Linmark Associates, Inc. v. Township of Willingboro

Linmark Associates, Inc., v. Township of Willingboro
Linmark Associates, Inc., v. Township of Willingboro
	Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 2, 1977; Decided June 22, 1977
Full case name	Linmark Associates, Inc., et al. v. Township of Willingboro et al.
Citations	431 U.S. 85 ( more ) 97 S. Ct. 1614; 52 L. Ed. 2d 155; 1977 U.S. LEXIS 81
Case history
Prior	Unpublished district court decision reversed, 535 F.2d 786 (3rd Cir. 1976); cert. granted, 429 U.S. 938(1976).
Holding
	Local ordinance prohibiting the posting of "for sale" and "sold" signs on real estate violated First Amendment protections of commercial speech.
Court membership
	Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Associate Justices William J. Brennan Jr. · Potter Stewart ; Byron White · Thurgood Marshall ; Harry Blackmun · Lewis F. Powell Jr. ; William Rehnquist · John P. Stevens
Case opinion
Majority	Marshall, joined by Burger, Brennan, Stewart, White, Blackmun, Powell, Stevens
	Rehnquist took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
	U.S. Const. amend. I

Last updated August 12, 2019

Linmark Associates, Inc. v. Township of Willingboro, 431 U.S. 85 (1977), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States found that an ordinance prohibiting the posting of "for sale" and "sold" signs on real estate within the town violated the First Amendment to the United States Constitution protections for commercial speech.^[1]

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. Established pursuant to Article III of the U.S. Constitution in 1789, it has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, including suits between two or more states and those involving ambassadors. It also has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all federal court and state court cases that involve a point of federal constitutional or statutory law. The Court has the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution. Executive acts can be struck down by the Court for violating either the Constitution or federal law. However, it may act only within the context of a case in an area of law over which it has jurisdiction. The court may decide cases having political overtones, but it has ruled that it does not have power to decide non-justiciable political questions.

A local ordinance is a law for a political division smaller than a state or nation, i.e., a local government such as a municipality, county, parish, prefecture, etc.

Real estate is "property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this (also) an item of real property, buildings or housing in general. Also: the business of real estate; the profession of buying, selling, or renting land, buildings, or housing." It is a legal term used in jurisdictions whose legal system is derived from English common law, such as India, England, Wales, Northern Ireland, United States, Canada, Pakistan, Australia, and New Zealand.

Background

Willingboro Township, New Jersey, had been experiencing a shift in its demographics during the 1960s as the proportion of its non-white population increased from less than 1% to 18.2% in 1973.^[1] Concerned that white flight might occur, it enacted an ordinance in 1974 that prohibited its residents from having a "for sale" or "sold" sign on any real estate within the township. During the 1960s and 1970s, many communities in the United States had enacted similar laws in response to the practices of blockbusting. It was believed that by preventing the posting of these signs, residents would not know if a large number of white homeowners were attempting to sell their houses and move from the township at the same time. The intent of such laws was to prevent panic selling and to allow integration in a more gradual manner.

Willingboro Township is a township in Burlington County, New Jersey, United States, with British roots going back to the 17th century. Abraham Levitt and Sons purchased and developed Willingboro land in the 1950s and 1960s as a planned community in their Levittown model.

New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is a peninsula, bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware River and Pennsylvania; and on the southwest by the Delaware Bay and Delaware. New Jersey is the fourth-smallest state by area but the 11th-most populous, with 9 million residents as of 2017, making it the most densely populated of the 50 U.S. states with its biggest city being Newark. New Jersey lies completely within the combined statistical areas of New York City and Philadelphia. New Jersey was the second-wealthiest U.S. state by median household income as of 2017.

White flight a term for the mass exodus of middle-class whites from large cities in the mid-20th century to smaller communities and suburbs.

White flight is a term that originated in the United States, starting in the 1950s and 1960s, and applied to the large-scale migration of people of various European ancestries from racially mixed urban regions to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions. The term has more recently been applied to other migrations by whites, from older, inner suburbs to rural areas, as well as from the U.S. Northeast and Midwest to the milder climate in the Southeast and Southwest. The term has also been used for large-scale post-colonial emigration of whites from Africa, or parts of that continent, driven by levels of violent crime and anti-colonial state policies.

Linmark Associates owned property that was for sale when the ordinance was passed, and filed suit in federal district court seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. The district court granted a declaration of unconstitutionality of the ordinance, but on appeal a divided Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed the decision of the district court.^[2] The case was then appealed to the Supreme Court.

