Now I'm curious what the historical precedent is for this. What happens (first-amendment-wise) when a company town has a literal private-property town square? Could the company control speech in "its" town square?
For that matter: what about malls? Or university campuses? Or public transit infrastructure provided by private government contractors? What are your free-speech rights when in one of these (privately-owned, public use) places?
I feel like a very extreme edge-case situation could be constructed to test the law here: incorporate a town; and then, as your first act as mayor, sell the whole of the town's incorporated territory to a private corporation. Have the corporation declare that anyone engaging in democratic actions on "its property" (e.g. holding a municipal election) is trespassing. Are you now the town's autocratic mayor-for-life, however-many people may move in?
This (almost) exact scenario played out in Marsh v. Alabama (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama). If the town is, for all intents and purposes, acting like a traditional town, and with the public having access to it, first amendment rights hold.
I remember reading that there's some precedent for those kinds of workarounds, and courts have ruled that, when you start looking like a government, then the First Amendment applies, and it came up when the Domino's Pizza owners tried to do exactly that, but I don't know where to look to substantiate that, though someone else might.
In the University of California system they set up "free speech zones" for protestors and activists. They're often complete surrounded by chain link fencing with one entrance/exit.
That's a way to avoid having to test the law, certainly. What happens if you don't do that, though—if you have a public-use area, and none of it is a "free-speech zone"?
> What happens (first-amendment-wise) when a company town has a literal private-property town square? Could the company control speech in "its" town square?
Thankfully, we don’t need to imagine what happens: the Disney Corporation has a modern company town (Celebration, FL)[0]; they control a pair of HOAs (one each for residential and non-residential owners). Lexin Capital manages the literal town square, and while I can’t find anything on the topic, I would imagine standard private property rights would apply to the land they own.
For that matter: what about malls? Or university campuses? Or public transit infrastructure provided by private government contractors? What are your free-speech rights when in one of these (privately-owned, public use) places?
I feel like a very extreme edge-case situation could be constructed to test the law here: incorporate a town; and then, as your first act as mayor, sell the whole of the town's incorporated territory to a private corporation. Have the corporation declare that anyone engaging in democratic actions on "its property" (e.g. holding a municipal election) is trespassing. Are you now the town's autocratic mayor-for-life, however-many people may move in?