Facts
- Chickasaw, Alabama, was owned by Gulf Shipbuilding Corporation but functioned as an ordinary town with residences, streets, sidewalks, public utilities, and a business district.
- The business block and its sidewalks and streets were open and freely used by the general public, including visitors and highway traffic.
- A company-paid deputy sheriff acted as the town’s policeman, and the federal government operated a post office in the business district.
- The company posted signs barring solicitation without written permission.
- Grace Marsh, a Jehovah’s Witness, distributed religious literature on a sidewalk near the post office.
- After being told no permit would be issued and being warned to leave, Marsh refused and was arrested.
- Marsh was prosecuted under an Alabama statute criminalizing remaining on another’s premises after notice to depart.
Issues
- Whether the First and Fourteenth Amendments permit a State to enforce a criminal trespass statute to punish religious literature distribution on the sidewalks of a privately owned company town that is open to the public.
Decision
- The Supreme Court reversed Marsh’s conviction.
- The Court held Alabama could not constitutionally apply its trespass statute to prevent Marsh from distributing religious literature on the sidewalks of the company town.
- Because the town functioned as a public community and was open for public use, constitutional protections for speech and religious exercise applied despite private ownership.
- Justice Frankfurter concurred in the judgment.
- Justice Reed dissented, joined by Chief Justice Stone and Justice Burton; Justice Jackson did not participate.
Legal Principles
- When a private entity operates a community that is, in substance, a town open to the public, it performs a municipal-type public function for purposes of First and Fourteenth Amendment analysis.
- A State’s enforcement of criminal trespass law to support a company town’s exclusion of peaceful religious leafleting constitutes state action that can violate the First Amendment as incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment.
- In spaces that serve as community streets and sidewalks, private title alone does not allow suppression of protected expression where the property is held out for public use as a town’s public thoroughfares.
Conclusion
A privately owned company town that is open and functions like an ordinary municipality cannot use state trespass enforcement to exclude protected religious speech from its streets and sidewalks; applying the trespass statute in that setting violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.