In the wake of US President Donald Trump’s continued attack against "fake news," the ACLU thought it might be prudent to run an ad campaign reiterating the text of the First Amendment on DC’s subway cars.
The rejected ad read: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." The ACLU’s advertisement included translations of the First Amendment in Spanish and Arabic as well.
But the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) spurned the civil liberties group over concerns that the ads “intended to influence members of the public on which there are varying opinions,” or that the group’s marketing copy was motivated to “influence public policy.” Both would be banned under the agency’s policies.
The suit was filed on Wednesday. Plaintiffs listed include the ACLU itself, pro-Trump firebrand Milo Yiannopoulos’ Milo Worldwide LLC, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and health care provider Carafem, which sells abortion pills. All plaintiffs encountered similar difficulties in trying to run ads on Washington’s metro system.
"The abortion pill is, of course, both FDA-approved and accepted by the American Medical Association. We are a healthcare provider, not an advocacy group," said Carafem COO Melissa Grant in a release.
The ACLU explicated its contention with WMATA’s policies in a Wednesday blog post. "WMATA’s view is apparently that the litany of commercial advertisements it routinely displays involve no ‘issues on which there are varying opinions.’ Beyond the obvious Coke-or-Pepsi jokes, there’s a dark assumption in that rule: that we all buy commercial products thoughtlessly. Buy beer! (Don’t think about alcoholism.) Buy a mink coat! (Don’t think about the mink.)"
Notably, Milo Worldwide’s cause sticks out in this suit, seeing as his positions tend to embody values the ACLU "condemns,"the group elaborated in its blog post. But this was a case where principles trumped politics. "Our free speech rights rise and fall together — whether left, right, pro-choice, anti-choice, vegan, carnivore, or none of the above," the ACLU said.
The US Supreme Court upheld a federal circuit court decision on June 19, 2017, in Lee v. Tam, stipulating that it was illegal for the government to “silence or muddle the expression of disfavored viewpoints.” In other words, as the ACLU put it, “the government violates the First Amendment when it allows only 'happy-talk.'"
In Lee v. Tam, "Simon Tam, the lead singer of the rock group 'The Slants,' chose this moniker in order to ‘reclaim’ the term and drain its denigrating force as a derogatory term for the Asian persons … The Patent and Trademark Office denied the application" when Tam tried to obtain federal registration for The Slants, the court syllabus says.
"With a few narrow exceptions, a fundamental principle of the First Amendment is that the government may not punish or suppress speech based on disapproval of the ideas or perspectives the speech conveys," the justices held.