The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States district court. Each federal judicial district has at least one courthouse, and many districts have more than one. The formal name of a district court is "the United States District Court for" the name of the district—for example, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.

An injunction is a legal and equitable remedy in the form of a special court order that compels a party to do or refrain from specific acts. "When a court employs the extraordinary remedy of injunction, it directs the conduct of a party, and does so with the backing of its full coercive powers." A party that fails to comply with an injunction faces criminal or civil penalties, including possible monetary sanctions and even imprisonment. They can also be charged with contempt of court. Counterinjunctions are injunctions that stop or reverse the enforcement of another injunction.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts for the following districts:

Court's Decision

The Supreme Court had recently recognized that commercial speech had some protection in Bigelow v. Virginia ,^[3] in which the Court struck down a Virginia statute prohibiting the advertisement of out-of-state abortion procedures, and in Virginia State Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council ,^[4] which struck down a statute forbidding the advertisement of prescription drug prices. Justice Marshall's decision noted that the Willingboro ordinance did not genuinely regulate the time or manner of the communication, but its content, since other signs were permitted. Rather, Willingboro proscribed particular signs, those stating "for sale" or "sold," because the township feared that the signs will cause those residents reading them to act upon them. As such, the township's ordinance was essentially the same as the situation in Virginia State Pharmacy Board, where a statute was intended to keep information from the public. Although the purpose of the Willingboro law was to prevent irrational decisionmaking by white homeowners by keeping information on the status of real estate from them, the First Amendment does not permit the government to make such a statute. The opinion says that when there is a choice between suppressing information and the danger of its misuse if it is freely available, then the remedy under the First Amendment is more speech and not enforced silence. As there was no meaningful difference between the township's ordinance and the statute overturned in the Virginia State Pharmacy Board case, the Court concluded that the Willingboro violated the First Amendment.

Bigelow v. Commonwealth of Virginia, 421 U.S. 809 (1975), was a United States Supreme Court case that established First Amendment protection for advertising.

Virginia State Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, 425 U.S. 748 (1976), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that a state could not limit pharmacists’ right to provide information about prescription drug prices. This was an important case in determining the application of the First Amendment to commercial speech.

Justice Rehnquist did not participate in the decision. His had been the lone dissenting opinion in the Virginia State Pharmacy Board case, stating that the free speech protection of the First Amendment should be limited to social and political issues.^[4]

Related Research Articles

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws which respect an establishment of religion, prohibit the free exercise of religion, or abridge the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the right to peaceably assemble, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.

R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377 (1992), is a case of the United States Supreme Court in which the Supreme Court unanimously struck down St. Paul's Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance and reversed the conviction of a teenager, referred to in court documents only as R.A.V., for burning a cross on the lawn of an African-American family for violating the First Amendment's protections for freedom of speech.

Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court decided 8–1 in favor of the respondent, Edward Schempp legal responsible of his son Ellery Schempp, and declared school-sponsored Bible reading in public schools in the United States to be unconstitutional. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court during this case was Earl Warren.

First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765 (1978), is a U.S. constitutional law case which defined the free speech right of corporations for the first time. The United States Supreme Court held that corporations have a First Amendment right to make contributions to ballot initiative campaigns. The ruling came in response to a Massachusetts law that prohibited corporate donations in ballot initiatives unless the corporation's interests were directly involved.

Blockbusting is a business process of U.S. real estate agents and building developers to convince white property owners to sell their house at low prices, which they do by promoting fear in those house owners that racial minorities will soon be moving into the neighborhood. The agents then sell those same houses at much higher prices to black families desperate to escape the overcrowded ghettos. Blockbusting became possible after the legislative and judicial dismantling of legally protected racially segregated real estate practices after World War II. By the 1980s it largely disappeared as a business practice, after changes in law and the real estate market.

Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343 (2003), is a First Amendment case decided in the Supreme Court of the United States. Three defendants were convicted in two separate cases of violating a Virginia statute against cross burning. In this case, the Court struck down that statute to the extent that it considered cross burning as prima facie evidence of intent to intimidate. Such a provision, the Court argued, blurs the distinction between proscribable "threats of intimidation" and the Ku Klux Klan's protected "messages of shared ideology." However, cross-burning can be a criminal offense if the intent to intimidate is proven. It was argued by former Solicitor General of Virginia, William Hurd.

In law, commercial speech is speech or writing on behalf of a business with the intent of earning revenue or a profit. It is economic in nature and usually attempts to persuade consumers to purchase the business's product or service. The Supreme Court of the United States defines commercial speech as speech that "proposes a commercial transaction".

Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88 (1940), is a US labor law case of a United States Supreme Court. It reversed the conviction of the president of a local union for violating an Alabama statute that prohibited only labor picketing. Thornhill was peaceably picketing his employer during an authorized strike when he was arrested and charged. In reaching its decision, Associate Justice Frank Murphy wrote for the Supreme Court that the free speech clause protects speech about the facts and circumstances of a labor dispute. The statute in the case prohibited all labor picketing, but Thornhill added peaceful labor picketing to the area protected by free speech.

Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U.S. 569 (1941), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that, although the government cannot regulate the contents of speech, it can place reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions on speech for the public safety. Here, the Court held that government may require organizers of any parade or procession on public streets to have a license and pay a fee.

Valentine v. Chrestensen, 316 U.S. 52 (1942), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that commercial speech in public thoroughfares is not constitutionally protected.

44 Liquormart, Inc. v. Rhode Island, 517 U.S. 484 (1996), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a complete ban on the advertising of alcohol prices was unconstitutional under the First Amendment, and that the Twenty-first Amendment, empowering the states to regulate alcohol, did not operate to lessen other constitutional restraints of state power.

Lorillard v. Reilly, 533 U.S. 525 (2001), was a 2001 case brought by Lorillard Tobacco Company when Massachusetts instituted a ban on tobacco ads and sales of tobacco within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds. Lorillard argued that this was an infringement on its First Amendment rights and that the regulation was more extensive than necessary. Applying the Central Hudson Test, the U.S. Supreme Court held that Massachusetts' ban on advertising and tobacco sales was overbroad. The Supreme Court also held that the Massachusetts regulation was preempted by federal law.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons in the U.S. Commonwealth of Virginia do not enjoy the same rights that non-LGBT residents do. Same-sex marriage has been legal in Virginia since October 6, 2014, when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider an appeal in the case of Bostic v. Rainey. Despite this, there is still only limited rights for LGBT persons in Virginia, since there is no statewide law protecting LGBT persons from discrimination in housing, credit, or any other area, with the exception of statewide employment, the state's hate crime laws do not protect against violence committed based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and Virginia's statute criminalizing sodomy between same-sex and opposite-sex couples, though declared unconstitutional in 2003, was not repealed until 11 years later in 2014.

Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., 564 U.S. 552 (2011), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a Vermont statute that restricted the sale, disclosure, and use of records that revealed the prescribing practices of individual doctors violated the First Amendment.

NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415 (1963), is a 6-to-3 ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States which held that the reservation of jurisdiction by a federal district court did not bar the U.S. Supreme Court from reviewing a state court's ruling, and also overturned certain laws enacted by the state of Virginia in 1956 as part of the Stanley plan and massive resistance, as violating the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The statutes here stricken down by the Supreme Court had expanded the definitions of the traditional common law crimes of barratry, champerty, and maintenance and had been targeted at the NAACP and its civil rights litigation.

Hoffman Estates v. The Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc., 455 U.S. 489 (1982), is a United States Supreme Court decision concerning the vagueness and overbreadth doctrines as they apply to restrictions on commercial speech. The justices unanimously upheld an ordinance passed by a Chicago suburb that imposed licensing requirements on the sale of drug paraphernalia by a local record store. Their decision overturned the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

Richmond Newspapers Inc. v. Virginia, 448 U.S. 555 (1980), is a United States Supreme Court case involving issues of privacy in correspondence with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the freedom of the press, the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. After a murder case ended in three mistrials, the judge closed the fourth trial to the public and the press. On appeal, the Supreme Court ruled the closing to be in violation of the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment asserting that the First Amendment implicitly guarantees the press access to public trials.

References

1 2 Linmark Associates, Inc. v. Township of Willingboro, 431 U.S. 85 (1977).
↑ Linmark Associates, Inc. v. Township of Willingboro, 535F.2d786 (3rd Cir.1976).
↑ Bigelow v. Virginia , 421 U.S. 809 (1975).
1 2 Virginia State Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council , 425 U.S. 748 (1976).

External links

Text of Linmark Associates, Inc. v. Township of Willingboro, 431 U.S. 85(1977) is available from: Cornell CourtListener Google Scholar Justia Library of Congress Oyez (oral argument audio)

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[Linmark-1] 1 2 Linmark Associates, Inc. v. Township of Willingboro, 431 U.S. 85 (1977).

[2] Linmark Associates, Inc. v. Township of Willingboro, 535F.2d786 (3rd Cir.1976).

[3] Bigelow v. Virginia , 421 U.S. 809 (1975).

[Virginia-4] 1 2 Virginia State Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council , 425 U.S. 748 (1976).