinion

Mr. Justice White,

concurring in the result.

While I concur in the result reached by the Court, I find it unnecessary to inter Food Employees v. Logan Valley Plaza, 391 U. S. 308 (1968), and therefore do not join the Court’s opinion. I agree that “the constitutional guarantee of free expression has no part to play in a case such as this,” ante, at 521; but Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U. S. 551 (1972), did not overrule Logan Valley, either expressly or implicitly, and I would not, somewhat after the fact, say that it did.

One need go no further than Logan Valley itself, for the First Amendment protection established by Logan Valley was expressly limited to the picketing of a specific store for the purpose of conveying information with respect to the operation in the shopping center of that store:

“The picketing carried on by petitioners was *525 directed specifically at patrons of the Weis Market located within the shopping center and the message sought to be conveyed to the public concerned the manner in which that particular market was being operated. We are, therefore, not called upon to consider whether respondents’ property rights could, consistently with the First Amendment, justify a bar on picketing which was not thus directly related in its purpose to the use to which the shopping center property was being put.” 391 U. S., at 320 n. 9.

On its face, Logan Valley does not cover the facts of this case. The pickets of the Butler Shoe Co. store in the North DeKalb Shopping Center were not purporting to convey information about the “manner in which that particular [store] was being operated” but rather about the operation of a warehouse not located on the center’s premises. The picketing was thus not “directly related in its purpose to the use to which the shopping center property was being put.”

The First Amendment question in this case was left open in Logan Valley. I dissented in Logan Valley, 391 U. S., p. 337, and I see no reason to extend it further. Without such extension, the First Amendment provides no protection for the picketing here in issue and the Court need say no more. Lloyd v. Tanner is wholly consistent with this view. There is no need belatedly to overrule Logan Valley, only to follow it as it is.

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.

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