Giboney v. Empire Storage and Ice Co.

In Giboney v. Empire Storage and Ice Co., 336 U.S. 490 (1949), a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a Missouri state court's injunction that prohibited a union from picketing the office of an ice distributor. The picketing had been retaliation for the ice distributor's continued sale of ice to non-union ice peddlers.

Justice Hugo Black, writing for the Court, held that "it has never been deemed an abridgment of freedom of speech or press to make a course of conduct illegal merely because the conduct was in part initiated, evidenced, or carried out by means of language, either spoken, written, or printed." Id. at 502.