AFDI and ACLU Sue D.C. Metro For First Amendment Violations Over ‘Geller Ban’ on Ads

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It is good to see an uber-left organization such as the ACLU, historically aligned with the jihad force, taking up a key fight for us in defense of our First Amendment freedoms. Although I am sure you know that they are not doing it for us. But their uber-left pet causes have been affected by the “Geller ban.”

In every major city where we have sued and won to get out ads in defense of freedom up, the city’s response to our free speech victory has been to ban all political ad issue-related ads. This new form of censorship came to be known as the Geller Ban.

If the ACLU or AFDI lawsuit(s) prevail, then every city that has enacted the “Geller ban” can be challenged, New York, Washington DC, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Miami, Los Angeles, Denver etc.

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We have moved forward with our D.C. lawsuit. On July 24, our legal team, AFLC, filed our opening brief in the DC Circuit court in our lawsuit against Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). Read it here:
Opening Brief–Filed

American Freedom Defense Init, et al v. WMATA, et al “Appellant/Petitioner Brief Filed by Pamela Geller on Scribd

 

Metro banned issue ads after activist Pamela Geller, whose American Freedom Defense Initiative, has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, tried to get ads featuring caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad on Metro buses and inside rail stations.

https://twitter.com/PamelaGeller/status/895683383346339840

ACLU Says Metro Violates First Amendment Over Issue Ad Ban

By Martin DiCaro, WaMu, August 10,2017:

ACLU Says Metro Violates First Amendment Over Issue Ad Ban

Notice how these cowards don’t run the ad that actually initiated the ban. Ours.

Although we had wrangled with WMATA before.In 2012, we won a similar lawsuit against the WMATA over an ad that portrayed Adolph Hitler and Haj Amin al-Husseini, alongside the text: “Staunch ally, the leader of the Muslim world.” The ad also contained the text: “Islamic Jew-Hatred: It’s in the Qura

The American Civil Liberties Union of D.C. is suing Metro over its ban on all issue-oriented ads on buses, trains, and inside rail stations, claiming the ban violates the First Amendment.

The lawsuit was prompted by the transit authority’s recent decisions to reject or pull ads it said violated its ban on advertising “intended to influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions.”

In early July, Metro pulled ads for a new book by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. The D.C. ACLU is representing him in its lawsuit as well as groups on the other side of the ideological spectrum that had ads rejected by Metro: the women’s health collective Carafem and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), as well as the national ACLU. The ACLU’s rejected ads displayed the text of the First Amendment in English, Spanish, and Arabic.

“It’s not workable because that ignores the facts the commercial advertisements that they do run also take positions on issues that people have opinions about,” Arthur Spitzer, the ACLU of D.C.’s legal director, said of Metro’s ban on issue ads. “They are willing to take ads for hamburgers and fur coats and pretty much anything you want to sell, but they are not willing to take an ad to make somebody think.”

In a statement, Metro said it is not backing down.

In 2015, WMATA’s Board of Directors changed its advertising forum to a nonpublic forum and adopted commercial advertising guidelines that prohibit issue-oriented ads, including political, religious and advocacy ads. WMATA intends to vigorously defend its commercial advertising guidelines, which are reasonable and view-point neutral.

Metro banned issue ads after activist Pamela Geller, whose American Freedom Defense Initiative, has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, tried to get ads featuring caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad on Metro buses and inside rail stations.

In Islam, images of the Prophet are prohibited, and a cartoon-drawing contest Geller held in Texas provoked a shooting there; she wanted to feature the winning cartoon in her Metro ads.

Mort Downey, the chairman of the Metro board at the time, said he pushed for the ban to prevent any safety threat to Metro passengers, a concern that overrode his support of free speech.

“I have no problem with that, if it doesn’t lead you to the position where somebody who doesn’t like the ad is going to start shooting at the buses,” the now retired Downey said in an interview.

He intended for the ban to be temporary to provide time to produce a “more nuanced” policy.

“At the time it was the only quick course of action we could take,” Downey said. “Put the ban in place, and six months to a year come back with a more nuanced solution, but such as solution does not seem to have materialized.” Downey, 81, left the Metro board in 2016.

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livingengine
livingengine
6 years ago

ACLU finds common cause with Pamela Geller to protect of freedom of speech?! WOW.

Liatris Spicata
Liatris Spicata
6 years ago
Reply to  livingengine

Yeah- they must have undergone conniptions when arriving at the decision to defend a reprobate like Pamela!

My own position is, FWIW, that the ACLU does many things wrong- one of the worst was their decision in the 1970’s to “protect” a young man (I think he was 15 at the time, so legally a minor) by returning him to the slavery of Brezhnev’s Soviet Union. Nonetheless, I am glad they are there, and here is an example of them doing something worthwhile.

Halal Bacon
Halal Bacon
6 years ago

The pendulum swings both ways – this is what the islamist fear the most – their true color will come out in spades

Lisacmckinnon
Lisacmckinnon
6 years ago
Reply to  Halal Bacon

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Mahou Shoujo
Mahou Shoujo
6 years ago

Those, like the aclu who do not wish to be tools of islam, must start to conduct their business as though they are believer in freedoms they defend. The battle lines are drawn, islam is trying to violently force the world into submission, resistance will be intensive leading to the defeat of islam, and its destruction.

cypressswamp
cypressswamp
6 years ago
Reply to  Mahou Shoujo

The ACLU will, once winning this case, turn around and start trying to legally define ‘hate speech’ so that the freedom of political advertising can be controlled in the terms that the legal minds deem appropriate. ACLU is a leftist organization and they would never do this if there wasn’t a more important battle to be won in their estimation.

Kalambong Kalambong
Kalambong Kalambong
6 years ago
Reply to  cypressswamp

Actually ACLU used to be Libertarian – incline

I used to be an ACLU member, volunteered to help them preparing cases arguing for Free Speech

But that was decades ago, when the ‘CL’ of ACLU still meant “Civil Liberties’

Nowadays, the ‘CL’ has turned into ‘Criminal Left’

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6 years ago

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iprazhm
iprazhm
6 years ago

What’s up with this? Why is the ACLU now suddenly switching sides and defending what’s right? I don’t trust it.

Michael Jacobs
Michael Jacobs
6 years ago
Reply to  iprazhm

The ACLU has _always_ tried to defend what was right, civil-liberties-wise. They don’t play favorites regarding the CONTENT of the speech they protect. They sued a few years back to get a legal ban lifted that prevented neo-Nazis from marching in the city of Skokie, IL, which had a lot of Jewish residents, including Holocaust survivors. They sue to allow abortion protesters to gather in front of abortion clinics and to allow the Westboro Baptists to protest at American soldiers’ funerals. Nobody has to LIKE the kind of speech they are protecting; in fact, the only speech that NEEDS protecting is the unpopular kind. Without that, freedom of speech is meaningless. So, yes, they have always tried to be on the “right” side of that issue, without taking sides at all on the content.

Sometimes they get it wrong, though, as does anyone who has been at it for any length of time. I disagree with ACLU over their recent stand on the anti-BDS bill now before Congress as being a restriction on free speech, for instance. It’s not; it’s an anti-discrimination measure, as long as it does not prohibit INDIVIDUAL citizens from choosing not to buy Israeli products. If the law is too broadly written so that it does that, it needs to be re-drafted to be constitutional, before it is passed.

iprazhm
iprazhm
6 years ago
Reply to  Michael Jacobs

LOLOLOL! You’re kidding, right? If not, you should do a google search of whom the ACLU has persecuted! It has a long history of going after Christian pastors, students, politicians, as private citizens and in the military. They have a long history of supporting criminals, racists, terrorists and generally bad people.
Please.

aemoreira1981
aemoreira1981
6 years ago
Reply to  iprazhm

That is who contacts the ACLU. Not their fault.

Michael Jacobs
Michael Jacobs
6 years ago
Reply to  iprazhm

I’m not sure you understand what “Civil Liberties” means. Liberty means nothing unless that freedom applies to everybody, and the people most in need of such protection — the ones whom the ACLU has to step in and sue to protect — are usually “generally bad people” with HIGHLY unpopular opinions that the government is trying to suppress. That includes your rogues’ gallery of “criminals, racists, terrorists” and so on. The ACLU also gets involved when someone in the majority (here, that usually means Christians, if we are talking about religious freedom) is trying to create an “establishment of religion” and give official government approval to some religious dogma. That is also unconstitutional, and that is when the ACLU opposes “Christian pastors, students, politicians, as private citizens and in the military” who are trying to foster government involvement in Christian prayer or promotion of Christian belief and practice. Big no-no, and I’m glad the ACLU keeps us from becoming a theocracy like Iran.

iprazhm
iprazhm
6 years ago
Reply to  Michael Jacobs

Well let me just make it clear that I do. I suggest you read a book by New York Times bestselling author Jerome Corsi, entitled, “Bad Samaritans: The ACLU’s Relentless Campaign to Erase Faith from the Public Square,” to gain a working knowledge of the real agenda of the ACLU.
Are you aware of the ACLU’s beginnings and why it was created?

“The book exposes the roots of ACLU in the 1920s among socialists and communists who were opposing World War I,” Corsi told WND. “It’s founder, Roger Baldwin, was a draft resister in 1917 who went to prison. Among the early board members were outright communists, including William Foster, who was at one time the general secretary of the Communist Party USA and wrote the book ‘Toward Soviet America.’ Corsi
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/real-agenda-of-aclu-exposed-at-last/#cIADdS0HZW0CAlRX.99

Michael Jacobs
Michael Jacobs
6 years ago
Reply to  iprazhm

Sure, I knew where the ACLU originated. It’s not illegal in the US to be a communist, you know. And opposing the draft is, or can be, a legitimately civil-libertarian position — is it not, after all, a form of forced servitude? US courts have recognized the rights of conscientious objectors to the draft, and the ACLU had a lot to do with that. Sure, the group has made some choices on certain issues I disagree with, but that does not impugn their overall purpose or mission.
Your Mr. Corsi sounds like a holdover from the ultra-right-wing John Birch Society. Does he not realize that if a government came along that tried to suppress HIS freedom of expression, the ACLU would be right there to protect him? They are non-partisan as far as left-right goes.

iprazhm
iprazhm
6 years ago
Reply to  Michael Jacobs

The ACLU is notorious for refusing to represent rightwing, conservative or race related issues where the plantif was other than black.
It’s also notorious for going after small schools across the country that were too poor to defend themselves in court when their postings of the Ten Commandments were attacked. The vast majority of citizens know that the separation of church and state was meant to keep the government out of the church, not keep the church out of the public.
Too often throughout history the ACLJ has been on the wrong side of what’s right.
You can tap dance around the truth all day. Clearly it is not in you.

Michael Jacobs
Michael Jacobs
6 years ago
Reply to  iprazhm

You write, “ACLU is notorious for refusing to represent rightwing, conservative or
race related issues where the plantif was other than black.” Then how is it that the ACLU is making common cause with Ms. Geller’s AFDI organization — which is decidedly right-wing — as well as with the Nazis who wanted to march in Skokie? Which was also a racial issue where ACLU sided with the white supremacists — because their civil liberties were being violated by the refusal of a parade permit based on the CONTENT of their speech.

