Madison Square Garden's surveillance banned this fan over his T-shirt design

[flagged]

This is not a 1st amendment issue.

This is a late stage capitalism issue where too much power has been consolidated into the hands of too few, and so much as a single comment made publicly can blacklist you from participating in any cultural event for the rest of your life.

Think of how many radio stations, venues, internet channels etc have been bought up by megacorp.

We have all the bad parts of a Gibson cyberpunk dystopia and none of the flying cars or bio-enhancements.

> This is not a 1st amendment issue.

It absolutely is. Freedom of speech means free speakers. If you're going to face petty punishments for the rest of your days because your criticized the "wrong" people then you are not a free speaker.

If you're serious about a free society that means you have to cop criticism, disrespect, and even mockery, most especially and particularly if you're in a position of power.

The 1A protects citizens from the government. Presently the government is being systematically dismantled from the inside.

Madison Square Garden and its investors have the freedom to bar anyone they see fit on their own property. Their portfolios are only getting larger.

That’s late stage capitalism.

It can be both.

The intent of 1A is to protect the freedom of speech from those in power. The fact that non-government entities now wield the power to suppress speech doesn't change the fact that this is an infringement of free speech.

That’s not the interpretation of pretty much any court in the history of the United States.

In fact, the opposite is true: The government forcing private individuals or companies to tolerate speech on their premises or carry it in their media is considered compelled speech and as such a First Amendment violation itself.

Whether that’s still the best way of doing things is a different question, but that’s what the First Amendment is/does.

This is incorrect. An important case is Marsh vs Alabama. [1]

A person was distributing fliers in a 'company town.' Company towns were essentially privately owned 'towns' on privately owned property. They were told to stop and leave, they refused, and were arrested for trespass. The case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court where it was thrown out. Wiki has a pretty nice synopsis of the critical point:

---

The state had attempted to analogize the town's rights to the rights of homeowners to regulate the conduct of guests in their home. The Court rejected that contention by noting that ownership "does not always mean absolute dominion". The court pointed out that the more an owner opens his property up to the public in general, the more his rights are circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who are invited in.

---

That's unlikely to matter here but it's an important nuance to the 1st Amendment. It's also important for the future because it will, sooner or later, likely end up applying to social media companies who are doing everything they can frame themselves as a digital 'public square' for speech.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama