Cite as: 518 U. S. 727 (1996)
Opinion of Thomas, J.
Similarly, assertion of government control over private property cannot justify designation of that property as a public forum. We have expressly stated that neither government ownership nor government control will guarantee public access to property. See Cornelius, supra, at 803; Postal Service v. Council of Greenburgh Civic Assns., 453 U. S. 114, 129 (1981). Government control over its own property or private property in which it has taken a cognizable property interest, like the theater in Southeastern Promotions, is consistent with designation of a public forum. But we have never even hinted that regulatory control, and particularly direct regulatory control over a private entity's First Amendment speech rights, could justify creation of a public forum. Properly construed, our cases have limited the government's ability to declare a public forum to property the government owns outright, or in which the government holds a significant property interest consistent with the communicative purpose of the forum to be designated.
Nor am I convinced that a formal transfer of a property interest in public access channels would suffice to permit a local franchising authority to designate those channels as a public forum. In no other public forum that we have recognized does a private entity, owner or not, have the obligation not only to permit another to speak, but to actually help produce and then transmit the message on that person's behalf. Cable operators regularly retain some level of managerial and operational control over their public access channels, subject only to the requirements of federal, state, and local law and the franchise agreement. In more traditional public forums, the government shoulders the burden of administering and enforcing the openness of the expressive forum, but it is frequently a private citizen, the operator, who shoulders that burden for public access channels. For instance,
ship of leased or public access programming); N. Y. Pub. Serv. Law § 229 (McKinney Supp. 1996) (same). At any rate, the Court has never recognized a public forum based on a property interest "taken" by regulatory restriction.
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