Unions Thwart Private Property Rights
Posted on December 24, 2007 at 4:13 am by WTH
Here is a loss to liberty, freedom and our rights. Once again, judicial activism slaps down one of our most central rights, property rights, n favor of union thugs. In California, unions won the right to be able to disrupt the businesses inside malls.
Now, a mall should be considered private property, but these extremist leftists on the Calif. Supreme court have decided in their finite wisdom that a union may legally invade a mall and protest a business that they don’t like, disrupting the store’s operations and scaring customers away.
The 4-3 ruling came in a case dating to 1998 involving the Fashion Valley mall and a labor union representing press workers at The San Diego Union-Tribune. The court majority said that free-speech rights – as interpreted under the state Constitution and a 1979 state Supreme Court case – also extend to the private property of shopping malls.
“Urging customers to boycott a store lies at the core of the right to free speech,” Associate Justice Carlos Moreno wrote for the majority.
Moreno was joined by Chief Justice Ronald George and Associate Justices Joyce Kennard and Kathryn Mickle Werdegar.
Almost half the court had enough sense to understand that this ruling is a violation of the rights to private property:
In a strong dissent, Associate Justice Ming Chin criticized the ruling and said the court should have overturned the 1979 case that extended free-speech rights to shopping malls.
“Private property should be treated as private property, not as a public free speech zone,” Chin wrote.
He was joined by Justices Marvin Baxter and Carol A. Corrigan.
Call this one a strike against Americanism and our rights and a win for union thugs all across the state. Now, lets hope that such a blow against freedom and liberty isn’t replicated elsewhere.
