Author Archive | Liz Woolery

Ads on Wheels: More First Amendment Problems in the Triangle

Nearly a year after an advertisement on Chapel Hill city buses sparked controversy, the City of Raleigh is experiencing its own public outcry over transit advertising. The Humane Society of the United States has filed suit against the Raleigh Transit Authority over the agency’s rejection of an advertisement featuring pigs in confined gestation crates used on factory farms.

The proposed ad would have wrapped around the exterior of buses and said, “How would you like to spend the rest of your life in a space as small as a bus seat? It’s what Big Pork wants for pigs. But together we can change that.” The Raleigh Transit Authority rejected the ad because it was “too negative.” 

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, alleges that the Raleigh Transit Authority’s rejection of the ad is a violation of the Humane Society’s First and 14th Amendment rights. Under the RTA advertising policy, some ads are prohibited, including those for illegal products or services, alcohol or tobacco, or advertisements that are false or misleading. Additionally, advertisements that deal with political issues, causes, or candidates, or that advocate or oppose a particular religion, belief, or creed, are not permitted.

But what about advertisements that are simply “too negative”?  There is nothing in the RTA policy about the agency’s authority to reject advertisements based on their negative messages. Emails between the RTA and the Humane Society show that the rejection took place because the ad was “too negative,” not because it was a political issue or cause. That puts the RTA in a pinch, because its decision to reject the ad was not in line with its own policy. However, one question that will need to be addressed is whether the Humane Society’s advertisement could fit into the political issues/causes category of prohibited advertisements. If the better treatment of pigs is an example of a political cause, then the RTA could refuse to accept the advertisement, and doing so would be in line with RTA policy. But that’s not what happened. The RTA refused the ad because the agency was uncomfortable with the negative tone of the Humane Society’s message.

The Supreme Court has dealt with the issue of transit advertising and the First Amendment only once, in Lehman v. City of Shaker Heights (1974). In that case the Court held that a public forum had not been created in Shaker Heights, Ohio, buses, and that the city’s refusal to permit a political candidate advertisement was constitutional. However, the Supreme Court also has been clear that governments may not discriminate against speech based on viewpoint.

Controversial transit advertisements have been popping up across the nation over the past few years, with several cases going before federal courts in Washington, D.C., California, and Pennsylvania. The subjects of these ads have ranged from Israel to Islam to inmate voting rights. Two recent federal district court opinions explored viewpoint discrimination as it applies to transit advertising, concluding that the refusal to permit ads calling for support of Israel was unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.

The ad in question in Raleigh already has been featured on buses in Des Moines, Iowa, and Washington, D.C. “without controversy,” according to the Humane Society. The ads’ impact in North Carolina could be significant, however, since N.C. is second in the nation in pork production.

To read more about the contentious transit ads in Chapel Hill last year, see this blog post on the issue.

Liz Woolery is a third-year Ph.D. student studying legal and regulatory issues in mass communication at the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

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Final Interdisciplinary Lunch of the Year

This Friday the Center will hold its final interdisciplinary lunch of the year from noon to 1:15 p.m. in the Halls of Fame Room in Carroll Hall. The topic for this lunch is “Privacy by Design.” More information on the lunch (and how to RSVP) is available here.

If you haven’t attended one of our lunches yet, here’s what you’re missing:

The chance to meet new people
The lunches are open to Carolina graduate students and faculty. And the lunches truly are interdisciplinary. We have had students, faculty, and staff from the School of Information and Library Science, School of Law, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Department of Computer Science, Health Sciences, Office of Human Research Ethics, University Libraries, and more. If you’re looking for opportunities to collaborate across disciplines, there could not be a better place to start than with a conversation over lunch.

Exposure to new topics and new ideas
Between the suggested readings and the conversation at the lunch, attendees are guaranteed exposure to research topics and ideas they hadn’t previously considered. Though the topic for each lunch is set in advance, the conversation is only loosely structured, which means that each lunch can cover a lot of scholarly ground. At each lunch we address a different topic; over the course of a year we tackle between four and six media law and policy-related issues.

Great conversation
By the time Friday rolls around, maybe you’re feeling a little burned out and you’re looking forward to the weekend. What better way to slip into the weekend than with some great scholarly conversation? Given the interdisciplinary nature of these lunches, everyone comes at these topics from a different perspective, which makes for a fun discussion.

Input on future lunches and topics
One of the best parts of bringing together people from across the University is that everyone brings something different to the table. And when it comes to thinking about topics for future lunches, that means that you can suggest an interesting topic for our next lunch! Do you have an idea for a future topic? We are all ears.

And last, but certainly not least: Good food!
If you show up, we are happy to feed you – usually sandwiches or wraps from some of the great restaurants in Chapel Hill. Free food and interesting discussion. What could be better?

