Edwards v. MARYLAND STATE FAIR, ETC.

• Decision Date: 17 August 1979
• Docket Number: Civ. No. Y-78-1601.
• Citation: 476 F. Supp. 153
• Parties: David EDWARDS et al. v. MARYLAND STATE FAIR AND AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY et al.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Maryland

476 F. Supp. 153

David EDWARDS et al. v. MARYLAND STATE FAIR AND AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY et al.

Civ. No. Y-78-1601.

United States District Court, D. Maryland.

August 17, 1979.

C. Christopher Brown, Baltimore, Md., Barry A. Fisher, and Robert C. Moest, Beverly Hills, Cal., for plaintiffs.

J. Frederick Motz, Alan H. Fisher, and Benson Everett Legg, Baltimore, Md., for defendants.

JOSEPH H. YOUNG, District Judge.

I. THE FACTS

Each year during a ten-day period in late summer, the Maryland State Fair and Agricultural Society, Inc. ("Agricultural Society") sponsors the annual Maryland State Fair ("Fair") at the fair grounds in Timonium. The Fair provides an occasion at which agricultural interests throughout the State can gather to demonstrate farming techniques and machinery. At the same time, various exhibits and amusements, such as horseracing, attract large numbers of the general public as well, and the total number of visitors attending the the Fair each year approaches half a million.

On August 28, 1978, after the 1978 Fair had already begun, the individual plaintiffs in this case filed for injunctive and declaratory relief in the form of a temporary restraining order.¹ As devotees of the religion Krishna Consciousness which is formally known as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness ("ISKCON"), plaintiffs sought to enjoin the Fair, its Manager, the Chief of the Baltimore County Police, and the State's Attorney for Baltimore County from enforcing the Fair's so-called "booth rule." Under the booth rule, the Agricultural Society requires that all persons and groups, whether commercial, civic, political, or religious, who wish to solicit contributions, sell products, or distribute literature, must do so from a booth. According to defendants, the booth rule is uniformly and nondiscriminatorily enforced as a necessary means of achieving effective crowd control at the Fair.

Plaintiffs, on the other hand, contended that the booth restriction limited their freedom of expression in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. According to their complaint, plaintiffs are members of ISKCON, an international religious society espousing the missionary views of Hinduism as expressed by the Hindu denomination Krishna Consciousness. ISKCON maintains temples throughout the world, including one in Baltimore, and has been more fully described both in terms of its religious practices and organizational features in the many cases having already litigated the religious freedom issue raised here. See, e. g., ISKCON v. Rochford, 425 F.Supp. 734 (N.D. Ill.1977), modified, 585 F.2d 263 (7th Cir. 1978); ISKCON v. Engelhardt, 425 F.Supp. 176 (W.D.Mo.1977); ISKCON v. Conlisk, 374 F.Supp. 1010 (N.D.Ill.1973); ISKCON v. New Orleans, 347 F.Supp. 945 (E.D.La. 1972).

ISKCON members find the booth rule particularly offensive because of their religious obligation to perform the ritual known as Sankirtan which consists of gratuitously disseminating religious tracts, making converts, and soliciting funds to support the organization. "Sankirtan is directed to spreading religious truth as it is known to Krishna Consciousness, attracting new members and supporting ISKCON's religious activities. Donations and book distribution in exchange for contributions to defray printing and other distribution costs are the very lifeblood and principal means of support of this religious movement." Complaint at ¶ 10. According to ISKCON, restricting Krishna disciples to a booth would confine their movements and deny them the right to practice Sankirtan.

Because of the late filing of this case initially, plus the fact that granting plaintiffs' requested relief would have secured for them the entire relief sought for last year's Fair, Judge Harvey declined to issue a temporary restraining order. Consequently, the case was set in for ultimate trial on the merits. In the months following Judge Harvey's ruling, extensive discovery was conducted, and ISKCON's Baltimore Chapter was added as a corporate plaintiff. The case is now before this Court on cross motions for summary judgment which raise two issues: (1) whether enforcement of the booth rule by the Agricultural Society constitutes sufficient state action in this context to satisfy the "color of state law" requirement of 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and (2) whether the booth rule represents a reasonable time, place, and manner restriction upon the exercise of plaintiffs' First Amendment rights.

