Greer v. Spock

Spock and his companions did not take this refusal lying down. On 29 September 1972, they went to court for the right to engage in political activity on the base. They asked the court to enjoin the commander from interfering with their campaign. The district court did not agree, but the court of appeals did. That court issued an injunction, which allowed Spock to conduct a campaign rally at a Fort Dix parking lot on 4 November 1972. Later court decisions seemed to further affirm the public's right to make political speeches or to distribute leaflets in areas of the base open to the public.

The various commanders of Fort Dix were also unwilling to give in. They too appealed, and the case eventually went to the Supreme Court. There, the Court took the side of the commanders, affirming their right to decide what kind of political activity took place on their base.

To decide what kind of political activity can happen on a base, the Court had to define what kind of place a base was. If it was an ordinary public place, political activity there would be protected by the First Amendment, but as Justice Stewart wrote in the Court's majority opinion, the Court did not consider Fort Dix a public place:

Since under the Constitution it is the basic function of a military installation like Fort Dix to train soldiers, not to provide a public forum, and since, as a necessary concomitant to this basic function, a commanding officer has the historically unquestioned power to exclude civilians from the area of his command, any notion that federal military installations, like municipal streets and parks, have traditionally served as a place for free public assembly and communication of thoughts by private citizens is false, and therefore respondents had no generalized constitutional right to make political speeches or distribute leaflets at Fort Dix.