Plans by a group that is planning to sue New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority after the agency rejected a proposed advertisement that refers to Muslims killing Jews highlights how cities can differentiate between categories of speech in accepting advertising on city-owned buses.
The M.T.A. said in a statement released Friday that it had rejected a request by American Freedom Defense Initiative, a pro-Israel group, to run advertisements that feature the quotation, “Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah,” credited to “Hamas MTV.” The ad reportedly parodies ads sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations that presented jihad as an idea of individual struggle rather than incitement to terrorism.
The ads ran on buses in cities other than New York, according to the M.T.A.
Under the First Amendment, a city’s allowing advertising on public buses does not make that property a public forum. Rather, a bus is a commercial forum, which means that a city can limit advertising so long as the city’s review of proposed ads is viewpoint neutral and substantially related to an important government interest.
In its statement, the agency defended its policy as viewpoint neutral. “The M.T.A. does not decide whether to allow or not allow a proposed advertisement based on the viewpoint that it expresses or because that viewpoint might be controversial,” the agency said.
The M.T.A. said that its security chief “concluded the proposed advertisement would lead reasonable observers to interpret it as urging direct, violent attacks on Jews, given turmoil in Gaza, Syria and Iraq and New York City’s heightened security concerns.”