WLF Asks Supreme Court to Overrule PruneYard v. Robins

“PruneYard is the property-taker’s preferred precedent and the speech-compeller’s best friend. It’s time for it to go.”
—Zac Morgan, WLF Senior Litigation Counsel

Click here to read WLF’s brief.

(Washington, DC)—Washington Legal Foundation (WLF) today urged the U.S. Supreme Court to grant review in Majestic Realty v. Salazar, a case that asks the Court to overrule one of its worst First and Fifth Amendment precedents, PruneYard v. Robins.

In 1980, PruneYard upheld that a California law that forced a private shopping mall to admit political activists on its grounds against a First and Fifth Amendment challenge. Thirty-six years later, two California shopping centers are asking for the Court to overrule that precedent. Just as in PruneYard, the malls don’t wish to host uninvited activism. Yet California law insists that the shopping centers provide space for Alex Salazar, who advocates for men to cease complying with child-support orders.

As WLF’s brief explains, the Court should take the case and overrule PruneYard. The case was a dangerous outlier to begin with—and over the past three decades the Court has issued opinion after opinion protecting the right of corporations to disassociate from unwanted political messaging and to exclude uninvited guests from their premises. But since PruneYard remains on the books, it’s always a ready citation for a government looking to compel speech or seize land without paying for it. It’s time, WLF argues, for the case to be dispatched.