## Facts

- Chris Schmid, a member of the United States Labor Party, entered Princeton University’s main campus on April 5, 1978, to distribute and sell political literature about a local mayoral campaign and the party.
- Princeton University is a private, nonprofit institution; Schmid was not a student and had no university affiliation.
- Princeton permitted leafleting on campus so long as it did not disrupt essential university operations or significantly infringe others’ rights.
- Princeton imposed an additional requirement on off-campus organizations: prior university permission before distributing materials; affiliated speakers were not subject to the same approval requirement.
- Schmid did not seek or obtain permission and was arrested by a university security officer.
- The State charged Schmid with disorderly persons trespass under N.J.S.A. 2A:170-31.
- Schmid was convicted, and the conviction was affirmed on appeal; the New Jersey Supreme Court granted review, and Princeton intervened.

## Issues

1. Whether Princeton University’s enforcement of its access rules constituted state action so that the federal First Amendment barred Schmid’s trespass conviction.
2. Whether the New Jersey Constitution’s speech and assembly guarantees protected Schmid’s leafleting on a private university campus open in significant respects to the public.
3. Whether Princeton’s permission requirement and enforcement scheme unreasonably restricted protected expressive activity.

## Decision

- The court held Princeton’s conduct was not state action; Schmid had no federal First Amendment claim against the university’s restriction.
- The court held the New Jersey Constitution protected reasonable speech and assembly on privately owned property that is open to and used by the public in a meaningful way.
- The court found Princeton’s rules and their application invalid under the state constitution because they imposed a discriminatory prior-permission barrier on nonaffiliated speakers and vested overly broad discretion in the university.
- The court reversed Schmid’s trespass conviction and remanded for proceedings consistent with its opinion.

## Legal Principles

- State constitutional free-speech and assembly provisions may provide broader protections than the federal First Amendment.
- Under the New Jersey Constitution, a private property owner may be required to accommodate reasonable expressive activity when the property is held open to the public in significant ways and the expression is compatible with the property’s normal use.
- Restrictions on expression in such settings must reasonably serve legitimate private interests (e.g., order, safety, and institutional functions) and should be content-neutral time, place, and manner regulations rather than open-ended permission schemes.
- The State may not use a trespass statute to criminalize expressive conduct that the New Jersey Constitution protects in the relevant privately owned, publicly used setting.

## Conclusion

The New Jersey Supreme Court set aside Schmid’s trespass conviction, holding that although Princeton was not a state actor for federal First Amendment purposes, the New Jersey Constitution required the university to permit reasonable, non-disruptive political leafleting in campus areas functioning as public-facing spaces, subject only to reasonable and objective regulations protecting legitimate institutional interests.


State v. Schmid, 423 A.2d 615 (N.J. 1980)