Watchtower Bible & Tract Society, Inc. v. Metropolitan Life Insurance

Defendant, as a private proprietor, owns in the borough of The Bronx in New York City, a residential community called Parkchester, which is said to be the largest of its kind in the world, covering 129 acres and housing 12,000 family units made up of some 35,000 people, in 171 adjoining and “ interrelated ” apartment houses. These buildings are seven to twelve stories high. Through Parkchester run two public highways and in it are a number of private streets, lanes and parks, as well as shops, offices, and automobile service stations, the latter operated by tenants of defendant. All of the apart

Plaintiff Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, Inc., is the incorporated governing body of a religious group known as Jehovah’s Witnesses, the ministers of which group make it their practice, besides handing out leaflets on the streets, to go from door to door distributing literature, and, who, by oral persuasions, or by the use of portable phonographs, seek thus to interest people in the religious beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The individual plaintiffs are three of such ministers. This suit was brought to have it adjudged that defendant’s regulation, quoted above, infringes the constitutional rights of

It was established by proof on the trial, and found by the Trial Justice, that teams of Jehovah’s Witnesses made sporadic visits to these apartment buildings from 1941 to 1944, and that, beginning in the latter year, the visits took place weekly, or several times a month. Some tenants seem to have accepted the literature willingly, but a number of others made, complaints to defendant, which instructed its guards to prevent the Witnesses from going into or through the buildings. Iti March, 1946, defendant sent to each of its tenants a questionnaire calling for an answer as to whether that tenant wished to be visited by Jehovah’s Witnesses. Tip to the time of commencement of this action about 8,000 replies had come in, and during the pendency of the cause 3,400 more were filed. Of all the tenants who answered, about 11,000 said they did not want the visits continued, and only about thirty said ‘1 yes ’ ’. Defendant submitted all this data to plaintiffs and offered to allow" a continuation of the Witnesses’ visits to the thirty tenants who desired them. After the present lawsuit had been started, a large group of Jehovah’s Witnesses, more than 700 in all, came to Parkchester and insisted on going, through the interior passageways of the buildings, to every apartment to present each tenant with a letter signed by the corporate plaintiff, in which was contained a request that the tenant certify to defendant that he did not object to the visits. Of the approximately. 8,000 persons thus summoned to their doorways in the apartment houses, a good many complained to defendant’s “ Protective Division ”, and a few testified on the trial as to the persistency of the demands and the inconvenience suffered by the tenants. More than 1,700 signatures were gotten by plaintiffs, about 1,500 being signatures of tenants. Some of those who thus signed testified at the. trial that they had done so out of courtesy only, or to be free of the importunities of the callers.

On the facts above summarized, the Trial Justice held that defendant’s. regulation was reasonable and valid and not in violation of any rights of plaintiffs, pointing out that no case

Though we are in full agreement with the holdings of the Trial Justice as expressed in his written decision, we write this opinion to make further comment on certain United States Supreme Court decisions, pressed on us by appellants, and a decision of our own, which is of some pertinence.

In May, 1943, the Supreme Court decided Martin v. Struthers ( 319 U. S. 141 ). That decision struck down as invalid a municipal ordinance which absolutely forbade any person to knock on a door, ring a doorbell or otherwise summon to the door the occupants of any dwelling for the purpose of distributing to those occupants any handbills or circulars (regardless of the householder’s wishes). Appellant Martin, a Jehovah’s Witness, was convicted and fined for violating the ordinance in that she had knocked at a Struthersville door for the purpose of handing out an invitation or leaflet advertising a religious meeting of her faith. The Supreme Court held that this prohibitory ordinance, so applied, violated the constitutional rights,

