## Facts

- Michael Cross sought to collect signatures at Sunland Park Mall to place Pat Buchanan on the 2000 presidential ballot.
- Sunland Park Mall was privately owned but open to the public during business hours; it maintained rules governing use of common areas and the parking lot.
- The mall permitted certain noncommercial activities and allowed groups to use common areas only after submitting an application approved in the mall’s sole discretion.
- The mall’s written policy did not allow partisan political activity in the common area; management stated Cross’s request would have been denied even if he applied.
- On Cross’s first visit, security told him he needed to complete the common-area application; Cross refused.
- Cross returned and again solicited signatures; mall officials asked him to leave.
- Cross refused to leave; police were called and arrested him for criminal trespass.
- Cross was convicted of criminal trespass and fined $500; he argued the trespass statute was unconstitutional as applied because it burdened political speech and petitioning.

## Issues

1. Whether enforcing Texas’s criminal-trespass statute against political petitioning in a privately owned shopping mall violated the First Amendment.
2. Whether the Texas Constitution’s free-speech provision grants broader rights than the First Amendment to engage in political speech on privately owned shopping-center property.

## Decision

- The court affirmed the criminal-trespass conviction.
- The court held the First Amendment claim was controlled by U.S. Supreme Court precedent rejecting a federal right to engage in expressive activity on privately owned shopping-center property over the owner’s objection.
- The court declined to interpret the Texas Constitution more broadly on this record, holding Cross failed to show a basis for expanding state free-speech protections to private malls.
- The $500 fine remained in effect.

## Legal Principles

- The First Amendment does not, by itself, confer a right to engage in expressive activity on privately owned shopping-center property when the owner objects and the state enforces a generally applicable trespass law.
- A state may extend broader speech rights on private shopping-center property under its own constitution, but a party seeking that expansion must provide a substantive basis in text, history, or precedent.
- Criminal-trespass laws may be applied to remove a person from private property after notice and refusal to depart, even when the person’s purpose is expressive, absent a recognized constitutional entitlement to remain.

## Conclusion

The court upheld Cross’s trespass conviction because federal law provided no First Amendment right to petition inside a privately owned mall contrary to management’s rules, and Cross did not justify a broader construction of Texas’s free-speech guarantee that would create such a right.


Cross v. State, No. 08-03-00283-CR, 2004 WL 1535606 (Tex. App.—El Paso July 8, 2004)