The dude
Can't actually make any arrest, he has no grounds to do so, and would lay himself open to charges of false imprisonment and common assault, but let's not detract from the fantasies of hormonally challenged14 year old 'atheists'.
Shopping mall mulls Supreme Court bid to back no-speaking ban
A California shopping mall may ask the State Supreme Court to defend its ban on its patrons speaking to one another except to ask where the toilet is. Judges on the 3rd District Court of Appeal last week ruled that the Westfield Galleria in Roseville's ban on a visitor "approaching patrons with whom he or she was not …
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Thursday 19th August 2010 09:51 GMT Intractable Potsherd
@AC 19th August 00:05
I don't know what legal system you are talking about, but it seems unlikely that your assertion is true. Consider the (seriously hypothetical) situation where you invite in, say, a plumber to fix a dripping tap. The plumber does this, but then, without your permission, sits down on your sofa, switches the telly on, and proceeds to watch something you don't want to watch. The plumber is no longer there for the activity he was invited in for, and it is now a trespass.
Incidentally, certainly in the UK, common trespass isn't a criminal offence - it is civil.
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Thursday 19th August 2010 08:35 GMT LateNightLarry
Mall == private property
In California, owners of properties like shopping malls may not prohibit solicitors such as religious, political (candidates, ballot measures, etc), or various causes (animal rights, etc.) from soliciting... The property owner can limit where they can set up operations (i.e., a fixed site with a table), and require that they not approach shoppers, but allow shoppers to express an interest by approaching the solicitor. Usually, the mall owner will limit the number and placement of tables, and require that the solicitor not block pedestrian traffic in any way. Most malls have a large open area, or several, where the solicitors set up their tables, and are ignored for the most part.
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Wednesday 18th August 2010 13:40 GMT David Edwards
If you think this through, its obvious
what this is about is the right of people to access a space and interact, BUT
Im fairly sure you'd expect that if someone wanted to do customer research, collect for charity, give our free samples of product x. They would need permission form the mall/store management ?
If you were at a mall/store and got stopped every 5 ft by someone doing research, collecting for charity, giving out free samples etc, you may complain to store management because you don't want to be harassed while shopping?
So really this is about limiting/managing people who go to the store/mall to interact with people but have no intention of shopping (possibly hence the term 3rd party access form).
Now as with every other area of stuff in life there are grey areas, e.g. a few school kids collecting info for homework etc, but thats life, you just expect people to deal with this in a sensible way. Maybe this guy was not being dealt with in a sensible way, but maybe he was popping out from behind things saying "hey id like to talk to you about god!" and being a jerk.
But what this isn't about, is two shoppers having a chat.
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Wednesday 18th August 2010 13:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
My flabber is well and truly gasted
I can't even begin to imagine the meeting where this mall law was thought up and everyone round the table said "yeah, that's a good idea."
And then for the mall manager to say (presumably with a straight face) that people have to fill out a form to be allowed to talk to other people in the mall...
This is the kind of thing you'd expect the Taliban to come up with, not residents of a supposedly free country like the USA.
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Thursday 19th August 2010 08:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
Aargh!
Can anyone here tell the difference between a private entity and the state?
Let me spell this out for you cretins:
1) The mall, a private entity, made the rule
2) The state, a public entity, has been petitioned to answer as to the validity of the private entity's actions
See how that works? The petitioner is hoping to find that the government will find that freedom of speech exists *more* broadly than generally understood to, not *less*, and the government had no involvement in, nor did it pursue, any harassment of the individual.
Is this actually that difficult to understand, or is it just hard for people to avoid self-righteously slandering the US because it's in vogue?
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Wednesday 18th August 2010 13:45 GMT Dave Mundt
Chatting at the Mall.
Greetings and Salutations.
I am not a lawyer (my parents raised me to be ethical and honorable). However, it appears that the Mall is so far in the wrong here that the best they can do is negotiate a settlement, and move on. According to the uncontested reports, the pastor was speaking with three young ladies about his Christian views AFTER he had asked their permission and received it. It was an employee of the Mall who was offended and precipitated the unlawful detention. Some of the important points here are that the employee had no standing in the conversation, as they were not a part of it. Then, there is no indication that the pastor was soliciting anything (Most retail stores here have "no soliciting" signs on the building, as they do not want the competition). Finally, the California Supreme Court has ruled that "that the free-speech and petition provisions of the California Constitution grant mall visitors a constitutional right to free speech that outweighs the private-property interests of mall owners"
Now, when the pastor was approached by security and refused to leave when asked, he may have stepped over a line...However, if his goal was to force the issue, this was a good way to go about it. However, again, the request should never have come up, because there is no sign that he was doing anything to disrupt the shopping experience of the other folks in the Mall.
