California Mall Sets Rules: No Hitting on Foxes or Dudes Without a Permit - Judge Nixes Plan

Want to Hit on a Hot Chick You Spot at the Mall? Get a Permit First!

An unidentified man is depicted trying to impress women at the mall by showing them the pelts of dead cats.


August 18, 2010

Want to make a move on that hot guy you saw coming out of the bookstore at the mall? The owners of the Westfield Galleria at Roseville, California, don't want anyone doing that in "their" mall.

So they established rules to enforce their no talking to strangers policy. Only problem is a state appellate court has starkly declared that the mall’s attempt to regulate conversation is unconstitutional. Well, who would have thought that?

The specific rule at issue prohibited a person in the center’s common areas from "approaching patrons with whom he or she was not previously acquainted for the purpose of communicating with them on a topic unrelated to the business interests" of the mall or its tenants. Wow! There goes that invitation to cop a clandestine "feel" behind the palm tree.

The court struck down the shopping mall rule.

The appellate court’s opinion dealt one way or another with possible conversations that the rules would prohibit:

Talking about the weather is a no-no, unless one is intuitive enough to observe how it may be affecting the size of the crowd at the mall. Teenagers who use the common areas for social gatherings, not necessarily limited to contemporaries they already know, are out of luck. Should someone stop you and ask directions to Sutter-Roseville Medical Center, you would be well advised to blow them off, lest your humanitarian instincts lead you astray. Better to let them bleed out.

The owners of the mall were invited to move it to Teheran, where they might put in a public stoning arena (no, not to smoke hashish) to stone to death couples who want to fornicate, or marry outside their clan.

When the mall owners were told to read the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution they responded that it was their private mall, bought and paid for by them,and they could allow or disallow any speech they wanted to on their own property. "This is America, where we have freedom of speech," they said.