391 U.S. 308 (1968)
Logan Valley Plaza, Inc., owned a large shopping center complex known as Logan Valley Mall near Altoona, Pennsylvania, at the intersection of Plank Road and Good's Lane.1 The center featured five entrance roads, extensive macadam parking lots, sidewalks, and driveways, all separated from the adjoining highways by earthen berms twelve to fifteen feet wide.2 At the time of the events, the mall was occupied by Weis Markets, Inc., which operated a supermarket consisting of an enclosed building, a covered porch, and a five-foot-wide parcel pickup zone, along with Sears, Roebuck and Co., which operated a department store and automobile service center.3
Weis opened for business on December 8, 1965, employing a wholly nonunion staff.4 A few days later Weis posted a sign on the exterior of its building prohibiting trespassing or soliciting by anyone other than its employees on its porch or parking lot.5 Beginning December 17, 1965, members of Amalgamated Food Employees Union Local 590, all employees of Weis competitors rather than of Weis itself, began picketing the Weis store.6 They carried signs stating that Weis was nonunion and that its employees were not receiving union wages or other union benefits.7 Between four and thirteen pickets, averaging around six, conducted the activity almost entirely in the parcel pickup area and the immediately adjacent portion of the parking lot; the picketing remained peaceful at all times.8
On December 27, 1965, Weis and Logan filed an equity action in the Court of Common Pleas of Blair County.9 The court immediately issued an ex parte order enjoining petitioners from picketing and trespassing upon the Weis storeroom, porch, and parcel pickup area as well as the Logan parking area and all entrances and exits.10 The order had the effect of confining all picketing to the berms beside the public roads outside the shopping center.11 Picketing continued along the berms, and handbills asking the public not to patronize Weis were also distributed.12
After an evidentiary hearing that established the facts of the picketing, the Court of Common Pleas continued the original ex parte injunction indefinitely.13 The trial court rejected petitioners' First Amendment claim and alternatively based the injunction on both property rights and an unlawful purpose.14 On appeal the Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed the issuance of the injunction on the sole ground that petitioners' conduct constituted a trespass on respondents' property.15 The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari.16
Whether peaceful picketing of a business enterprise located within a shopping center can be enjoined on the ground that it constitutes an unconsented invasion of the property rights of the owners of the land on which the center is situated?17
Where a privately owned shopping center functions as the equivalent of a public business district by opening its parking lots, sidewalks, and driveways to unrestricted public access for commercial purposes, the First Amendment protects peaceful picketing and the state cannot invoke trespass laws to exclude entirely those who wish to exercise speech rights in a manner consonant with the property's actual use, as established in Marsh v. Alabama.18
Yes. Logan Valley Mall featured extensive macadam parking lots, sidewalks, and driveways open without restriction to customers of Weis Markets and Sears, separated from public highways only by earthen berms, making the center the functional equivalent of a municipal business district.19 The union members conducted peaceful picketing averaging six participants in the parcel pickup zone and adjacent parking area directly adjacent to the Weis supermarket to inform the public that the store was nonunion.20 The Court of Common Pleas and Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld the injunction solely on the basis of unconsented trespass to the privately owned premises, without any finding of interference with access or business operations.21
The property had been opened to the public for shopping in the same manner as a town business block.22 The First Amendment therefore precludes the state from delegating to respondents the power to exclude the picketers through trespass enforcement.23
The injunction violates the First Amendment and cannot stand.24
Related opinions on this issue
Justice Douglas concurred on the ground that respondents had opened the shopping center to public uses.25 They held it out as public for attracting customers and facilitating deliveries. Picketing related to labor conditions at Weis was directly connected to that business.26
He emphasized that picketing is free speech plus physical activity.27 That activity may be regulated for traffic concerns.28 However, picketers cannot be banished entirely to distant berms several hundred feet away.29
Pennsylvania courts could fashion a decree allowing assembly close enough to Weis to make First Amendment rights effective without interfering with customers or employees.30
Justice Black dissented on the ground that the picketing occurred almost entirely in the parcel pickup zone.31 That zone forms an integral part of the Weis supermarket's private operations for loading groceries into customers' cars.32 It cannot be considered dedicated to public use under any extension of Marsh v. Alabama.33
He argued that the Constitution recognizes private ownership of property under the Fifth Amendment.34 The majority misapplied Marsh because the shopping center lacked residential areas, sewers, or other town attributes.35 It was merely a collection of stores with a parking lot.36
Therefore, the state trespass laws could validly protect the pickup zone and the entire premises from invasion.37
Justice Harlan dissented on the ground that the preemption issue under federal labor laws was not properly raised in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.38 Its Rule 59 requires questions to be set forth in the statement of questions involved.39 This rendered the Court without jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1257 to reach either preemption or the First Amendment claim.40
He would have dismissed the writ as improvidently granted.41 This avoided disrupting the congressional scheme for labor disputes by imposing a rigid constitutional rule in an area where Congress had struck a delicate balance.42
Justice White dissented on the ground that Logan Valley Plaza is not a town but only a collection of stores.43 The public is invited solely to shop, not for general thoroughfares, meetings, or parades.44 Thus the parking lot, pickup zone, and sidewalks are not dedicated to public communicative uses in the manner of public streets.45
He argued that the majority's rationale would require the center to permit picketing and handbilling for any purpose, even unrelated to the stores.46 Inviting the public to do business does not impliedly dedicate private property for all First Amendment activities.47