|
New York, NY — Today, the American
Freedom Law Center (AFLC), a national, nonprofit Judeo-Christian law firm,
filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against New York City’s Metropolitan
Transportation Authority (MTA) for refusing to run a “Hamas Killing Jews”
advertisement on MTA buses. The lawsuit was filed in the United
States District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of
the advertisement’s sponsors, the American Freedom Defense Initiative
(AFDI) and its co-founders, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer.
Last week, the MTA was under fire by public officials for running Ms.
Geller’s displays critical of Islamic Jihad, and on Monday of this week,
Ms. Geller compassionately acquiesced to a plea from the parents of James
Foley to pull an advertisement depicting their son moments before his
beheading.
Today, however, Ms. Geller instructed her attorneys from AFLC to file a
federal lawsuit, challenging the MTA’s refusal to run the following ad:
As noted in the lawsuit, the MTA’s rejection was based upon a “security
assessment” by the MTA, claiming that it feared that some New Yorkers
(presumably Muslims) would likely take the Hamas quote to kill Jews as a
religious instruction and engage in imminent violence (presumably against
Jews).
Ms. Geller’s message is timely in light of the fact that Hamas continues to
call for Israel’s destruction. Moreover, the Israel / Palestinian
conflict has drawn intense international media attention as Hamas uses
human shields (mostly women and children) to protect its rockets and
jihadis as they set about to murder innocent Jewish men, women, and
children.
David Yerushalmi, AFLC Co-Founder and Senior Counsel, commented, “Across
the country, we have successfully litigated cases where government transit
authorities permit Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas front groups like the Council
on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) 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 or conjure up some threat of violence.
This will now be the third time we have sued the MTA, and it will likely be
the third successful time. 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, “The MTA’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 speech out of fear that some
members of the public might react violently to its content. Quite
simply, the First Amendment knows no heckler’s veto.”
Muise continued, “If the MTA can get away with this obvious ploy to
manufacture a threat when this ad has already run without incident in
Chicago and San Francisco for months, it will use this pretext to shut down
all unwanted speech. This would not only make a mockery of the First Amendment,
it would actually encourage the thuggery and violence the MTA now claims it
fears.”
Contact:
David Yerushalmi, Esq.
(646) 262-0500
dyerushalmi@aflc.us
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment