The ACLU of Washington is taking its fight to protect free political speech on metro buses—specifically, advertisements that depict “Israeli War Crimes: Your Tax Dollars at Work”—to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Yesterday, the group filed a lawsuit appealing a U.S. District Court’s decision that found King County had reasonable cause to pull the political ads, purchased last December by the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign (SeaMAC), because the county, metro, and its riders faced a legitimate risk of service disruption caused by threats.
“If you want to see how tough Jews can be, then go ahead and run those despicable ads and we’ll see who has the last word on this,” reads one of hundreds of letters reportedly received by KC Metro, which helped inform the lower court’s decision. “If you run these ads, we will work together with our Jewish friends and others to shut Metro down.”
However, the ACLU argues that the county’s actions—accepting money and then canceling the ads after they proved controversial—amounted to censorship and violated SeaMAC’s First Amendment rights.
“In a free and democratic society, we cannot allow the government to suppress lawful speech,” Kathleen Taylor, ACLU of Washington executive director, said in a statement. “We should keep in mind that mild speech doesn’t need protection. It is when we are faced with controversial speech, speech that is upsetting to some people, that support of the First Amendment is most important.”
In December 2010, the nonprofit SeaMAC—which seeks to education the American public about the U.S. policies on the Israel-Palestinian conflict—bought 12 full-banner bus ads reading “Israeli War Crimes: Your Tax Dollars at Work” from KC Metro that they planned to run for two weeks. However, the county pulled the ads before they appeared on buses. In January, the ACLU of Washington filed suit on behalf of SeaMAC in U.S. District Court seeking a declaration that King County’s decision not to publish the ad violated the First Amendment and an order that the county publish the ad as originally promised. On October 7, the district court dismissed the lawsuit. The dismissal is now being appealed to the Ninth Circuit.
“We continue to believe that the county acted improperly in canceling the contract to run the ads,” said ACLU-WA legal director Sarah Dunne in a statement. “When government accepts paid ads to run on public buses, it cannot refuse to run an ad because it stirs controversy. The cancellation of SeaMAC’s ad amounted to censorship.”
Meanwhile, in the spring King County revised its Metro Bus ad policies to prohibit ads pertaining to issues of public debate.
@1 the government doesn’t have the authority to limit speech, irregardless of how controversial it is.
Welcome to the entry fee and price of freedom.
What about the Neo-Nazis at OS? You feel they have a right to put up ads on Metro buses but not to hang out at SCCC? I don’t get it….
@3 The First Amendment entitles racist pieces of shit to gargle their hate anywhere they choose. The idea that other people at SCCC would share a skinhead’s POV is another matter entirely.
Would riot gear-clad storm troopers be hurled against those who would shut down Metro? I wonder.
This is what is expected of the ACLU. If they don’t do it, nobody else will.
This will be the main reason why I wont vote for Dow for re-election. He caved in so quickly to threats of violence. In NY, they have similar ads and they got the same threats, even lawsuits, but it didnt phase the MTA.
Sorry@2 I just have to point this out seeing it is, perhaps, my biggest pet peeve in language: “irregardless” is a “word” whose most prominent descriptor in the Websters dictionary is that it was a mush-mash made-up combination of “irrespective” and “regardless” and is still thought of as a “nonsense” word.
What you meant to write was “Regardless.” Irregardless sounds like a Palinism and makes the person who wrote it look almost as silly. To me.
Sorry to do that- I just had to get that off my chest.
@2 oh! And in terms of your content? Completely agree.
@3 @4 they would probably have some grounds to sue. Would they win? I doubt it. It would almost certainly be a SCOTUS war. Government agencies run off different rules than private.
Assholes like skinheads, holocaust deniers and Westboro have the same speech rights we do.
@8 thanks and sorry for my abuse of language, as usual.
@4, Word….and so it begins. Now ads against Israel’s extreme right-wing foreign policy is Holocaust denial.
Yawn.
Thank you, @8. That’s a pet peeve of mine, too.
I have no comment on this issue, other than to note that it’s a safe bet that the Ninth Circuit will come up with the kookiest ruling humanly possible. They’re pretty reliable that way.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.
Had Metro allowed the ads, no one would have noticed them. After whatever number of days they ran, they would have vanished like all the other unnoticed bus ads.
SeaMAC was hoping for (more likely, counting on) this sort of vast overreaction to their attempt to buy a few ads. They got their wish for mega-attention due to the stupid choice by Metro … and they didn’t even have to pay for the ads.
@10
So have you ever actually SEEN bus ads by “assholes like skinheads, holocaust deniers and Westboro?”
Probably not. Because there’s no chance that the Metro would ever run such ads. So it’s either the threat of censorship or actual censorship that has kept this from happening. ie, “censorship” happens. All the time.
@16 Probably, but it doesn’t make it right. The First Amendment (to many of us) is the most sacred bit of the Constitution.
The problem is that Dow and Metro cooked up this “no dramatic ads” crap after these advertisements critical of Israeli policies got rejected. If the policy since day one had been no political or advocacy advertisements, no one would have batted an eye at this, since it would have been a carte blanche ban on all advocacy and political speech. I’m not 100% sure how I feel about the legality of that itself, but at least it would be uniform and equal. But do they really even ban all advocacy advertising now? If they don’t, they’re in trouble still.
tl;dr the government has no legal right to pick and choose between types of speech to protect or bar. Dow and the County did–for whatever reason, and the reason is ultimately irrelevant in my opinion–and now they’re in trouble.
But promoting Mormonism, which is promoting homophobia, “isn’t political.” We shouldn’t have to threaten fucking violence to get the same treatment for religious bigots as we do for humanitarians that want us to stop giving the Israeli government billions to murder Palestinians.
Yeah, so this is the policy, section 2.3.
This is the bit that (and I’m not a lawyer) feels problematic still:
http://i.imgur.com/I6Yh9.png <– screen capture
It sounds like it basically boils down to, “You can run your advertisement unless we think it will cause a problem”. I’m 99% sure that governments cannot control speech that way. If they said something like, “Only advertisements for commercial, non-political type programs or products are allowed,” that they’d be fine.
But if they ban these advertisements critical of Israel, can they ban those critical or Christianity? Critical of Muslims? What about VOTE FOR XYZ person advertisements? Are advertisements for Planned Parenthood out? What about anti-Planned Parenthood? Are advertisements for McDonalds OK? Some people have a big problem with the endemic culture of McDonalds contributing to obesity. Can they run an advertisement for BILLY BOB JONES, DDS? I just found that Billy Bob, while an excellent dentist, contributed $15,000 to anti-gay causes–or pro-gay causes. Can Mars Hill Church, which is anti-gay and anti-women, run any advertisements? How about some I’M A MORMON ads? Ads for Mel Gibson’s new film? We know how much he supports the Jews.
Government cannot pick and choose.
@4 “institutions still have the right to make choices about who they sell ad space to”
Metro sold them the ad space.
Go get em ACLU.
In the interim, I will continue my mission to tear down all the fraudulent ‘birthright USA’ advertisements inside the buses.
Right-wing radicals can advertise their abusive anti-women fraud clinics, but people can’t advocate against war crimes?
Fuck you, Metro.
“If you want to see how tough Jews can be,…”
Probably not as tough as Muslims, who recently firebombed the offices of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hébdo after it put Muhammed on its front page and named him “guest editor”.