Posted on 11/10/2013 10:07:21 AM PST by ilovesarah2012
To start with, a mall is clearly private property. In past, the courts have held in the common areas of a mall that people can non-aggressively distribute leaflets. However, it is not a venue for public speaking, if the owners don’t want it to be, and most don’t, no matter the content.
If it was a private store, most everyone would agree that someone cannot use the property for their own purposes without permission.
On the opposite score, a “casbah” or public marketplace, *is* fair ground, unless a speaker is causing a public disturbance. Under some circumstances if the speaker’s audience, in rejecting what he is saying, also can create enough of a disturbance that police can stop the event in the name of public order.
A mall, however, falls in between the two. It is not a public space, even its parking lot, except for set asides, by city ordinance, for things like handicapped parking spaces.
What about the rights of the mall owner, it’s private property
A shopping mall is someones private property, with owners that have a responsibility to the general public.
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From the article. Reading is your friend because it tends to prevent uninformed speech....
"The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in 1994 in the case of New Jersey Coalition Against War in the Middle East v. J.M.B. Realty Corporation that malls followed the “historical path of free speech,” in the vein of parks, squares and downtown business districts. It allowed citizens to leaflet both inside and outside malls, but did not endorse other forms of expression such as public speeches."
I have also read that the cops have the right to go through these private parking lots and issue citations on windshields of cars. Expired emissions stickers, registration lapses, etc.
If LEO can go on private property this way, than folks practicing their first amendments rights do to.
Typically that is done with the permission of the mall owners, who allow police to patrol their lots to prevent car break-ins. But as with the “camel’s nose in the tent”, if the police see any expired tags, etc., they can legally cite them.
There are now police car sensors that just driving through a parking lot, every single license plate will be read and checked against the police database looking for stolen cars, outstanding warrants, etc. Several thousand an hour.
A brief explanation of the Middle East v. J.M.B. Corporation case mentioned in the OP can be found at the following link.
Shopping malls in New Jersey
The question is, is it fair for a Muslim property owner, for example, to allow a Christian to come onto his property to find people who are interested in learning about Christianity? Likewise for a Christian property owner and a Muslim who comes on his property to look for people interested in learning about Islam.
I suspect that we'd find a few Christians who wouldn't like the idea of Muslim coming on their property to try to find people who may be interested in converting to Islam.
Next, regardless what patriots have been taught about about our 1st Amendment freedoms, including religious expression, the states do have the constitutional authority to regulate those freedoms, such power now limited by the 14th Amendment. In other words, the Founding States never intended for our 1st Amendment-protected freedoms to be absolute.
More specifically, regardless what anti-religious expression activist justices said about Thomas Jefferson's "wall of separation," the real Thomas Jefferson had actually indicated the following about the 1st and 10th Amendments where state power to regulate religion is concerned. Jefferson had clarified that the states had made the 10th Amendment in part to clarify that the states had reserved uniquely for themselves the power to regulate (cultivate) religious expression, regardless that the states had also made the 1st Amendment to prohibit such powers entirely to Congress.
"3. Resolved that it is true as a general principle and is also expressly declared by one of the amendments to the constitution that ‘the powers not delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people’: and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain, & were reserved, to the states or the people: that thus was manifested their determination to retain to themselves the right of judging how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot be separated from their use should be tolerated rather than the use be destroyed (emphasis added); …" --Thomas Jefferson, Kentucky Resolutions, 1798.
Again, state government power to regulate religion is now limited by the 14th Amendment.
But the question concerning 14th Amendment limits on state powers as it relates to this case is this imo. How far should state power to limit religous expression extend to the retired police officer, especially if mall is owned by a Muslim for example? Should the officer wait for a Christian to buy the mall and share the gospel elsewhere in the meanwhile? After all, a Muslim mall owner can argue that the retired officer's spreading of the gospel might make his Muslim friends suspect that he's now a Christian for example, the Muslim's freedom of religious expression arguably abridged.
That’s OUTRAGIOUS!!!
From the article:
“The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in 1994 in the case of New Jersey Coalition Against War in the Middle East v. J.M.B. Realty Corporation that malls followed the “historical path of free speech,” in the vein of parks, squares and downtown business districts. It allowed citizens to leaflet both inside and outside malls, but did not endorse other forms of expression such as public speeches.”
When I was a teenager, back in the late 60s, my church youth group would go to the airport in Miami and pass out tracts and talk to people. Never had any problems doing that. No complaints, none of us were arrested or kicked out. My, how our nation has changed.
“The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in 1994 in the case of New Jersey Coalition Against War in the Middle East v. J.M.B. Realty Corporation that malls followed the “historical path of free speech,” in the vein of parks, squares and downtown business districts. It allowed citizens to leaflet both inside and outside malls, but did not endorse other forms of expression such as public speeches.”
Why would you say that?
You demonstrate one of the key reasons that constitutional conservatism is at such dire risk - personal opinion over a personal hot-button topic is more important than the concept of the Constitution.
You need to be a more careful reader and less reactionary to only part of what I said. And what I said was that I wholly embrace his rights to publicly practice his faith and his religion, but that I also wish he would use materials that come from an anti-Catholic publisher. There are plenty of other good non-Catholic Christian resources people can use without financing mis-information. How can anyone have a problem with that?
I may have overlooked what you were thinking, but did not write - not what you wrote. One of the reasons our fore fathers wanted to have no laws regarding establishment of religion by the State was to preclude different religions from getting in the way of things - no matter the source, or the religion it impugns, Constitutional is Constitutional.
I'd rather have an atheist espousing Constitutionalism than a member/leader of any religion who used any religion as a constitutional touchstone. The Bible is what it is no matter what folks try to twist it into, with or without the Constitution. The Constitution is the same in that regard to any religion as long as Biblical/Christian principles remain as the thread that it derives from.
Our God, unlike allah, does not need our defense because He will stand up to any attempts to lessen Him. He is not a Catholic/Protestant/Methodist/Baptist and I have trouble imagining that he prefers any of the sects of Christianity laid out in the various religions to any other sect. If someone insults God, I am not offended because I have absolute faith in His power/Humility/Goodness/Love. What others believe cannot shake that. Being upset because someone doesn't like your religion makes no sense.
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