Young Israel of Tampa v. Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority

Young Israel of Tampa is an Orthodox Jewish synagogue that serves the growing Jewish population of Tampa, Florida. In October of 2020 they submitted a request to put an advertisement on a nearby bus route that is operated by the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority (HART). This advertisement was going to advertise for their annual celebration of Chanukah. They have celebrated it with “Chanukah on Ice'' for the last fourteen years, and it is a family-friendly event with ice-skating, food, music, a raffle, and the lighting of an ice-sculpture menorah. HART denied the request to advertise for it due to its religious nature. The advertisement that Rabbi Rivkin of Young Israel of Tampa wanted to use featured a menorah and invited the community members to enjoy “ice skating to Jewish music around the flaming menorah”. HART has a policy that bans any ads promoting alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs, obscenity, nudity, pornography, politics, and religion. They also want to avoid any advertisements that their riders may view as offensive. The main issue HART had with this advertisement was the clear referral to the menorah. After the denial, Young Israel appealed to HART, and HART’s CEO said it would let them run the advertisement with certain accommodations. HART asked Young Israel to remove the menorah, the central feature of the Jewish celebration, from the ad. Young Israel refused to remove the menorah from the ad because they found those changes to be deeply offensive to their religion, so HART denied the ad from being run. With this denial, on February 5, 2021, Young Israel of Tampa filed a lawsuit against HART in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

The main issue being argued in this case is freedom of religious speech and free exercise of religion in a public square. They believe that HART’s refusal to run their advertisement is against their constitutional rights. Young Israel is being discriminated against based on its religious content and viewpoint. There is also no clear standard by which HART evaluates advertisements that they deem “appropriate”, and specifically they have no clear criteria for what makes an ad religious, and therefore prohibited. Without set standards, they argue that there is a clear violation of the First Amendment. HART also discriminates based on religion as shown by their rules on what can and cannot be advertised, in which they establish that religious advertisements are prohibited. This is facially plain discrimination that directly violates the Free Exercise Clause, and HART cannot just avoid First Amendment scrutiny by claiming that its advertising space is not a public forum. They have been very inconsistent with this discrimination, which was shown from 2012 to 2013 when they permitted St. Leo University, a Catholic University, to advertise. They have also allowed Alcoholics Anonymous to run advertisements, even though alcohol is a prohibited ad according to their standards. While Young Israel did not end up being able to host Chanukah on Ice in 2020 due to COVID-19, they intend to hold it in 2021 and the future, so they want to be able to advertise for it.

One key case to look at when deciding this case is Good News Club v. Milford Central School. In this case the Good News Club, a private Christian organization for children, sought approval to hold their Club’s meetings weekly after school at Milford Central School. The school denied this request because they reasoned that the content of the Club’s meeting was the equivalent of religious worship, which was prohibited by their community use policy. The Club sued, arguing that their free speech rights were being directly violated. The Court ruled 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 reasoning the Court used in this case can also be applied to the Young Israel case. HART, like Milford Central School, is denying access to something on the grounds that the content is religious in nature. Just like in Good News Club v. Milford Central School, this blatant discrimination against religion is unconstitutional. HART cannot deny advertisements due to viewpoint discrimination. 

In my opinion, I would have to side with Young Israel of Tampa and say that they should be permitted to advertise for their Chanukah on Ice event. The policies that HART has implemented are clearly discriminatory against religion. As seen by Good News Club v. Milford Central School, clear discrimination based upon religious content is unconstitutional. Also, there are no clear standards set that HART seems to be following. Certain religious advertisements are permitted, like St. Leo University’s, while others aren’t, like Young Israel’s. This clear inconsistency in their decision making makes it seem as though they are discriminating against certain religious groups and not others. The policies they have implemented are not facially neutral and place a burden on the Free Exercise rights of Young Israel. I see no compelling state interest in denying Young Israel advertising space, so the constitutional rights are being violated. If we allow this to occur, it will create a slippery slope that allows for religious discrimination in the future without a compelling state interest. We need to protect the constitutional rights of Young Israel and others by ruling in their favor in this case.