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Supreme Court gives MBTA right to reject political ads
By adamg on Mon, 01/11/2016 - 11:44am
The US Supreme Court today rejected an effort by an anti-Palestine group to force the MBTA to run ads saying whatever the hell it wanted to say about Palestinians - by rejecting the group's request for a hearing before the court.
T directors recently decided to just ban all political ads, in part because of the two years of legal wrangling with the group in federal court.
In 1993, a US District Court judge ruled the T was not a "public forum" and that the T could ban particular types of ads, as long as it had consistent written policies, which, in two later decisions involving the Palestinian issue, a judge ruled it had.
The T at first rejected an ad from the American Freedom Defense Initiative because it referred to Palestinians as savages, which violated its police against "demeaning or disparaging" a large group of people.
The group sued in federal court in Boston, but then agreed to change the wording. The company that handles advertising for the T agreed to allow the new ads, but then the group submitted a revised ad that got rejected, and it sued again - and again lost in federal court in Boston. The group appealed and lost in the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit last year, so naturally, it appealed to the Supreme Court.
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Comments
People are going to complain
People are going to complain about lost revenue, whatever, but being able to blanket reject these things is going to prevent more lawsuits about offensiveness and bias and whatever the hell else. It's not like a cell phone carrier isn't going to snap up the ad space in its place.
For those truly concerned about
lost ad revenue, consider this:
Every one of those pointless "Winter Happens" posters the T has plastered everywhere is taking up an ad rack that could otherwise be occupied by a private company's ad.
My employer
Back about 5-6 years, bought a bunch of T ads because "We paid for a month but the T never takes their ads down on time, so we'll probably get a few months free advertising too."
I believe our January ad didn't get replaced until April. So we got February and March for free.
I have an idea...
The MBTA can set up ad racks that are actually paid opinion pieces but the public is not falsely led to believe that it is something else. Then we can all send our opinions into the MBTA, of course with the required fee attached, and tear each other to pieces.Think of the revenue. Think of the vitriol. Think of the humanity...Of course, like everything in the world, unless you got the money, they aint got the time. ;)
Better idea
Perhaps the T could actually maximize the revenue from advertising if they sold the advertising space themselves instead of relying on an outside vendor to sell the space.
Hire a director of advertising, two assistants, and an office manager. Pay them minimum salary and benefits, and tell them they get a percentage commission from each ad space they sell.
Then watch a) how quickly ad spaces turn over, b) how many more of the spaces are actually filled every month, and c) how much more revenue the MBTA pulls in each month from advertising.
Maybe I'm in the minority but
Maybe I'm in the minority but I think government oughta stay out of the advertising business entirely. Take down the T ads and billboards. Get rid of special license plates. Just provide services, and pay for those services with taxes and fees.
It's not like the public "needs" to be served more ads. Everyone gets plenty of ads already.
if it were 100% publicly
if it were 100% publicly funded and wasn't supposed to be a profitable venture, then I might agree with you. However it's treated as a business that is expected to be self sufficient at creating it's own revenue to run. Cutting the ability to raise some easy funds through advertising isn't realistic.
The MBTA is, by statute,
The MBTA is, by statute, given a 20% chunk of the sales tax, plus other state and local assistance. About 30% of their income comes from fares and another small portion from ads, real estate, and other obscure sources. There's a "target" goal published somewhere (I've seen this referenced in news articles about T woes, but never the original source), that the MBTA one day hopes to have 50% of their income derived from fares. So there's not even any dim hope that the T would be run like a profitable business. Their best-case scenario is still half-taxpayer-funded.
The MBTA only acts like a private business where and when it suits them (e.g., here, in order to exempt themselves from the 1st Amendment; maintaining an opaque, private pension system separate from the public pension system all other state employees are under, etc.), and they act like a public agency when it suits them. Legally, they're an "authority" which means they're a corporation but also a political subdivision and "body politic" of the state.
good
probably the only decent piece of news i can remember hearing about something political out of this country in awhile
i mean there are probably others but they get outweighed by articles that sound like they're coming out of The Onion's "dystopian future edition"
I choose the savages
I'm personally glad there won't be political advertising on the T but I don't understand the ruling. The court has recently decided that people and businesses can give an unlimited amount of politicians and they seem to enjoy striking down what few campaign finance laws were enacted on the questionable grounds of free speech.
Yet, they are saying that it is A-OK for them to prohibit me from spending millions to directly convey my views to the public via advertising? It's twisted logic. Paid political advertising in public places seems like one that should be protected speech while political donations should be regulated.
i dont think
that hate speech against federally protected classes should be displayed probably anywhere, but certainly not on government property.
think of it this way- the public in general has a right to use their government facilities without posters calling them subhuman and so do it's (potentially palestinian) employees. way i see it, lets say i own a restaurant and i have a poster calling latinos savages in my kitchen. first off i won't have any friends, and i damn sure better not wonder why my restaurant burned down.
i am a pretty big advocate of free speech- as anybody that has read enough of my posts here might surmise- but i'm a pretty big advocate of protected classes, too.
I don't like them either
I'm not a fan of the savage ads nor am I a fan of unlimited campaign contributions. One of easier to classify then the other yet surprisingly campaign contributions are ones allowed without limits not the ads.
This policy is bound to cause conflict. There are plenty of commcerial advertisements which can be construed in political ways even if they aren't overtly political. Are they allowed or banned? The MBTA is going to need to make a subjective decision.
At least with donations you can put a numeric cap on it and when it exceeds the cap the donation is banned -- no subjectivity involved.