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posted by Fnord666 on Friday August 11 2017, @12:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the no-bill-of-rights-for-you dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Can the government ban the text of the First Amendment itself on municipal transit ads because free speech is too "political" for public display? If this sounds like some ridiculous brain teaser, it should. But unfortunately it's not. It's a core claim in a lawsuit we filed today challenging the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's (WMATA) restrictions on controversial advertising.

[...] Earlier this year, following President Trump's repeated commentary denigrating journalists and Muslims, the ACLU decided to remind everyone about that very first promise in the Bill of Rights: that Congress shall make no law interfering with our freedoms of speech and religion. As part of a broad advertising campaign, the ACLU erected ads in numerous places, featuring the text of the First Amendment. Not only in English, but in Spanish and Arabic, too — to remind people that the Constitution is for everyone.

The ACLU inquired about placing our ads with WMATA, envisioning an inspirational reminder of our founding texts, with a trilingual twist, in the transit system of the nation's capital. But it was not to be: Our ad was rejected because WMATA's advertising policies forbid, among many other things, advertisements "intended to influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions" or "intended to influence public policy."

You don't have to be a First Amendment scholar to know that something about that stinks.

Source: https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/first-amendment-literally-banned-dc

Also at NPR.


Original Submission #1   Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @02:55AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @02:55AM (#552068)

    I've been saying that for years, whether it is the whole country or just the southern states that choose to move to the Articles of Confederation.

    Something that many people forget in regards to the reason the Confederation fell and was replaced by the Union was the trifecta of issues state rights above all caused: State-specific currency, which lead to some states heavily inflating their currency while others weren't printing enough, leading to all sorts of trade imbalances between states. Debt left over from the Civil War was another, this was related to some but not all of the currency issues mentioned above. Lack of a cohesive foreign trade policy, which lead to different states trading with different foreign partners, some of which were antagonistic to each other and sometimes 'rival' states. And lastly: unequal enforcement of laws and intentionally differing/incompatible laws between states, affecting interstate commerce.

    While I dislike the level of overreach the federal government has been taking for itself ever since the 'modern' country's founding, people often forget all the shortcomings that could be enumerated against the original pre-Constitution American Confederacy. Sadly what replaced it was a series of compromises, oversights, and intentional power grabs which have continued until today. Much like Rome didn't decline in a century, neither did America. But decline now it does.

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