Court decision may open malls’ doors
Peace activists see opportunity
By Bill Lascher 01/03/2008
Anti-war activists in Ventura may use a recent ruling by the California Supreme Court loosening restrictions on protests at shopping malls to argue that they should be allowed to demonstrate for an end to U.S. military involvement in Iraq at the Pacific View Mall.
As thousands of shoppers rushed to the Ventura-based Pacific View to find last minute gifts, members of the Ventura County Committee to Stop the War and the Iraq Moratorium/Peace Coalition of Greater Ventura planned to sing Christmas carols rewritten as anti-war ballads and classic folk songs with messages of peace while picketing at the mall Dec. 21. But representatives of the Santa Monica-based Macerich Corporation, which owns the Pacific View Mall, told protesters it would have them arrested if they carried out the action, said John Osmond, an organizer with the Ventura County Committee to Stop the War. To avoid a potential conflict, the protest was moved from the mall’s main foot entrance to the sidewalks of Downtown Ventura.
Pacific View Mall Spokeswoman Alice Love was on vacation and unavailable for comment for this story. Other mall representatives, including Kathy Taggart and Macerich corporate public relations representatives did not respond or could not be reached for comment on this story.
Three days after the planned protest, however, the California Supreme Court appeared to support the notion that, although malls are private property, they serve as de-facto public forums, when it announced it had sided against another mall in a case stemming from a 1998 dispute between a union and the Robinsons-May department store chain. The Christmas Eve decision supported a complaint filed by the National Labor Relations Board against the management of the San Diego-area Fashion Valley Mall after members of the Graphic Communications International Union Local 432-M complained to the board that it was prevented by the mall’s owners from picketing against the San Diego Union-Tribune Publishing Company.
According to the supreme court’s decision, an NLRB administrative law judge had found that the union was “attempting to engage in a lawful consumer boycott” when its members tried to urge customers to boycott Robinsons-May for advertising in the Union Tribune . The court found that restrictions in the mall’s regulations that it used to deny a permit to the union were outweighed by protections in the California state constitution for free speech, including political protests.
Osmond said the timing of the decision so soon after the anti-war protest was “quite remarkable.”
“We said wow, maybe we could have pressured them more to accommodate us,” Osmond said.
He said organizers of the caroling event were told by Pacific View management that rather than preventing them from having a protest altogether, it was simply applying a holiday blackout period that prevented any group from obtaining permits for events at the mall during the shopping season between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
This point may be crucial. In its conclusion, the court majority which issued the opinion wrote “a shopping mall is a public forum in which persons may reasonably exercise their right to free speech” guaranteed in the state’s constitution. Shopping malls may make rules affecting the time, place and manner of that speech so normal business isn’t affected, the majority wrote, but they can’t prohibit some types of speech based upon its content. Thus, sources in the Ventura County legal community say, the anti-war group would have to prove that it was unfairly singled out by Macerich because of its message and that its message would be diluted if held at another time.
Osmond said that while the general point the mall made that the holiday period wasn’t a good time for any group to have an event made some sense, his group wasn’t trying to interfere with the mall’s or any particular store’s business, and that the very fact there would be more shoppers at the mall during the holidays was important to the effectiveness of the group’s protest.
“If you want to have a message reach an audience — which is what free speech is about — that is where you want to go at that time,” Osmond said. Now that the holidays are passed, he said, having a caroling event might be moot.
Osmond said some protest organizers are discussing a follow-up to the protest. That event may be held at the mall outside of its holiday blackout period. Further planning for any such event will officially begin at a meeting open to the public to be held Jan. 5 at 1 p.m. at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf at 5722 Telephone Rd., No. 11 in Ventura. Activists at that meeting will also discuss ways to commemorate the point when U.S. military casualties in Iraq reach 4,000, which may occur soon.
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