## Facts

- Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), a privately owned public utility, routinely included a newsletter in its monthly billing envelopes.
- The newsletter contained political editorials, feature stories on public issues, energy-conservation tips, and information about utility services and bills.
- In a ratemaking proceeding, Toward Utility Rate Normalization (TURN), a consumer group opposing PG&E in Commission proceedings, argued that ratepayers should not fund PG&E’s political speech.
- TURN asked the Public Utilities Commission of California (PUC) either to bar PG&E’s political editorials in bill inserts or to grant TURN access to the same billing-envelope “extra space.”
- The PUC characterized the unused space in PG&E’s billing envelopes as “ratepayers’ property” and ordered PG&E to include TURN’s materials in that space up to four times per year.
- The order imposed no content limits on TURN beyond a disclaimer that TURN’s messages were not PG&E’s.
- PG&E claimed the order violated the First Amendment by compelling it to disseminate a hostile third party’s speech; state-court review was denied, and the case proceeded to the U.S. Supreme Court.

## Issues

1. Whether a state utility regulator may require a privately owned utility to provide an opposing private group access to the utility’s billing envelopes to distribute the group’s messages.
2. Whether compelling a corporation to carry a hostile third party’s speech in the corporation’s chosen expressive vehicle violates the First Amendment, including the right not to speak and the right to avoid forced association.
3. Whether treating billing-envelope space as “ratepayer property” permits the state to convert that space into a forum for alternative viewpoints.

## Decision

- The Court vacated the PUC’s compelled-access order and remanded.
- A plurality concluded the order unconstitutionally burdened PG&E’s First Amendment rights by forcing it to disseminate messages inconsistent with its views.
- The plurality emphasized that the order was triggered by, and targeted, PG&E’s speech: when PG&E addressed controversial matters, it risked being compelled to carry an adversary’s response.
- The plurality reasoned that compelled inclusion of hostile messages could pressure the utility to avoid controversy, reducing speech rather than increasing it.
- Concurring and dissenting opinions did not produce a single majority rationale, but the Court rejected this compelled-access scheme as applied to PG&E’s billing inserts.

## Legal Principles

- The First Amendment protects not only the right to speak, but also the right to refrain from speaking and to control the content of one’s own expressive vehicle.
- Government generally may not compel a private speaker or publisher to carry another’s message, particularly when the compelled carriage is content based or discriminatorily assigned to opponents.
- Private property does not become a public forum merely because it is used to convey the owner’s speech or because customers indirectly fund aspects of the distribution mechanism through regulated rates.
- Regulatory authority over rates and economic conduct does not, without more, justify forcing a regulated entity to associate with or distribute an adversary’s speech.

## Conclusion

The Court set aside an order requiring a utility to include an opposing group’s materials in its billing envelopes, holding that compelled access of this kind violates the First Amendment by forcing the utility to disseminate and associate with speech it may reject.


Pac. Gas & Elec. Co. v. Pub. Utils. Comm'n, 475 U.S. 1 (1986)