05/05/1980 Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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;- . Property belonging to large collective groups is a social prop- erty. In the case of Cynthia Kokis, the managers of Valley River Center were very arbitrary in deciding what could be said. They were also arbitrary in implementing their rules against political exhibits. He does not feel this should happen in areas where the public gathers. Dorothy Sistrom, 3386 Loma Linda, stated agreement with Mr. Sher- idan. The situation is the right of free speech versus the right of private property. The right of free speech benefits society as a whole. There needs to be an acknowledgment that shopping centers are quasi-public places. e Eric Roost, 1311 Willagillespie, American Civil Liberties Union, stated the reason for this ordlnance being before City Council dates back to 1972 when the US Supreme Court,- in the decision Lloyd Corporation vs. Tanner, which involved the Lloyd Center in Portland, overturned the decision of the Supreme Court of four years earlier in the Logan Valley Plaza case. In the Logan decision it was stated that free speech in any private shopping center that was a functional equivalent of a public business district would be protected. Justice Marshall, the author of the Logan decision, criticized the Lloyd decision with these words: liThe vote in Logan Valley was 6-3, and that decision is only four years old. But, I am aware that the composition of this court has changed radically in four years. II What had happened in those four years is that President Richard Nixon had appointed four members of the court. All four of the Nixon-appointed judges voted to withdraw the constitutional protection for speech from shopping centers. They were joined by only one other justice, but that was sufficient to create a new interpretation of our freedoms. The legislature has found itself more and more to be in the position of guarding freedoms. Previously, the Supreme Court had said it would be the protector of the Constitution. In the Eugene Register-Guard on April 24, 1980, an editorial noted that in the Stanford Daily case, the Supreme Court with the Nixon appointees said there was no freedom of the press to protect the newspapers from police searches without suspicion of a crime being committed. The Register-Guard stated that Congress is considering legislation that would protect newspapers from such searches. It further noted that the Oregon Legislature has already provided similar safeguards for the press in Oregon. City Council is being called upon to protect freedom of speech where it has been abandoned by the Supreme Court. Other efforts have and will be made in the Oregon courts and legislature. The proposed ordinance change is a good step in the right direction. e 5/5/80--3