Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74 (1980), was a U.S. Supreme Court decision issued on June 9, 1980 which affirmed the decision of the California Supreme Court in a case that arose out of a free speech dispute between the Pruneyard Shopping Center in Campbell, California, and several local high school students (who wished to canvass signatures for a petition against United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379).

[1][2] The underlying dispute began in November 1975, when a group of high school students set up a table at the Pruneyard Shopping Center in Campbell, California to seek signatures from passersby for a petition they wished to send to the United Nations (UN) following the UN's condemnation of Zionism as "a form of racism and racial discrimination".

This distinction was significant because the U.S. Supreme Court had already held that under the federal First Amendment, there was no implied right of free speech within a private shopping center.

Footnote two of the decision quotes the relevant portions of the California Constitution, which states in Article 1, § 2 Every person may freely speak, write and publish his or her sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of this right.

In turn, many shopping centers have posted signs to explain that they do not endorse the views of people exercising their right to free speech, and that if patrons do not give them money, the speakers will go away.

[13] Shopping centers have regularly imposed restrictions on unwanted solicitors and appealed the resulting legal cases in the hope of convincing the California judiciary that Pruneyard should be overturned, or at least limited.

[13] Since Golden Gateway, decisions by the intermediate Courts of Appeal have generally limited the scope of the Pruneyard rule to the facts of the original case.

For example, starting in 1997, the parking lots of many Costco warehouse club stores in California became sites of conflict involving a large number of political activist groups who had gradually become aware of their rights under Pruneyard.

Miriam Vogel, a former Court of Appeal justice who argued for the shopping center tenant (Kroger subsidiary Ralphs), characterized the decision "a great victory for retailers as far as putting another nail in the Pruneyard coffin.

Pruneyard has been identified as possible case law in challenging the protections from liability of Internet service providers, like Facebook and Twitter, under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

[22] Nevertheless, Trump himself cited Pruneyard in Executive Order 13925, "Preventing Online Censorship", signed in May 2020, which seeks to modify the application of Section 230.