The city of Grand Rapids, Minnesota has an established
practice of using a large electronic marquee to publicize upcoming community
events by allowing nonprofit organizations to advertise their events. The city
has placed certain restrictions on the content of the advertisements and one of
these restrictions prevents religious content from being featured on the
marquee. Recently a local Christian organization had submitted a request to advertise
on the marquee for an upcoming concert that it was hosting in the community,
however their request was denied because they are a religious organization. The
city believed that because the organization was religious in nature advertising
the concert would therefore violate the religious content restriction as well
as the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, however the group believed that
the decision and advertising policy was unlawful and religiously
discriminatory. The group then turned to the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) for help resolving the matter. The ACLJ sent a letter to the
city where they outlined that there is a distinction between government speech
and private speech and that the marquee advertisements acted as a public forum
for private speech of local citizens and organizations. Because of this the
ACLJ argued that the city’s policy preventing advertise from religious groups
was a form of viewpoint discrimination which is an unconstitutional violation
of the First Amendment rights to freedom of speech. The ACLJ stated on their
website that “To ensure that our client, and other religious organizations,
would not suffer further discrimination, we asked that the City remove the
offending provisions from the Readerboard Policy and that it treat religious
nonprofit organizations in the community in the same manner as it treats
nonreligous groups for purposes of posting on the Readerboard”. The city has
since agreed to the ACLJ’s request and is currently rewriting its policy for advertising
on the readerboard marquee.
I agree with the ACLJ’s assessment of the issue in Grand
Rapids. By allowing the public access to postings on the marquee they have in
fact created a limited public forum which prevents them from discriminating
against groups based on viewpoint or the content of their speech. This concept
is backed in precedent by the Supreme Court Case Good News Club v. Milford Central School in which the court
produced a similar ruling stating that “When Milford denied the Good News Club
access to the school’s limited public forum on the ground that the Club was
religious in nature, it discriminated against the Club because of its religious
viewpoint in violation of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment”. The
ruling in this case directly applies to the issue in Grand Rapids as they both
involve viewpoint discrimination against religious groups in a limited public
forum, therefore allowing the ruling to be used in the context of the Grand
Rapids case to support the efforts of the ACLJ.
8 comments:
While the ACLJ might have an interested argument in favor of the religious non-profit this will without a doubt in my mind create a dangerous precedent of eventually all religious organizations finding ways to promote and be granted support by the city. For this reason I feel the courts will have interest in protecting there law of public support of any religious organization whether they are for profit or not to avoid even the show of possible entanglement between the city and religious organizations.
While I see the possible argument for allowing this group to advertise their religious message, and how it would be unconstitutional due to viewpoint discrimination, since the marquee is placing a restriction on all forms of religious advertisements, I do not think there is much to support this case in court. The city is doing its job to keep the advertised material fair and appropriate for all viewers. This restriction cannot be classified as viewpoint discrimination since it is being neutral to all religion and religion and non-religion.
I agree with Harrison. I understand where the ACLJ gets the argument for this being an unconstitutional practice, but I don't think it is as compelling as the potential danger of excessive entanglement between the city and religious organizations. Allowing the city to promote religion sets a dangerous precedent for the city to be essentially sponsoring religious groups through this marquee. I think this is very much a case of slippery slope, as the "reasonable observer" driving/walking by and seeing a marquee run by the city that is advertising a religion may understand this to be a sponsorship or endorsement or that religion.
I agree with Harrison and I think that this is very similar to Jill's previous blog post about religious advertising on public transportation. While it may make sense for the city to want to avoid religious advertisements in both of these cases, I think that given this is creating a limited public forum, it would be unconstitutional religious discrimination to prevent these advertisements. It is important that the city is facially neutral in what it does and does not allow for advertisements and the ACLJ is correct in saying that its current policies are preferincing non-religion over religion. Because there are multiple advertisements and because any group can submit an advertisement I do not think there is an issue of government sponsorship of any one religion.
I agree with the ACLJ and Dan in this case. By not allowing religious organizations to post their ads it is not preferencing one religion over another, however it is preferencing non religion over religion. I believe this is religious discrimination as it is not discriminating any other messages but religious ones. If it was prohibiting any ads that were selling a product, for example, that would be neutral, or if it only allowed government sponsored events to be advertised, that would be neutral to all other town organizations However, I believe this case is discrimination and violating the first amendment.
I am going to agree with Dan and the ACLJ. By preferencing non-religion over religion, the state is taking a position of hostility and the policy itself would therefore be religious discrimination. However, Abby does make a good point about the perception of the advertisement from a "reasonable observer". I think a possible response to that argument is that it would be clear to the observer that the advertisements placed on the marquee are paid for independently by private groups with no sponsorship from the state. This case sounds rather similar to the case with the public transportation service and their content-limited advertisements.
I concur with the prior arguments siding with the ACLJ, for I believe that barring a religious message from a public marquee creates a limited forum that preferences secular speech over religious speech. As mentioned, the prior dispute in Grand Rapids as well as the case of Good News Club v. Milford Central School set distinct criteria regarding what is to be considered a public forum and what may be classified as a limitation upon it. Finally, the religious message displayed on the marquee was in no way offensive to those who believed in other religions nor was it coercive, thus those who disagree with the message should simply look away from it.
I would have to disagree with the ACLJ and the opinion of the blog post. My primary concern is what I see as a misunderstanding of viewpoint discrimination, content discrimination, and limited public forums as a whole.
This example shows a limited public forum. This means that certain types of content are allowed through the advertisements and certain types aren't.
As seen in Rosenberger vs. R.V.UVA, a limited public forum, such as the one seen in this case, content discrimination is completely constitutionally viable while viewpoint discrimination is not. From what I understand, the advertisements were not prohibited due to their viewpoint but instead their religious content. For this reason, I believe this to be a case of constitutionally viable content discrimination.
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