Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/687

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Cite as: 502 U. S. 527 (1992)

529

Opinion of the Court

Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the Court. This case requires us to clarify the relationship between the rights of employees under § 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA or Act), 49 Stat. 452, as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 157, and the property rights of their employers. I This case stems from the efforts of Local 919 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, AFL–CIO, to organize employees at a retail store in Newington, Connecticut, owned and operated by petitioner Lechmere, Inc. The store is located in the Lechmere Shopping Plaza, which occupies a roughly rectangular tract measuring approximately 880 feet from north to south and 740 feet from east to west. Lechmere’s store is situated at the Plaza’s south end, with the main parking lot to its north. A strip of 13 smaller “satellite stores” not owned by Lechmere runs along the west side of the Plaza, facing the parking lot. To the Plaza’s east (where the main entrance is located) runs the Berlin Turnpike, a four-lane divided highway. The parking lot, however, does not abut the Turnpike; they are separated by a 46-foot-wide grassy strip, broken only by the Plaza’s entrance. The parking lot is owned jointly by Lechmere and the developer of the satellite stores. The grassy strip is public property (except for a 4-foot-wide band adjoining the parking lot, which belongs to Lechmere). The union began its campaign to organize the store’s 200 employees, none of whom was represented by a union, in June 1987. After a full-page advertisement in a local newspaper drew little response, nonemployee union organizers entered Lechmere’s parking lot and began placing handbills on the windshields of cars parked in a corner of the lot used mostly by employees. Lechmere’s manager immediately and Congress of Industrial Organizations et al. as amici curiae urging affirmance.