Source: WSJ
By Joe Palazzolo
Does First Amendment protect our right to say what we want in advertisements on the side of a city bus?
Yes and no.
A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that a Michigan transit authority could bar from the side of its buses an advertisement that read: “Fatwa on your head? Is your family or community threatening you? Leaving Islam? Got Questions? Get Answers! RefugefromIslam.com”
The group behind the ads is the the American Freedom Defense Initiative, which describes its mission as acting “against the treason being committed by national, state, and local government officials, the mainstream media, and others in their capitulation to the global jihad and Islamic supremacism.”
The group had sought in 2010 to place the ads on the buses in Michigan’s four southeastern-most counties, but the authority refused, on the grounds that the ads violated a policy against political advertisements and offensive speech.
AFDI sued, claiming First Amendment violations, and won. A federal district judge ruled in March 2011 that the ad policy gave inadequate guidance on what was permissible. The court noted, for instance, that the authority had allowed an atheist group to advertise on the buses.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said Thursday said that the side of the bus, in this case, wasn’t a public forum because the transit authority – Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation, or SMART – rejected all political advertisements. The state never opened the space for discourse.
Once SMART established that the space on the buses was a nonpublic forum, it could ban political speech, as long as it did so in a “reasonable and viewpoint neutral” way. The Sixth Circuit held that it did. Read more.
Categories: Americas
Hate speech should not be allowed or it will destroy civility in the society.
Further reading:
Is hate speech a right?
A Critique of President Obama’s UN Speech
Shariah Law: Gods’ Law, Moral Law, the Natural Law or Man made Law?
The World Muslim Leader: ‘The Law about Freedom of Speech is not Heavenly Scripture or the Gospel Truth!’
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The presentation and working together of artistes of various genres
also enables creative artistes of this region to get to know
each other’s creations and opens up possibilities of working together in the future.
Had the commentators never told us about why player
transactions occur as we see it, it’s easy for us to assume that ‘he’s a traitor’ because
he played for the rivals, but in the present age where money talks, loyalty doesn’t mean as much
as it used to (we can’t say for certain that it means nothing though).
Director of Aladin, Sujoy Ghosh who has already started dropping a
line with his Aladin blog and now the official theatrical trailer of the movie is making hoopla.
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