Have you been kicked out of a mall?
484
The Mall of America outside Minneapolis, Minnesota, is
the largest enclosed mall in the United States. It is also
the nation’s most popular tourist destination, visited by
42.5 million people in 2009.
This mall, like many others, was also once a popularhangout for young people. On Friday and Saturday
nights, as many as 10,000 teenagers would gather there.
But this practice ended in 1996, when the Mall of America
instituted a 6:00 PMweekend curfew for teenagers under
sixteen unless accompanied by an adult. Since then, hun-
dreds of malls have adopted similar curfews.
Teenagers, who in 2009 bought $170 billion in mer-
chandise, spend much of their free time in malls—over
fifty minutes a day on the average. Many resent the
curfews. “We just want to be able to hang out at the
mall,” complains Kimberly Flanagan, sixteen, of
Charlotte, North Carolina. Kary Ross, an attorney for
the American Civil Liberties Union, sides with the
teenagers: “We’re opposed to curfews that treat all
minors as if they’re criminals.”
Malls insist that as privately owned enterprises, they
are exempt from First Amendment protections, such as