Cite as: 518 U. S. 727 (1996)
Opinion of Thomas, J.
Brief for Petitioners Alliance for Community Media et al. in No. 95-227, p. 33. I disagree.
Cable systems are not public property.10 Cable systems are privately owned and privately managed, and petitioners point to no case in which we have held that government may designate private property as a public forum. The public forum doctrine is a rule governing claims of "a right of access to public property," Perry Ed. Assn., supra, at 44, and has never been thought to extend beyond property generally understood to belong to the government. See International Soc. for Krishna Consciousness, Inc. v. Lee, 505 U. S. 672, 681 (1992) (evidence of expressive activity at rail stations, bus stations, wharves, and Ellis Island was "irrelevant to public fora analysis, because sites such as bus and rail terminals traditionally have had private ownership" (emphasis in original)). See also id., at 678 (public forum is "government" or "public" property); Perry Ed. Assn., supra, at 45 (designated public forum "consists of public property").
Petitioners point to dictum in Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Defense & Ed. Fund, 473 U. S. 788, 801 (1985), that a public forum may consist of "private property dedicated to public use," but that statement has no applicability here. That statement properly refers to the common practice of formally dedicating land for streets and parks when subdividing real estate for developments. See 1A C. Antieau & J. Anti-eau, Antieau's Local Government Law § 9.05 (1991); 11A E. McQuillin, Law of Municipal Corporations § 33.03 (3d ed. 1991). Such dedications may or may not transfer title, but they at least create enforceable public easements in the dedicated land. 1A Antieau, supra, § 9.15; 11A McQuillin, supra,
10 See G. Shapiro, P. Kurland, & J. Mercurio, "CableSpeech": The Case for First Amendment Protection 119 (1983) ("Because cable systems are operated by private rather than governmental entities, cable television cannot be characterized as a public forum and, therefore, rights derived from the public forum doctrine cannot be asserted by those who wish to express themselves on cable systems").
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