People v. Bohnke (supra, p. 157 ) aErmed the conviction of a member of plaintiff’s group, for violating a village ordinance which provided, among other things, that, without the consent of the occupant, no person should enter upon private residential property for the purpose u of distributing any handbill, pamphlet, tract, notice or advertising matter ’’, there being an express exception in favor of those who had resided or maintained a business place in the village for six months. Bohnke, an authorized minister-of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ religion, circulated religious pamphlets from door to door in the village, without previous consent by any householder. We held the ordinance valid, with this comment (pp. 158-159): “ It does not prohibit pamphleteering. It regulates pamphlet distribution in private, not public, places, and gives no public oEcer any power of censoring the pamphlets or licensing, or refusing to license, their distribution. (See Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U. S. 569 , 574; People v. Kuc, 272 N. Y. 72 , 74; Town of Green River v. Fuller Brush Co., 65 Fed. Rep. [2d] 112.) It does not infringe any of appellants’ rights to the free exercise of their religion since it merely regulates their entry onto private property for the purpose of promoting their religious beliefs. It does leave to the pleasure of the individual householder the determination of whether or not pamphlets may be circulated on that householder’s premises, but this infringes no right of appellants, since the Constitution does not guarantee them any right to go freely onto private property for such purposes.”

Tucker v. Texas (supra) was a companion case to Marsh v. Alabama (supra), differing only in the circumstance that Hondo Navigation Village in Texas, was owned in its entirety, not by a business corporation, but the United States of America. “ According to all indications ”, the Supreme Court remarked, “ the village was freely accessible and open to the public and had the characteristics of a typical American town.” (Pp. 518-519.) The Federal Public Housing Authority’s manager in charge of the place had “ ordered appellant to discontinue all religious activities in the village ” and on appellant’s refusal, he was arrested, tried and convicted under a section of the Texas Penal Code which makes it an offense for any “ peddler or hawker of goods or merchandise ” willfully to refuse to leave premises after having been notified to do so by the owner or possessor thereof — a so-called “ trespass after warning ” statute. While not specifically so stated in the opinion, it seems clear that Tucker’s preaching and leaflet distribution was in the streets or sidewalks of the village, or from door to door, and not inside any residential building.

Both the Marsh and the Tucker cases (supra) seem to rest on the doctrine so clearly stated in Hague v. C.I.O. ( 307 U. S. 496 , at p. 515): “ Wherever the title of streets and parks may rest,

Our purpose in thus briefly analyzing those decisions is to show that they do not (nor do any others of which we know) go nearly so far as appellants would have us go here. Parkehester, like Chickasaw, Alabama, and the Federal housing community in Texas, is privately owned, but there the similarity as to facts ends. It is undisputed that this defendant has never sought in any way to limit the Witnesses’ activities on the streets or sidewalks of Parkchester, some of which are privately, and some publicly, owned. The distribution which this defendant’s regulation inhibits was not on streets, sidewalks or other public or quasi-public places, but inside of, and into, the several floors and inner hallways of multiple dwellings. Moreover, defendant’s regulation did not absolutely debar these ministers from their visits in the buildings and their persuasions therein, since it allowed them, whenever a tenant so desired, and expressed his desire. We think the Bohnke case (supra) is still the law and leaves valid the regulation of door-to-door calls along public streets. But, regardless of the Bohnke ruling, no case we know of extends the reach of the Bill of Bights so far as to proscribe the reasonable regulation, by an owner, of conduct inside his multiple dwelling. So holding, we need not examine the larger question of whether the pertinent clauses of the Constitutions have anything to do with rules made by am: dwelling proprietors, governing conduct inside their edifices.

Turning to another question, we hold that this sort of regulation, as here written and as applied to plaintiffs, was not unreasonable (see Brendlin v. Beers, 144 App. Div. 403 ). Neither Thousand Island Park Assn. v. Tucker ( 173 N. Y. 203 ) nor Federal Waste Paper Corp. v. Garment Center Capitol, Inc. ( 294 N. Y. 714 ) holds otherwise. Those cases dealt with wholly

The judgment should be affirmed, with costs.

• Loughran, Oh. J., Lewis, Conway, Thacher, Fuld and Dye, JJ., concur.

Judgment affirmed.