AFLC Sues Pennsylvania Transportation Authority for
Censoring Speech
September 18,
2014
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Today, the
American Freedom Law Center (AFLC) filed a federal civil rights
lawsuit against the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority
(SEPTA) for refusing to run a “Stop the Islamic Jew-Hatred” advertisement
on SEPTA property. The lawsuit was filed in the United States
District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on behalf of the
advertisement’s sponsors, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI)
and its co-founders, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer.
In May, AFDI submitted the below advertisement to SEPTA’s advertising agent
for display on SEPTA property:
As noted in the lawsuit, AFDI’s message is timely in light of the fact that
many Jews (and Christians) are being persecuted in Islamic countries in the
Middle East, and many of these countries receive aid from the United
States. Moreover, the Israel / Palestinian conflict has drawn intense
international media attention as Hamas is using human shields (mostly innocent
women and children) to protect its rockets from Israel’s defense forces as
the Islamic terrorist organization continues its deadly attack of Jews in
Israel.
Although SEPTA accepts as a matter of policy and practice controversial
political-issue, public-issue, and religious-issue advertisements, it
rejected AFDI’s advertisement, claiming that the ad “tends to disparage or
ridicule any person or group of persons on the basis of race, religious
belief, age, sex, alienage, national origin, sickness or disability.”
David Yerushalmi, AFLC Co-Founder and Senior Counsel, commented, “Across
the country, we have successfully litigated cases where government transit
authorities permit the Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas front groups like the
Council on American-Islamic Relations to run ads misleading the public
about Jihad and Islamic Jew hatred. When our clients run ads exposing
this Jew hatred, all of a sudden the transit authorities are worried about
the ‘tone’ of the conversation and attempt to shut it down. A word of
advice to government bureaucrats doing the Muslim Brotherhood’s bidding: we
will sue you and you will lose. Act accordingly.”
Robert Muise, AFLC Co-Founder and Senior Counsel, added, “SEPTA’s prior
restraint on our client’s speech is not only wrongheaded, it is clearly
unconstitutional. Under the First Amendment, the government is not
permitted to impose special prohibitions on speakers who express views on
disfavored subjects or on the basis of hostility towards the messenger or
the underlying message expressed, which is precisely what SEPTA has done
here.”
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