PruneYard is a privately owned shopping center in the city of Campbell, Cal. Appellees are high school students who sought to solicit support for their opposition to a United Nations resolution against “Zionism.” On a Saturday afternoon they set up a card table in a corner of PruneYard’s central courtyard. They distributed pamphlets and asked passersby to sign petitions.
Soon after appellees had begun soliciting signatures, a security guard informed them that they would have to leave because their activity violated PruneYard regulations. The guard suggested that they move to the public sidewalk at the PruneYard’s perimeter. Appellees immediately left the premises and later filed this lawsuit.
The California Supreme Court held that the California Constitution protects “speech and petitioning, reasonably exercised, in shopping centers even when the centers are privately owned.” It concluded that appellees were entitled to conduct their activity on PruneYard property.
PruneYard contends that a right to exclude others underlies the Fifth Amendment guarantee against the taking of property without just compensation and the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee against the deprivation of property without due process of law.
It is true that one of the essential sticks in the bundle of property rights is the right to exclude others. But “not every destruction or injury to property by governmental action has been held to be a ‘taking’ in the constitutional sense.” Here, there is nothing to suggest that preventing PruneYard from prohibiting this sort of activity will unreasonably impair the value or use of their property as a shopping center.
Finally, PruneYard contends that a private property owner has a First Amendment right not to be forced by the State to use his property as a forum for the speech of others. Although ordinarily a state may not constitutionally require an individual to participate in the dissemination of an ideological message by displaying it on his private property, here, by contrast, there are a number of distinguishing factors. a business establishment that is open to the public to come and go as they please. The views expressed by members of the public in passing out pamphlets or seeking signatures for a petition thus will not likely be identified with those of the owner. Second, no specific message is dictated by the State to be displayed on PruneYard’s property. There consequently is no danger of governmental discrimination for or against a particular message. Finally, as far as appears here PruneYard can expressly disavow any connection with the message by simply posting signs in the area where the speakers or handbillers stand.