Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization, 307 US 496 - Supreme Court 1939

Wherever the title of streets and parks may rest, they have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public and, time out of mind, have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions.

I suppose there is no doubt, and if there is this Court can dispel it, that a citizen or a class of citizens unlawfully excluded from jury service could maintain in a federal court an individual or a class action for an injunction or mandamus against the state officers responsible.

The Hague plurality recognized that while a citizen's right of access to the streets and parks is not absolute, it must not be abridged or denied in the guise of regulation.

—right ultimately rests on the principle that "one who is rightfully on a street which the state has left open to the public carries with him there as elsewhere the constitutional right to express his views in an orderly fashion."

This Court, however, has already given that decision a narrow reading, stating that the case "held as a matter of pleading that the particular cause of action set up in the plaintiff's pleading was in contract and was not to redress deprivation of the `right secured to him by that clause of the Constitution'[the contract clause], to which he had `chosen not to resort. "'

—the Supreme Court found invalid a Jersey City ordinance which read in part as follows: "The Director of Public Safety is hereby authorized to refuse to issue said permit when, after investigation of all of the facts and circumstances pertinent to said application, he believes it to be proper to refuse the issuance thereof; provided, however, that said permit shall only be …

The privilege of a citizen of the United States to use the streets and parks for communication of views on national questions may be regulated in the interest of all; it is not absolute, but relative, and must be exercised in subordination to the general comfort and convenience, and in consonance with peace and good order; but it must not, in the guise of regulation, be …

The first category, the traditional public forum, consists of streets, sidewalks, and parks that, in Justice Roberts' frequently quoted words, "have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public... for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions."