First Amendment and private property

As a follow-up to my post immediately below, we had about 20 folks show up on a gorgeous day yesterday to deliver letters to Representative Chet Edwards (D-TX-17). The letter writers, which were greater in number than we letter deliverers, voiced their objection to the war in Iraq and urged Edwards to work for the withdrawal of our troops from that country as soon as that could possibly be done. Some of the authors also thanked Edwards for his vote in favor of the congressional non-binding resolution that disapproved of Bush's plan to send more combat troops to Iraq.


22FEB07 - in front of Rep. Chet Edwards' College Station, TX office. Image by Ski

Chet Edwards was not in his office at the time of our visit there, but the sole and kindly staffer who was ensured us she wouldn't close the office for lunch (hers) until we all had delivered our letters. In addition to delivering our letters, one of the event's organizers was also thoughtful enough to bring Edwards a plate of home-baked cookies in thanks for his vote on the non-binding resolution.

So, although I wish 2,000 folks had shown up for this event, it never-the-less went as well as could be expected--until it was all over that is. That's when the cops showed up.

Seems that a branch manager of Bank of America, which has a branch office on the ground floor of the same commercial building housing Chet Edwards' office, had called the College Station police and complained about our group being on that property. Now mind you, that manager, nor any tenant of the building, nor the building owner, had asked us to leave the property at any time during our approximately 45-minute assembly there. We started meeting in the parking lot of that building at about 11:45, held a small rally (picture above and at The Eagle) at about noon that was filmed by local TV station KBTX, after which we all entered the building and went upstairs to Chet Edwards' office on the second floor, where one-by-one we turned in our letters--and the home-baked cookies. One of the organizers of this event was then interviewed on camera by KBTX right outside of Edwards' office. Some members of our group, including my better half Annie and me, started leaving the premises a tad before that interview was complete and the remainder of our group kind of straggled out piecemeal. As Annie and I pulled out of the parking lot I noticed that two police officers had come up and appeared to be talking to maybe five or six folks from our group who had stopped outside of the building's front door to chat a moment before going their separate ways. As I said earlier, by that time we had all been on this commercial property for about 45-minutes and no one had said squat to any of us with respect to moving our assembly off of it.

Having organized and/or participated in a fair share of union rallies and protests in the labor movement, I have experienced first-hand the tension between private property and First Amendment rights. Going into this rally I knew that at some point during our assembly we would probably be asked to remove ourselves from that private property. No big deal, had we been asked to leave we would have just moved ourselves 40-feet or so to the public sidewalk and held our rally there. At the end of the rally, we simply would have walked, as a group or not, right back onto that private property and entered the building to go upstairs to Edwards' office. In that scenario I don't know whether the property owner (had one been there) would have then tried to prevent our entering back onto the property, but if such an attempt would have been made, I for one would have refused to comply. And if necessary I would have gone to jail over that issue. Fortunately, though, we were not faced with that scenario because no one ever objected to our being on the property until, apparently, shortly before nearly everyone of us had left or was in the process of leaving. I can't imagine, however, that the legal system would ultimately condone an attempt by a commercial private property owner to prohibit constituents from peacefully accessing their congressional representative's public office housed on the private property. We weren't an unruly mob, we were non-threatening, we didn't block ingress or egress, and there were, embarrassingly, only 20 of us, of which some were a fair bit into their senior years. But, hey, this is Texas, remember, land of the "shoot first and think and ask questions later fagettabout asking questions later," and maybe property rights here trump all!

Anyway, as it worked out (the story of which was later relayed to our entire group from one of the rally's dawdlers "detained" by the police) the bank manager had no legal standing to order us off the property because the Bank of America doesn't own the building; they are just a tenant, no different in that respect than Representative Chet Edwards. Once the police determined that BofA didn't own the property, they allowed all the dawdlers to leave without citation, albeit not without a lecture/warning about trespassing and the consequences of such on the trespasser.

So, that leaves this question: Does a citizen in Texas have the right to enter onto commercial private property (that's open to the public for various public business) against the property owner's objection for the purpose of peacefully accessing the public office of their congressional representative? What's your take or answer?