So...Looks like the lawyers will be able to argue either side of this case, and, either way will get a new Mercedes out of the deal!
Regards
Dave Mundt
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Wednesday 18th August 2010 14:24 GMT max allan
Agreed, the only winners are lawyers
Once again, the lawyers win.
I think there used to be a time when laws were set up to protect the freedom/property/etc of individuals.
Now it seems that laws and policing are set up to perpetuate the huge amounts of money earnt by lawyers in either arguing about loopholes or arguing about idiotic/contradictory laws.
Now, if a government promised to sort that out, I'd vote for them.
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Wednesday 18th August 2010 13:45 GMT LuMan
Er....
Surely I'm not reading this right. Am I to believe that I can talk to a stranger in a shopping mall (or centre), but only if I have filled in a form?? Does my co-conversationer also need to have filled in a form? How will I know? Do we have to wear badges??
Sorry for the language, but this is fucking stupid!
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Wednesday 18th August 2010 13:45 GMT Jason Bloomberg
Huddled masses yearning to breathe free
This comment has been removed due to the commentator not seeking permission to comment four days in advance and giving no clear reason as to what they would be commenting on nor the form their comment would ultimately take. Abuse of the rules will not be tolerated and the police have been informed.
God Bless the United States of America.
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Wednesday 18th August 2010 13:45 GMT Whore Reamer
The point is...
... proselytising does annoy or upset a lot of people. Just because he found three people who were receptive doesn't mean that, in doing so, he didn't piss off a bunch of others. Religion has its place and if people are twatty enough to need it then they know where to find it. They should string this fucker up as an example. He could have started a riot.
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Thursday 19th August 2010 00:05 GMT Geoffrey W
Yeah,,,
<QUOTE>Just because he found three people who were receptive doesn't mean that, in doing so, he didn't piss off a bunch of others.</QUOTE>
And it also doesn't mean that a martian passing by in a flying saucer didn't collide with a tree whilst rubbernecking to hear what he was saying, either. But until you find those hypothetical OTHERS, or the Martian, then they may as well not exist, and your hypothetical riot and lynching solution is as much of this world as are your thought processes.
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Thursday 19th August 2010 09:12 GMT Ole Juul
Re: The point
Yes, proselytising can be a nuisance but who is to agree on which kind to ban? Personally sports fans irritate me. I'm also particularly pissed off by salesmen. However, as an adult I am able to put up with all these different kinds of religious fanatics. We have to be tolerant of each other. However, those who believe in "stringing" people up do push the limits of my tolerance a little. :)
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Wednesday 18th August 2010 14:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
Mighty opinions out of little ignorances grow
It is well-settled case law in the U.S. (and particularly in California) that shopping malls are public places and visitors may freely express opinions and engage in unsolicated conversations with other visitors. Westfield management knew the laws, but appear to have decided to flagrantly violate them. In the U.S., one of the few useful correctives for such lawbreaking is to relieve the scofflaw of piles of cash. Hence the lawsuit. In the U.S., punching a "god botherer" in the mouth in the ujnblinking gaze of multiple security cameras will result in a long stretch in either jail or prison in the company of men or women who will teach the would-be etiquette enforcer a whole new set of social rules, starting with "bend over."
So, all of the comments about trespass and useful yobs and the like are both ignorant and disturbing. People who recoil from the prospect of other people exercising freedom of speech can't reasonably complain when their own freedom of speech is taken away.
And as to this juvenile business of mocking religious people as "god botherers": I feel sorry for you. You are likely so busy making money, buying trinkets, and otherwise filling your lives with empty pleasures that you have no sense of the spiritual aspects of your existence, let alone the capacity to repond to them. This condition is, I think, the worst disability a human can suffer.
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Thursday 19th August 2010 00:04 GMT John H Woods
I'm not mocking your religious beliefs ....
... but it's amazing how many 'upright citizens' seem to be so glib about the possibility of a convicted offender being sexually assaulted in prison - you present it almost as if you consider it part and parcel of the punishment, as if it were officially sanctioned.
From simple induction, I conclude that the rest of your beliefs and opinions are likely to be, shall we say, uninformative.
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Thursday 19th August 2010 08:15 GMT Geoffrey W
Oh...
I was with you up to the bit where you started to feel sorry for me and called me disabled because I have no truck with any religion.
