Thornhill v. Alabama

Peititioner
Byron Thornhill
Respondent
State of Alabama
Petitioner's Claim
That an Alabama statute prohibiting all picketing, even peaceful labor demonstrations, violated his First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
Chief Lawyers for Petitioner
James J. Mayfield, Joseph A. Padway
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
William H. Loeb
Justices for the Court
Hugo Lafayette Black, William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, Charles Evans Hughes, Frank Murphy (writing for the Court), Stanley Forman Reed, Owen Josephus Roberts, Harlan Fiske Stone
Justices Dissenting
James Clark McReynolds
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
22 April 1940
Decision
The Supreme Court overturned the anti-picketing statute.
Significance
Thornhill was a recognition that President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal reforms, which included the National Labor Relations Act, had made picketing and other public demonstrations a part of the American landscape.
In 1935, in A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corporation v. United States, theSupreme Court struck down the National Industrial Relations Act, an important element in President Franklin Roosevelt's "First" New Deal program of economic and social reforms. Afterward, Roosevelt threatened to "pack" the Court with justices who would help him lift the country out of the Great Depressionby supporting his legislative proposals. The court-packing plan did not pass,but it coincided with an about-face in the Court's attitude towards the NewDeal.
Nowhere is the Court's re-orientation more apparent than in the area of laborrelations. In 1937, with National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., the Court upheld the legitimacy of the National LaborRelations Act (NLRA), the successor to the National Industrial Relations Act. Throughout the 1930s, the Court continued to uphold laws favoring organizedlabor. Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization (1939) marked the first time the Supreme Court used the First Amendment to prevent the states from interfering with labor's attempts to organize local workers. Thornhill extended organized labor's First Amendment protections to include picketing.
Byron Thornhill was an employee of the Brown Wood Preserving Company of Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. During a strike by a local affiliate of the American Federation of Labor, Thornhill was arrested for picketing in front of the Brown Wood plant. He was charged with violating a state statute outlawing all forms of picketing. After his conviction was upheld on appeal, Thornhill petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for review of his case.
Court Upholds Labor Pickets as Exercise of Freedom of Speech
Justice Murphy, who wrote the opinion of the Court, knew a great deal about strikes. Before coming to sit on the high bench, he had served as governor ofMichigan, where his refusal to call in troops to deal with a sit-down strikeby automotive workers cost him re-election. In Thornhill, he left little doubt about his support for organized labor:

In the circumstances of our times the dissemination of information concerning the facts of a labor dispute must be regarded as within that area of free discussion that is guaranteed by the Constitution . . . Labor relations are not matters of mere local or private concern. Free discussion concerning the conditions in industry and the causes of labor disputes appears to us indispensable to the effective and intelligent use of the processes of popular government to shape the destiny of modern industrial society.

For Murphy and seven other members of the Court, picketing was not only an exercise of freedom of expression, it also performed an educational function. The public's right to know about the state of industrial relations was as important as the picketers' right to express their dissatisfaction with their employers. The Alabama statute, which outlawed all picketing, was simply too broad to be constitutional. The Court struck it down and reversed Thornhill's conviction.
All the same, Thornhill did not endorse all aspects of picketing. States remained free to impose conditions on labor demonstrations in order to preserve the peace and privacy of its citizens. In later years, the Court wouldin fact cite Thornhill as authority for limiting labor activism that threatened economic production. In the 1940s, the Court came to emphasize thepublic interest in granting organized labor constitutional protections, rather than the workers' own fundamental rights. The logical result of this reasoning came into focus with American Communications Association v. Douds(1950), in which the Court used the NLRA's mission of protecting the free flow of commerce to uphold legislation intended to rid labor of communist sympathizers.
Related Cases

• Stromberg v. California, 283 U.S. 359 (1931).
  
• Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931).
  
• A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935).
  
• DeJonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353 (1937).
  
• National Labor Relations Board v. Jones and Laughlin Steel Corp.,301 U.S. 1 (1937).
  
• Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organizations, 307 U.S. 496 (1939).
  
• American Communications Association v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382 (1950).