Here’s a list of topics we’ve been talking about at these lunches over the past two years:

  • Privacy and Human Subject Research
  • Wikipedia as an Example of The Promises and Pitfalls of Peer-Produced Media
  • Who Owns Research Data?
  • Studying Social Media
  • Social Networks, Privacy, and Politics
  • The Right to Be Forgotten

What are you waiting for? RSVP for Friday’s lunch by 5 p.m. Wednesday, April 10. More information on the lunch (and how to RSVP) is available here.

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Next Stop: Transit Advertising and the First Amendment

About a month ago I went out of my way to take a photo of an advertisement in one of the Chapel Hill town buses. Normally I glance at these interior ad placards and give them little thought. This time was different. I had been searching for this advertisement for weeks and finally found it. I already knew what the ad looked like. It had appeared in the local news as one of the images symbolizing a free speech debate being waged in Chapel Hill. The ad had prominent pictures of a Palestinian man and child and an Israeli man and child and the words, “Join with us. Build peace with justice and equality. End U.S. military aid to Israel.”

When the Presbyterian Church of Reconciliation placed the advertisements in 98 buses this past summer, opponents of the church’s message quickly organized and voiced their disagreement at several recent town council meetings. There were plenty of supporters of the message who attended these meetings as well. And then there were others, like myself, who observed quietly by the side, curious as to how this charming, quintessentially southern town would resolve this tense and upsetting free speech debate.

Chapel Hill isn’t alone in this experience. There are similar debates happening across the country. Subway ads likening Muslim radicals to savages caused an uproar in New York City, and Washington, D.C.’s Metro system was recently told by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to accept that very same ad. The Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals found that Detroit’s regional transit agency did not violate the First Amendment when it refused an advertisement reading, “Fatwa on your head? Leaving Islam? Got questions? Get answers!”

The U.S. Supreme Court addressed the transit ad issue once, in Lehman v. Shaker Heights (1974). The Court found a ban on political candidate ads constitutional because the city had not created a public forum and had “limited access to its transit system advertising space in order to minimize chances of abuse, the appearance of favoritism, and the risk of imposing upon a captive audience.”

In Chapel Hill, debate over the Church of Reconciliation ads reached a fever pitch by mid-October. The town hosted a public forum on the matter and released a statement clarifying its policy on issue, religious, and political advertisements, noting that all such ads were accepted so long as the advertisers included contact information in the ads. Discussion then turned to whether the town should change its policy to prohibit ads like those posted by the Church of Reconciliation. The nearby city of Raleigh has a policy in place that bans political candidate and political issue advertisements on its buses. Should this be the model for Chapel Hill as well?

Then the town held a business meeting to discuss the transit policy. But here’s where things start to fall apart. As it turns out, the town’s policy permitting issue, religious, and political ads isn’t actually the town’s policy. Somewhere along the line there was a mix-up, and the policy the town had been enforcing was not the policy that was approved; it was a draft of the approved policy. In fact, the approved policy did ban “religious” and “political and social issue” ads. In late October the ACLU of North Carolina entered the debate with a letter to town attorney Ralph Karpinos. In its letter the ACLU contended that Chapel Hill’s acceptance of political ads classifies the bus ad placards as a public forum. The ACLU added that the town has operated under a “laissez-faire” advertising policy and therefore barring the Church of Reconciliation’s ads would be “fundamentally unfair.” The letter went on to praise the town’s “long-standing tradition of welcoming dialogue, including on its transit system.”

For the moment, the town’s policy has been suspended and no new advertisements are being accepted. The town council will meet again Dec. 3 to discuss whether to re-affirm the policy it actually had adopted, to amend the policy to be what the town thought its policy was, or to adopt a different policy. In the meantime, the question of whether the town should and will accept issue, religious, and political ads remains.

By no means am I a First Amendment absolutist. But it’s hard to ignore the power of ideas and the impact a single advertisement has had on this college town. Those who are opposed to the advertisement have made a compelling case at these public forums, opening up about their relatives who perished during the Holocaust and the pain caused by the Church of Reconciliation’s ad. No free speech supporter can turn his or her back on such emotional and personal appeals. But a transit advertisement policy that accepts controversial ads also has the potential to do so much good – to inspire robust public discussion about U.S. foreign policy, to remind us that there are large communities of people who continue to struggle with the Holocaust every day, and to encourage tolerance.

When I started in the mass communication Ph.D. program at UNC-Chapel Hill just over a year ago, I knew I was at the best place to study media law. I spend my days knee-deep in the First Amendment, lucky enough to take courses with some of the best media law scholars and join them for workshops and lunches. But events and classes can’t begin to rival the First Amendment in action. This transit advertising debate has captivated me, and it’s captivated this town. This is what the First Amendment is all about. The policy itself is interesting enough, but to go to the town council meetings and see the town turn out to talk about free speech – wow! Many who are engaged in this debate aren’t familiar with strict or intermediate scrutiny, they don’t know Shaker Heights, and forum analysis is of little interest. They just care about exercising their First Amendment rights, and right now they are exercising them like never before.

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