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A market for ideas, or just for groceries?

By HOWARD TROXLER
Published March 22, 2007

How "public" is Publix?

Is Wal-Mart our modern version of the town square?

The question is whether citizens have the right to gather petition signatures there, or whether such stores have the right to keep them away.

A couple of years back, some folks in Tallahassee wanted to petition at a Publix for legalized marijuana. Publix sued to keep them out and won.

Now there's a bill in our Legislature to make that power clear in state law. House Bill 559 is sponsored by state Rep. Don Brown, R-DeFuniak Springs. Florida's retailers support it.

Those who engage in petitions think it's a bad idea.

"This is an outrage," Lesley Blackner says. She's leader of Florida Hometown Democracy, a group that is trying to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot for direct voter control of growth.

"The First Amendment case law is clear that we have the right to petition, subject to reasonable time, and place restrictions," Blackner says.

But it's kind of a gray area. The case from Tallahassee hinged on the rights of private property owners.

And yet even private owners can open themselves up to challenge if they convert their property to a "public forum."

There's a classic case from the 1940s involving a "company town," an entire community built by a single employer. The residents didn't give up all their rights just because they lived there, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled. Here's an interesting passage:

The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the ... rights of those who use it. Thus, the owners of privately held bridges, ferries, turnpikes and railroads may not operate them as freely as a farmer does his farm.

The line also gets fuzzier when a private company is part of a publicly supported project or redevelopment.

If I were Publix, I wouldn't want the hassle of picking and choosing which groups got to petition. I would either celebrate being a public place and let 'em all use a designated spot, or else ban everybody - simplest, but also a loss to our civic discourse.

* * *

An update: Last week I wrote about Senate Bill 734 by state Sen. Charlie Justice, D-St. Petersburg, to outlaw the use of tax dollars by government to take sides in elections, such as the recent Penny for Pinellas sales tax vote.

On Tuesday, SB 734 was approved 8-0 by the Senate Ethics & Elections Committee. It still has two other Senate committees, and a similar version is bogged down in the House, so the prospects are unclear at best.

* * *

For the past month I've been hanging out on our web pages with my own blog, called "TroxBlog" (we decided against "Howard's End"). Now it's time for a live chat.

Tuesday, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., I'll answer as many questions and comments from readers as we can squeeze in. I'll post an announcement at 11:30 declaring the chat open, and we'll use the "comments" link of that announcement to do the talking.

You can get to TroxBlog by going to our home page, www.tampabay.com, then clicking on the "Blogs" link. Or you can type in the address directly: blogs.tampabay.com/troxler. See you there.

[Last modified March 22, 2007, 06:22:19]