Marsh v. Alabama

Marsh v. Alabama
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued December 7, 1945 Decided January 7, 1946
Full case name	Marsh v. State of Alabama
Citations	326 U.S. 501 (more) 66 S. Ct. 276; 90 L. Ed. 265
Case history
Prior	Defendant found guilty in Alabama Circuit Court; Alabama Court of Appeals affirmed; Alabama Supreme Court denied certiorari
Subsequent	Reversed and Remanded
Holding
Constitutional protections of free speech under First and Fourteenth Amendments still apply within the confines of a town owned by a private entity.
Court membership
Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone Associate Justices Hugo Black · Stanley F. Reed Felix Frankfurter · William O. Douglas Frank Murphy · Robert H. Jackson Wiley B. Rutledge · Harold H. Burton
Case opinions
Majority	Black, joined by Douglas, Murphy, Rutledge; Frankfurter (in part)
Concurrence	Frankfurter
Dissent	Reed, joined by Stone, Burton
Jackson took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
U.S. Const., amend. I, amend. XIV

Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 (1946), was a case decided by the US Supreme Court, which ruled that a state trespassing statute could not be used to prevent the distribution of religious materials on a town's sidewalk even though the sidewalk was part of a privately-owned company town. The Court based its ruling on the provisions of the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment.