Is allowing Religious ideas in advertisement more Constitutional than none at all?

         Young Israel of Tampa is an Orthodox Synagogue located in Tampa, Florida. The Synagogue hosts many events for the various Jewish holidays and celebrations, including Hanukah festivities and Passover dinners. These events are made to celebrate the Jewish religion and share the Synagogue's teachings with anyone in the community who would like to join. In the winter of 2020, the Synagogue put on its Hanukah celebration, which was titled Hanukah on Ice. The description of the event was that it was a family-friendly event with Ice skating music, food, etc. Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority, or HART, is a local transit station for the Synagogue. Rabbi Rivkin sought to advertise for the event Hanukah on Ice on HART's transit line. HART had a policy that would not run any ads on their buses that included "alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs, obscenity, nudity, pornography, politics, and religion." Due to this policy, HART told Rabbi Rivkin and the Synagogue if they wanted to run the ad, they must remove the menorah from the design as this fell under the category of religion. The Synagogue believed removing the aspect of the menorah from the ad was undoable as the lighting of the menorah is a key aspect of the Hanukah celebration and a central aspect of this family event and there for found this request offensive. The Synagogue refused to remove the menorah; therefore, HART refused to run the ad. The Synagogue then filed suit against HART as the Synagogue felt this violated their protection under the First Amendment.

        The issue presented is this advertisement the Synagogue is asking to post blatantly for religious purposes or is this about a family event that just includes religion? In the suit, the council states that this is blatant discrimination based on the group's viewpoints. The case also says that the policy itself must come into question as there are no proper written guidelines to what HART considers "religious," which is one of the subjects the company does not run advertisements on. There is a strong case based on this alone, as without written guidelines to what is and what is not religious is a very slippery slope into biases. This also opens the door to the question of what advertisements can HEART consider religious or just include the concept of religion in the bigger picture. To wrap up the argument in the suit, they explain that discrimination against the idea of religion violates the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause. The policy is not neutral toward religion; instead, the policy directly targets religion by not allowing any mention of it all. The policy burdens religious groups as they are disadvantaged compared to non-religious groups permitted to run ads about family-events through HART.

        A significant question brought up in this is does HART count as a non-public, public forum, or limited forum? The Synagogue argues that although HART is classified as a non-public, this should not be the case. In terms of this point, I must side with the Synagogues argument as the Transit line is exposed to the public forum daily. An example the council used where the transit public forum was exposed was the streets and sidewalks. The council finishes this argument that even if the court sided with HART on the fact they are a non-public forum, there is still religious discrimination which violates the First Amendment. The Federal district court found that HART violated the First Amendment as there was clear discrimination toward religious groups and that the ban itself had no proper standards to judge what and what was not religious. The court ordered that HART removes its religious ban on its advertisement 

     In such cases, it is essential to look back on prior rulings that encompass similar topics as what we see in HART. A recent case with a similar issue was the Archdiocese of Washington against the District of Columbia region's mass transit system. In this case, the Archdiocese of Washington was trying to post an advertisement for their Christmas Charity called Find a Perfect Gift. The District of Columbia region's mass transit systems policy was they would not post any advertisements that promoted or talked poorly about any religious activity; therefore, they denied the Archdiocese of Washington's ad request. The district courts found that The District of Columbia region's mass transit policy did not violate the constitution. This case was heavily criticized as the Supreme Court was unable to hear this case. This is because Justice Kavanaugh was on the district court at the time of this case before a decision was made, so the Justice removed himself from the review of the appeal. Justice Gorsuch and Justice Thomas both state that the Supreme Court can not hear this case as they do not have all of the Justices. The Justices also state that if this formality were not in place, this would be a prime candidate for an appeal. In their statements, the Justices state that not allowing for mention religion in advertisement is clear discrimination and is not neutral. The Justices say that this does not leave The District of Columbia region's mass transit without options to make this less restrictive as the transit system can eliminate all advertisements in general, which would be the only way to make this policy neutral to religious and non-religious groups alike.

        

        Although the Archdiocese of Washington against the District of Columbia region's mass transit system case is vital to look at, the Supreme Court never reviewed this case. For this reason, I believe it is essential to research a case the Supreme Court has reviewed which is another similar case of Good News Club v. Milford Central School. In this case, the Milford Central school allowed residents of the area to use the school after school hours for permitted activities. The Good News Club was a Christian group for children run by county residents who wanted to use the school's facilities for the club. The school denied this based on its religious nature, and the residents filed suit. The Supreme Court ruled that denying the club's request was unconstitutional as it was viewpoint discrimination. The school could not simply deny them access to non-religious groups because of the club's views. I believe this is very important when looking at the case of Young Israel of Tampa v. Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority because they share similar dilemmas. The court ruled the school could not hold meetings in the school's building because of the club's religious nature, just as HART said the Synagogue might not run its family-event advertisement due to its religious nature. It is essential to show that both groups' viewpoints were discriminated against by not letting them do something any non-religious group had the opportunity to do just because the action happened to involve the group's religious views. 

         Looking at this case's facts, I must side with Young Israel of Tampa. This was a very intriguing case to me as there is no "silver bullet" to make an opinion on this case. You must break down the different aspects of how the policy could be unconstitutional. When looking at if the policy is neutral, I believe it is not. Although HART believes this is neutral because they have this policy to avoid controversial topics such as religion and politics, I do not think the policy can be justified in banning any mention of religion. As Justice Gorsuch and Thomas stated in the statement regarding the appeal review of the Archdiocese of Washington against the District of Columbia region's mass transit system, the only way to make this neutral would be to allow all advertisements for family events or none at all. Then you must look at the prior ruling of the Supreme Court case of the Good News Club v. Milford Central School and how this case shows that the court will allow for groups to participate in other opportunities non-religious groups have even if the action being done has a groups religious values or beliefs included. You then must look at whether this policy discriminates towards religious groups, which I believe it does, as it favors non-religious groups over religious groups. I say this because allowing a non-religious group to post an advertisement of a family event while not letting a religious group do the same based on the fact it includes religious aspects is clear discrimination. When it comes to what forum category the transit company falls under. I believe this could be argued as many options, but I do not think this matters for the outcome as if there is religious discrimination, the forum would have less weight in the outcome. I believe this case is more an issue of Freedom to exercise religion, and I think, based on these reasons, the policy does violate the First Amendment making this policy unconstitutional.

Work Cited:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-1455_9h68.pdf

https://www.becketlaw.org/case/young-israel-tampa-v-hillsborough-area-regional-transit-authority-hart/

https://cathstan.org/news/local/supreme-court-will-not-review-lower-courts-ruling-against-archdiocese-of-washingtons-legal-challenge-to-metros-prohibition-of-religious-ads