Does the First Amendment apply to public-access cable?

By S.M. | NEW YORK

FREEDOM OF SPEECH, one of the five rights enshrined in the First Amendment, offers little solace to people silenced by private entities. If an arm of the government is suppressing your speech—on a street corner or in a school, say—you are protected. But a company, club or newspaper unaffiliated with the government has no obligation to let you speak; they can curate ideas within their walls or pages however they like. The line between spaces where free speech is a constitutional right and where it is not is to an extent clearly defined, but there are some venues where an otherwise private entity behaves like a state or acts as an agent of the government. One such arena posed a conundrum for the Supreme Court on February 25th, when the justices heard Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck.