Proposed shopping centers like North Pointe and Albemarle Place are supposed to be the modern town squares, according to the county’s neighborhood model policy. But thanks to a recent Virginia Supreme Court (www.courts.state.va.us) decision, free speech there will have its limits. By declining to hear the civil suit Rich Collins brought against Shopper’s World Manager Chuck Lebo, the Supreme Court lets stand an Albemarle Circuit Court decision that Collins didn’t have the right to hand out campaign leaflets in the Whole Foods parking lot because it’s private property.
“The court looked at our briefs and decided we were right,” says Michael Derdeyn, attorney for Lebo Commercial Properties, Inc. “As a matter of law, there simply is no right to engage in free speech in a privately owned shopping center.”
 Rich Collins’ trespassing conviction was thrown out because he thought he had the right to campaign outside Whole Foods. But with the Supreme Court’s decision, he won’t ever be able to make that argument again. "He got the one bite," says his attorney Frazier Solsberry. "He won’t get another bite at that apple." |
Collins can’t appeal the ruling any further as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t protect free speech on private property. Virginia had no prior case law on the issue, though roughly 20 other states did—only California, Colorado and New Jersey chose to protect politicking in shopping centers.
“The fact that there are as many states that have addressed this issue is indicative that there is an issue with the greater suburbanization of where people are going to congregate,” Derdeyn says. But he adds that there’s a slippery slope if you guarantee free speech: “You could easily end up all the way down to a 7-Eleven required to have somebody in front of them.
“If you really wanted to test that issue, this might not be the best community or the best shopping center to choose, because this isn’t a huge shopping center. …We’ve got a Downtown Mall with a free expression board.”
But Collins, a retired UVA prof and local activist, was courting county voters in an effort to unseat State Delegate David Toscano, says Frazier Solsberry, one of Collins’ attorneys. “And Albemarle doesn’t have anyplace that you can do that—anywhere in the whole county,” Salisbury says.
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