PACIFIC GAS & ELECTRIC v. PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION OF CALIFORNIA

Legal Principle at Issue

Whether the California Public Utilities Commission violated the First Amendment free speech rights of Pacific Gas & Electric Company by requiring it to include third-party messages from a group opposing the company in its own billing envelopes.

Action

Vacated and remanded. Petitioning party received a favorable disposition.

Facts/Syllabus

The appellant, Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), has distributed a newsletter in its monthly billing statements for many years. The newsletter has included political editorials, feature stories on matters of public interest, tips on energy conservation, and information about utility services and bills. 

The appellee, Toward Utility Rate Normalization (TURN) urged the California Public Utilities Commission to forbid PG&E to use billing envelopes to distribute political editorials, on the ground that appellant's customers should not bear the expense of appellant's own political speech. The Commission decided that the envelope space that appellant had used to disseminate the newsletter was the ratepayers' property, defining this "extra space" as the space left over after including the bill and required notices. In an effort to apportion this "extra space" between appellant and its customers, the Commission permitted TURN to use the "extra space" four times a year to raise funds and to communicate with ratepayers with no limitation except to state that its messages were not those of appellant. 

Arguing that it had a First Amendment right not to help spread a message with which it disagrees, PG&E appealed the Commission's order to the California Supreme Court, which denied discretionary review.