Some media outlets called the decision by the California Supreme Court last week a “hands down” victory for unions because it gave them picketing rights denied other demonstrators and signature gatherers.

The high court, on a 6-1 vote, said that “the state's interest in promoting collective bargaining to resolve labor disputes” accorded unions special protection from laws which recognize that private walkways in front of stores are not fair game for anyone who wants to be a presence. The justices reversed an appeals court ruling that the Moscone Act and a section of the state’s labor code violated U.S. Constitution guarantees of free speech and equal protection because they gave special consideration to unions.

But four of the seven justices made a point of cautioning that there were limits to how intrusive demonstrators can be and encouraged lower court judges not to let it get out of hand, without actually laying down any hard and fast rules. That drew a rebuke from Justices Goodwin Liu and Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, who thought the majority’s opinion, written by Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, was inviting legal challenges to union behavior. 

The case arose out of a dispute in Sacramento over picketing at a Ralphs grocery store. Ralphs had a policy of preventing demonstrators from coming within 20 feet of its store entrance, but union members handed out leaflets there in protest of the non-union shop. Ralphs said they were trespassers, but a trial court disagreed. Ralphs appealed and the appellate court sided with the company.

The state high court took note of a U.S. District Court ruling in 2004 that unions had no right to distribute leaflets in a grocer's parking lot; it formed the basis for the appellate court ruling. But Justice Joyce L. Kennard wrote that the court erred because it’s not enough to just note that “a union's picketing activities in such a location do not have state constitutional protection. Those picketing activities do have statutory protection.”

“We do not agree with the Court of Appeal that the Moscone Act and section 1138.1, which are components of a state statutory system for regulating labor relations, and which are modeled on federal law, run afoul of the federal constitutional prohibition on content discrimination in speech regulations.”

Lone state high court dissenter Justice Ming W. Chin argued that such reasoning “places California on a collision course with the federal courts.” Miriam A. Vogel, who represents Ralphs, told the Los Angeles Times the ruling might be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

–Ken Broder         

To Learn More:

California Supreme Court Upholds Picketing at Store Entrance (by Denny Walsh, Sacramento Bee)

Union Pickets Gain Special Protections from State Justices (by Maura Dolan, Los Angeles Times)

Justices Limit Shopping Mall Speech Rights, But Unions Can Still Picket (by Scott Graham, The Recorder)

Unions Can Picket, State High Court Rules (by Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle)

Ralphs Grocery Company v. United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 8 (California Supreme Court)