Marsh v. Alabama

Facts

Chickasaw, a suburb of Mobile, Alabama, was owned by the Gulf Shipbuilding Corporation. Apart from that, it had all the characteristics of any other American town: residential buildings, streets, sewers, a sewage disposal plant and a "business block" of stores. A deputy of the Mobile County Sheriff, paid by the company, served as the town's policeman. Merchants rented the stores, and the United States used one place as a post office from which six carriers delivered mail. Residents used the business block as their regular shopping center and walked on a company-owned sidewalk to reach the stores and the post office. Company-owned roads led from the business block to a four-lane public highway thirty feet away, and travelers could drive in and use the facilities freely. Marsh, a Jehovah's Witness, stood on the sidewalk near the post office and began to distribute religious literature. The corporation had posted a notice in the stores that no solicitation of any kind would be permitted without written permission. Marsh was warned that she could not distribute literature without a permit and was told that none would be issued to her. She protested that the company rule could not constitutionally be applied to bar her religious writings. When asked to leave the sidewalk and Chickasaw, she declined, and the deputy sheriff arrested her.

Issues

1. Can a State, consistently with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, impose criminal punishment on a person who distributes religious literature on the premises of a company-owned town contrary to the wishes of the town's management?
2. Does a corporation's title to all the property in a town give it power, enforceable by a state criminal statute, to deny the people who live in or come to the town freedom of press and religion?

Holding

Alabama could not constitutionally punish Marsh for distributing religious literature on the sidewalk of Chickasaw, a company-owned town that functioned like any other town and was open to the public. The corporation's title to the property did not justify the restriction on freedom of press and religion.