It seems to me that religion and spirituality very rarely go hand in hand, or mean the same thing. During my church going days I very rarely encountered any spiritual people in the congregation; or if they were spiritual then they hid it very deeply indeed. Not that I didn't like them but many had no apparent feeling for anything that wasn't in some other remote and invisible part of the world. Anything close by which they could smell or hear then it was just disgusting and there aught to be laws. I live in the woods on the side of a mountain and there is something very uplifting and spiritual about climbing the ridge behind my home as the sun comes up and feeling it on my face, and it has nothing to do with any church or religious organisation. Spirituality to me means seeing and feeling and appreciating the beautiful and the numinous in the world as we experience it, including all those things that religions like to proscribe such as sex and having fun, and not wishing for, or attempting to enforce, some fictional reality that will never be in human existence.
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Wednesday 18th August 2010 14:53 GMT John Tserkezis
Legal yes, Stupid, also yes.
On your property you can make up any rules (policies) you like as long as they don't contravene established state, federal, international, whatever etc laws.
A shopping centre here in Australia a couple of years ago created a policy that you're not allowed to wear thongs (the australian rubber footwear flipflop type thongs), while using the escalators (the moving stairway thingies).
They had legal right to ask and/or force you to leave if you insisted on using the escalators with thongs.
We speculated they only did that to satisfy a discount on their legal liability premiums in case someone's loose footware was to jam within the jaws of death and lose a foot...
They were very much within legal rights to do that. They were also very stupid to try it too.
It lasted barely a month.
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Wednesday 18th August 2010 16:02 GMT Marcus Aurelius
US appears to be different
It seems that US law has decided that certain types of "private" property are not private in respect of Free Speech rights, as they are to a certain extent public areas.
The Right to Free Speech can be limited (e.g. yelling Fire for no reason in a crowded theatre can be an offence) but only if it is absolutely necessary to do so.
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Wednesday 18th August 2010 15:53 GMT BristolBachelor
Permission to talk form
I hereby request permission to talk to people in your mall.
Name: A. Person
Persons(s): Cuties between 20-28.
Topics for discussion: How cute they look. What they are doing in a place like this. If they would like a drink...
Are you selling / giving anything away?: My wild oats
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Wednesday 18th August 2010 15:58 GMT Gene Cash
This is actually awesome
As someone in the Baptist South who gets harassed all the time by jesus nutjobs, I wish all the local malls would emulate this. I've had one old man spit at me because I was carrying a helmet and my "motorcycle is a tool of satan"
I've had women in business suits standing at the local grocery store, handing out business cards. I thought she was a realtor, so I took one, only to discover it was for a local church. I told her "I'm sorry! I thought you were a hooker!"
I had a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses wait for me at my bike so that he could ask me if I knew the Lord, as motorcycling was a dangerous hobby in which to partake. I said "you joined a religion which forbids blood transfusions... you're a fine one to talk!"
That's the sort of freakazoids we get.
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Thursday 19th August 2010 00:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
While I agree in principle..
>>you joined a religion which forbids blood transfusions... you're a fine one to talk!
Even though there are so many checks on blood; it is a known fact that donated blood damages the immune system. In fact, in BMC Medicine, it was published that in a control group of 25000, twice as many suffered postoperative infections as did those who didn’t receive a transfusion.
Then you look at the regulations of blood usage. Within the country, strict controls regulate how it is received, tested, screened and stored. But your hospital will (and often does) accept blood from other countries, who don't have the same screening practices.
You don't even need full blood! Calledleukoreduction, the removal of white blood cells from donated blood; can be used along with medical filler products with extreme safety. This reduces known risks oftaking full blood on it's own (yes, there are known risks) by lowering immuno problems.
I agree with your point about them peeps, but get your facts right first.
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Thursday 19th August 2010 08:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
Perhaps
if they weren't the most authoritarian, freedom hating bunch of rogues ever to assemble together, people wouldn't feel the need to slag them off?
What's the problem with the new government anyway? Have they asked you to actually ***GASP*** ***SHOCK*** ***HORROR*** get a job ?!??!?!?!?!?!?!
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Thursday 19th August 2010 09:14 GMT Tigra 07
I can spell Labour however i like...
Yes it is spelt like that lol, didn't notice that
Grow up Martin and get a sense of humor!
If people like you can't see anything wrong with what Labour, sorry Liebour did in 13 years then you are very deluded and out of touch with everyone else who voted for change.