II. THE STATE ACTION REQUIREMENT

Both section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment and the First Amendment proscribe only governmental activities.² Private parties, consequently, are excluded from their scope to the extent that no state action is involved in the alleged constitutional violation. As the Supreme Court made clear almost a century ago, "individual invasion of individual rights is not the subject-matter of the Fourteenth amendment." Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 11, 3 S.Ct. 18, 21, 27 L.Ed. 835 (1883). More recently, the Supreme Court has remarked that "private conduct abridging individual rights does no violence to the Fourteenth Amendment unless to some significant extent the State in any of its manifestations has been found to have become involved in it." Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 365 U.S. 715, 722, 81 S.Ct. 856, 860, 6 L.Ed.2d 45 (1961).

To prevail in their claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, plaintiffs must demonstrate that the defendants acted under color of state law to deprive them of their constitutional rights. Deciding whether or not particular action rises to the level of state action sufficient to permit the enforcement of constitutional rights in a lawsuit is not always a straightforward task. A review of the most prominent Supreme Court rulings on state action will reveal that instead of a unified, coherent, readily applicable theory, the Supreme Court has instead left us with a series of examples crying out for a common theory. The Court has already noted that formulating an infallible state action test is an impossible task. Reitman v. Mulkey, 387 U.S. 369, 378, 87 S.Ct. 1627, 18 L.Ed.2d 830 (1967). One scholar, after surveying its doctrinal development, has referred to the state action doctrine as "a conceptual disaster area." Black, The Supreme Court, 1966 Term-Forward: "State Action," Equal Protection, and California's Proposition 14, 81 Harv.L.Rev. 69, 95 (1967).

While there is little question that the Supreme Court's developments in this area have been uneven and occasionally contradictory,³ the Court's more recent cases have recognized that what is needed is not a unitary state action doctrine but rather a flexible approach by which the dividing line between state and private action depends less upon a search for quantitative factors such as those used in a minimum contacts inquiry but more upon a sensitive balancing of the competing interests at stake as well as the relationships between state activity and the alleged discrimination. See, e. g., Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. v. Democratic National Committee, 412 U.S. 94, 93 S.Ct. 2080, 36 L.Ed.2d 772 (1973); Norwood v. Harrison, 413 U.S. 455, 93 S.Ct. 2804, 37 L.Ed.2d 723 (1973).⁴

In an early public function case, Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501, 66 S.Ct. 276, 90 L.Ed. 265 (1946), the Supreme Court employed a balancing approach to determine whether constitutional rights could be enforced. The issue in Marsh was whether a company town's streets were public or private such that the town owners could invoke state trespass laws against Jehovah's Witnesses who were distributing religious literature on the streets. Although considered a public function case, Marsh actually avoided deciding whether the town's streets were in fact public property. Writing for the majority, Justice Black saw the central issue as whether private property rights enforceable through the state's trespass laws could be enforced at the expense of free speech rights. He resolved the conflict by reference to the nature and use of the property as well as the constitutional right invoked. As to the property, he said:

Ownership does not always mean absolute dominion. 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 statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it.

326 U.S. at 506, 66 S.Ct. at 278. As to the competing rights, he explained that "when we balance the Constitutional rights of owners of property against those of the people to enjoy freedom of the press and religion, as we must here, we remain mindful of the fact that the latter occupied a preferred position." 326 U.S. at 509, 66 S.Ct. at 280.

In the years after Marsh, however, the balancing approach gave way to a "symbiotic relationship" test by which the presence of such a symbiosis between the State and a private party who was discriminating illegally could involve the State as a joint participant in the unlawful conduct so as to render the activity subject to the fourteenth amendment. Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 365 U.S. 715, 81 S.Ct. 856, 6 L.Ed.2d 45 (1961). The Burton court also referred to the need for "sifting facts and weighing circumstances" in evaluating competing claims. 326 U.S. at 722, 66 S.Ct. 276. Only in recent years has state action analysis shown a tendency to abandon a quantitative contacts analysis in favor of the earlier balancing approach of Marsh. See, e. g., Evans v. Abney, 396 U.S. 435, 90 S.Ct. 628, 24 L.Ed.2d 634 (1970); Moose Lodge No. 107 v. Irvis, 407 U.S. 163, 92 S.Ct. 1965, 32 L.Ed.2d 627 (1972); Lloyd Corp., Ltd. v. Tanner, 407 U.S. 551, 92 S.Ct. 2219, 33 L.Ed.2d 131 (1972); Columbia Broadcasting Systems, Inc. v. Democratic National Committee, 412 U.S. 94, 93 S.Ct. 2080, 36 L.Ed.2d 772 (1973); Jackson v. Metropolitan Edison Co., 419 U.S. 345, 95 S.Ct. 449, 42 L.Ed.2d 477 (1974). While these cases have...