Target has a ban on any sort of petitioning or fund-raising activities in front of its stores, even in California, but G says that yesterday he went to the Target in Vallejo, CA and ran into a group of petitioners at the entrance (see photos).

I went shopping at the local Target in Vallejo, CA and found petitioners soliciting my signature for bringing big industry back or something or other. They segued the petition by asking me if I was a registered California voter and by my answer of yes, I was hit by a barrage of two different petitions to sign in addition to the big industry petition.

I mean, I’m all for grass roots movements and getting out the vote, but I kind of get annoyed and just want to do some shopping. I mean, at first I was peeved Target woud not allow Salvation Army bell ringers and the Girl Scouts in front of their stores but found it quite the hidden blessing when they did not allow petitioners.

G says he tried to speak to the manager to ask why this group was being allowed to petition shoppers, but he was told the manager was unavailable.

Update: If you followed the first link in the post above, you can see that Target is in a unique situation in California because of state laws and various court cases. Target’s official opinion is that recent cases justify its total ban on all petitioners on store property, but–as displayed by some commenters below–there are others who interpret the law otherwise and say Target can’t enforce a blanket ban in California.

Someone who claims to work in a security position at Target wrote in with this explanation. We can’t verify his position so take it with a grain of salt:

I work at Target for their security and I am familiar with the Vallejo target situation. They asked them to leave, but the group was very confrontational and refused to leave. The police were called but refused to do anything (lots of crazy public-but-private land rights laws/issues in that state). I do not know why the manager was “unavailable”; there should have been a few employees that could have explained the situation to him/her.

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