Ditto with the “small schools across the country” who were sued for “postings of the Ten Commandments.” Firstly, because it is mostly small,, rural schools that DO such a thing; the larger school boards, who apparently are kept from committing such an Establishment Clause violation by their own internal lawyers’ familiarity with the requirements of the First Amendment, know better. You may disagree, but the Supreme Court has ruled that such postings amount to an illegal establishment of religion, if they are not accompanied by a genuine literary or scientific purpose to study comparative religion that is open to other religious traditions to present their views as well — whether it be Muslims, Satanists, or Flying Spaghetti Monster fans.

Look, I’m no anti-religion. I’m an orthodox Jew. But that’s also exactly why I applaud, and need, a secular, open, tolerant government to prevent any one religion or sect from inserting its own rules into law that would apply to everybody. The Catholics are agaoinst abortion? Fine, DON’T HAVE ONE. The fundamentalists are against gay marriage? Fine, don’t have one. The Baptists are against drinking alcohol? Fine, don’t have one. But don’t try to pass Prohibition again — that didn’t work. And proponents of religion in the public sphere should not try to ban abortion, or ban gay marriage, or just because THEY don’t like it, when a substantial number of other Americans — often the majority — see nothing wrong with it. Those are the real substantive issues at stake; and the debate over purely symbolic steps, such as posting the Ten Commandments in public schoolrooms as a rule to live by and not as an exhibit in a comparative-religion class, is that some sect may gain the political clout to sway public policy its way, and BAN all other viewpoints.

You think that would be okay? What about if the sect that got that much power, and was able to impose its own version of religious law on everybody else and ban all opposing viewpoints, was Islam?

Please do stop and consider that the only thing keeping America from sinking into EITHER a Spanish Inquisition-type Christian Taliban society that burns heretics at the stake, OR an ISIS-type Islamist one that does the same thing to ITS opponents, is the First Amendment. And the ACLU helping to uphold it.

IzlamIsTyranny
IzlamIsTyranny
6 years ago
Reply to  Michael Jacobs

Funny how they don’t oppose the islamization of public schools though isn’t it shrub?

Michael Jacobs
Michael Jacobs
6 years ago
Reply to  IzlamIsTyranny

Every case is different. The 1st Am religion clause has 2 prongs. In some cases, it is the individual freedom of religion that is being infringed; public schools may not PREVENT student-led prayer, as in this case currently going on in San Diego, California:

https://www.aclusandiego.org/aclu-statement-on-carver-elementary-schools-school-prayer-policy/

In other cases, the ACLU _has_ opposed publicly-funded schools’ actions which appear to be actively PROMOTING religion, including Islam, as in this ACLU suit against a Muslim-oriented charter school in Minnesota:

http://www.startribune.com/aclu-to-sue-twin-cities-charter-school-that-caters-to-muslims/38034459/

Here is the ACLU’s generic statement on the issue of religion in public schools, which should help clarify matters:

https://www.aclu.org/other/joint-statement-current-law-religion-public-schools

IzlamIsTyranny
IzlamIsTyranny
6 years ago
Reply to  Michael Jacobs

Temporal hyperbole of the week: “They sued a few years back to get a legal ban lifted that prevented neo-nazis from marching in the city of Skokie, IL…”
Reality:
this happened in 1978, almost FORTY years ago.

winniec
winniec
6 years ago

Mort Downey opted for the ‘Heckler’s Veto’.

Definition: -“A heckler’s veto is an IMPERMISSIBLE content-based RESTRICTION on speech where the speech is prohibited due to an ANTICIPATED DISORDERLY or VIOLENT reaction of the audience.” – Justice Dolores Sloviter

IzlamIsTyranny
IzlamIsTyranny
6 years ago

The ACLU representing Milo? I never would’ve bet that would ever happen. I wonder how the ACLU’s muslum financiers feel about this decision?

aemoreira1981
aemoreira1981
6 years ago

In New York, the response was to ban all political ads regardless of viewpoint. The other problem is that many ad sales are outsourced and the agency could claim that private enterprise rejected the ad.

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