--- Jim Devine <jdevine03 at gmail.com> wrote:
> is, then he doesn't belong on the list. It's DH's
> living room, as they
> say, and DH can kick out anyone he wants to.
Not necessarily, if it is considered "public space" - see: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment01/20.html <<<Quasi-Public Places .--The First Amendment precludes government restraint of expression and it does not require individuals to turn over their homes, businesses or other property to those wishing to communicate about a particular topic. 115 But it may be that in some instances private property is so functionally akin to public property that private owners may not forbid expression upon it. In Marsh v. Alabama, 116 the Court held that the private owner of a company town could not forbid distribution of religious materials by a Jehovah's Witness on a street in the town's business district. The town, wholly owned by a private corporation, had all the attributes of any American municipality, aside from its ownership, and was functionally like any other town. In those circumstances, the Court reasoned, ''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.'' 117 This precedent lay unused for some twenty years until the Court first indicated a substantial expansion of it, and then withdrew to a narrow interpretation.
First, in Food Employees Union v. Logan Valley Plaza, 118 the Court held constitutionally protected the picketing of a store located in a shopping center by a union objecting to the store's employment of nonunion labor. Finding that the shopping center was the functional equivalent of the business district involved in Marsh, the Court announced there was ''no reason why access to a business district in a company town for the purpose of exercising First Amendment rights should be constitutionally required, while access for the same purpose to property functioning as a business district should be limited simply because the property surrounding the 'business district' is not under the same ownership.'' 119 [T]he State,'' said Justice Marshall, ''may not delegate the power, through the use of its trespass laws, wholly to exclude those members of the public wishing to exercise their First Amendment rights on the premises in a manner and for a purpose generally consonant with the use to which the property is actually put.'' 120 The Court observed that it would have been hazardous to attempt to distribute literature at the entrances to the center and it reserved for future decision ''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.'' 121 >>>
However, later decisions reversed some of that ruling and affirms the property right. I am pretty sure Justin has more to say on this subject. I just want to add that (i) even a socialist-leaninng forum can benefit from capitalist constitutional laws and prperty rights; (ii) I pretty much agree with Justin's position on the 1st amendement, as I believe that (iii) censorship only adds gravitas to the censored speech, in many cases more than its content may possibly warrant; it make it look more serious than it actually is.
Wojtek (next in line for the ax)
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