Nixed rules for Palin’s MOA visit revive free-speech issues

Photo: René Sinn

News of now-abandoned plans for Sarah Palin’s Dec. 7 appearance at the Mall of America that would have banned non-English-language media and required reporters to call Palin “governor” rekindles questions about free speech rights at the mall.

“This is outrageous,” says Minneapolis attorney Steven P. Aggergaard, who wrote a William Mitchell Law Review article about a landmark 1999 Minnesota Supreme Court ruling that allowed limits on free speech at the mall.

“This is exactly the sort of concern raised by critics of the Mall of America case 10 years ago,” Aggergaard tells the Minnesota Independent.

In that case, activists tried to distribute animal-rights literature inside the mall in front of department store that sold furs. The state high court said the mall owners’ property rights trumped the activists’ free-speech rights.

The Mall of America had successfully “privatized Main Street,” in Aggergaard’s view. That’s the position courts have taken in a majority of states, he says.

“I doubt the folks who labored over the Constitution had any intention” to allow restrictions based on nationality or English-speaking ability, he says – or requirements on what words to use in addressing a public figure.

Still, Aggergaard says he is glad that “good sense won out in the end. The Mall of America saw the error of their ways.”