California Court Restricts Trespassing by Labor Unions on Private Property

The California Legislature has enacted two statutes that create barriers to injunctive relief against trespassing by union agents on the private property of employers, and California courts have repeatedly sought to exempt labor unions from the intentional tort of trespass that applies to all other persons and organizations in this state.

In a recent decision, however, the California Court of Appeal for the Third Appellate District emphatically rejected this state-sponsored protection of union trespassing. The court ruled—in Ralphs Grocery Company v. United Food & Commercial Workers Union Local 8—that the statutes protecting union trespassers violate the free speech provisions of the U.S. Constitution, and that the decisions of the California courts that carve out trespassing by union agents for special protection no longer have viability as binding precedent.

If this important decision survives review by the California Supreme Court, the legal landscape will be dramatically altered for employers and labor unions in this state.

Facts of the Ralphs Case

The dispute in Ralphs arose when the company opened a new grocery store in Sacramento with a non-union workforce. The store was located in a retail development know as College Square, which included common areas and restaurants where outdoor seating was available. Ralphs, however, owned the sidewalk in front of the store, and that area was not designed or presented to the public as a public meeting place.

To protest the lack of union representation at the store, union agents picketed and passed out handbills on a privately-owned sidewalk within five feet of the store's entrance. About eight to 10 union agents participated in this activity for eight hours a day, five days a week, on an ongoing basis.

Ralphs requested that the Sacramento Police Department remove the union trespassers, but the police refused. Therefore, Ralphs sought injunctive relief from the Sacramento Superior Court. The court refused to provide such relief, however, because of a statute designed to protect unions from injunctions.

Appellate Court's Decision

This decision of the Court of Appeal includes several important rulings affecting the private property of employers and the expressive activities of labor unions.

Grocery Store's Private Property Not a "Public Forum"

Although the Ralphs grocery store was located in a retail development that included common areas and restaurants where outdoor seating was available, the court found that the privately-owned sidewalk in front of the store was not a "public forum" under the California Constitution because it was not designed and presented to the public as a public meeting place. Instead, the court found that this area was a "private forum."

The legal significance of this ruling is that the private sidewalk in front of the store was not subject to the California Supreme Court's Pruneyard doctrine, under which members of the public (including union agents) have a right to engage in expressive activities in a common area of a shopping center under the theory that the area has become a public forum. Robins v. Pruneyard Shopping Center, 23 Cal. 3d 899 (1979).

Because the area in question was not a public forum, the court declared that Ralphs, as a private property owner, could limit the speech allowed and exclude anyone desiring to...

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