It's people like you who vote for Liebour just because you're a lifelong fan and hold back progress.
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Thursday 19th August 2010 12:00 GMT EvilGav 1
And ??
I live in Scotland (though I am English) and still heard, during the last election, that many people could never vote Conservative because of Margaret Thatcher.
She hasn't been at the head of the party for 2 decades and hasn't been a politician for almost as long, but that was still the reasoning behind the decision.
Therefore I think it's entirely right and proper to be allowed to slag off a party that only lost power this year and held it for the previous 13 years.
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Thursday 19th August 2010 17:47 GMT Tigra 07
RE: EvilGav 1
You will notice from history that the conservatives have always left the country richer when leaving office, whearas Labour have usually left it poorer.
Labour tax everything and lie about everything, wasting their time slagging off other mps, rather than take constructive criticism and use it to help the country.
They are a disgrace to the country and serve only to fill their pockets and stuff everyone else
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Wednesday 18th August 2010 18:03 GMT Bluenose
Free Speech, now Paid Speech....
would probably be allowed. Wonder if you have to pay to fill in the 3rd party form?
It is also interesting to note that if someone shouted out support the Patriots (an American football team worshipped by some Americans :) ) they would also have to fill in a form so the issue here appears to be that any form of communication that does not revolve around, "get in to American Eagle there's 50% off or other such commercial speak) is banned by this company. Now that is a step to far.
Imagine standing outside the Houses of Parliament and only being able to talk about politics or going to work and only being allowed to discuss work. Where would our discussions of the weather, football, the opposite sex, etc be held. Pubs could ban us discussing such things and force us only talk about the quality (or more likely lack of it) of their beers and wines.
I think therefore that I stand in support of this bloke who like most scientists was simply propounding standing in support of his own unproven theorie relating to the origins and laws of this universe and possibly others. Wonder if Richard Dawkins has managed to prove his theory of the genetic meme yet??
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Wednesday 18th August 2010 20:39 GMT Graham Bartlett
@AC
I pity you. I have the ability to figure out morality from one base principle: a holy man who said: "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another".
I don't need a book which consists of God getting his followers to do immoral things (the entire Old Testament), which Christ explicitly said should be irrelevant to his followers; nor the clearly-fictionalised parts of what Christ did (easy to find by comparing the Gospels); nor various letters from people who never met Christ slagging off other Christ-followers and replacing Christ's teachings with their own bigoted views (all of the rest of the New Testament). Start from the start, and everything else follows. You could do that too, but you've chosen to abdicate reasoning to a money-making organisation where members of the organisation's hierarchy are not accountable to the people they claim to govern, and are able to freely abuse that position of responsibility. Nice one.
I'd say I'm a fundamentalist Christian in that I believe in the fundamental teachings of Christ. As such, I believe that every organised church - without exception - is heretical to Christianity. Go to church on Sunday if you like, or spout Old Testament nonsense about gays, or repeat Paul's bigoted views of women, but if you do then you're in direct violation of Christ's own ideas on the subject.
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Wednesday 18th August 2010 20:43 GMT Ron Eve
surely
It's to do with the prevention of unauthorised persons/organisations from effectively setting up shop within a commercial property i.e. the mall. The tabloid (if that's what it is) is subverting the actuality.
Quite right too (the prevention, that is).
They haven't paid any rent to the owners for the space they're occupying and they're likely to seriously piss off paying customers with their proselytising about imaginary beings. I mean how would you like to walk into <name of supermarket here> for your weekly supply of toilet paper and be confronted by someone trying to force your to do 'Personality Tests', as formulated by a late science fiction writer?
Thought not.
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Wednesday 18th August 2010 20:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Private property
Just a clarification. A mall, while privatly owned, is not a "private" property, in the sence that is it a public place. The difference can be summed thus.
Your house, I can't come in without being invited. A mall is open to everyone, without restrictions. You could, for example, decide you do not like black people for some reason and forbid them from entering your property. While this makes you a racist bigot, it is not, strictly speaking, illegal. (You can prevent whoever you want from getting on your property), where the shopping center isn't allowed to have such a rule.
Another clarification. While you are quite right that you cannot force someone to listen to you in a public place, they are still allowed to come to you and ask if you'd like to talk to them. From the article, the ladies did not mind at all talking about God (or whatever) with the man, so it isn't ask if he was arrasing them (that would be illegal). As such, the staff did not protect anyone who was being arrased and basically barged in to the "private" conversation of people speaking in a public place. That is unlawful.
now let's see everyone point out how wrong I am.
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
