Pacific Gas & Electric Co. v. Public Utilities Commission of California et al. (475 U.S. 1)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided February 25, 1986 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 475 U.S. 1 · 106 S. Ct. 903
- Decided
- February 25, 1986
- Term
- October Term 1985
- Vote
- 5–3
- Majority author
- Justice Powell
- Issue area
- First Amendment
- Disposition
- Vacated and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
- Constitutional ruling
- State/territorial law held unconstitutional
Opinion excerpt
Justice Powell announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which The Chief Justice, Justice Brennan, and Justice O’Connor join. The question in this case is whether the California Public Utilities Commission may require a privately owned utility company to include in its billing envelopes speech of a third party with which the utility disagrees. I — I For the past 62 years, appellant Pacific Gas and Electric Company has distributed a newsletter in its monthly billing envelope. Appellant’s newsletter, called Progress, reaches over three million customers. It has included political editorials, feature stories on matters of public interest, tips on energy conservation, and straightforward information about utility services and bills. App. to Juris. Statement A-66, A-183 to A-190. In 1980, appellee Toward Utility Rate Normalization (TURN), an intervenor in a ratemaking proceeding before California’s Public Utilities Commission, another appellee, urged the Commission to forbid appellant to use the billing envelopes to distribute political editorials, on the ground that appellant’s customers should not bear the expense of appellant’s own political speech. Id., at A-2. The Commission decided that the envelope space that appellant had used to disseminate Progress is the property of the ratepayers. Id., at A-2 to A-3. This “extra space” was defined as “the space…
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