Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-11-35931/USCOURTS-ca9-11-35931-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

SEATTLE MIDEAST AWARENESS

CAMPAIGN, a Washington non-profit

corporation,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

KING COUNTY, a municipal

corporation,

Defendant-Appellee.

No. 11-35914

D.C. No.

2:11-cv-00094-

RAJ

SEATTLE MIDEAST AWARENESS

CAMPAIGN, a Washington non-profit

corporation,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

KING COUNTY, a municipal

corporation,

Defendant-Appellant.

No. 11-35931

D.C. No.

2:11-cv-00094-

RAJ

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Western District of Washington

Richard A. Jones, District Judge, Presiding

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2 SEATTLE MIDEAST AWARENESS CAMPAIGN V. KING CNTY.

Argued and Submitted

October 3, 2012—Spokane, Washington

Filed March 18, 2015

Before: Alex Kozinski, Morgan Christen,

and Paul J. Watford, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Watford;

Dissent by Judge Christen

SUMMARY*

Civil Rights

The panel affirmed the district court’s summary judgment

in favor of King County, and dismissed as moot the County’s

conditional cross appeal in an action brought pursuant to 42

U.S.C. § 1983 by the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign

alleging a violation of its First Amendment rights.

The Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign, a non-profit

organization whose goal is to bring attention to IsraeliPalestinian relations, proposed to display an advertisement

opposing the United States government’s financial support

for Israel on King County Metro buses in the Seattle

metropolitan area. After initially accepting the ad, the

County revoked its approval, concluding that displaying the

ad would likely result in vandalism and violence disruptive

* This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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SEATTLE MIDEAST AWARENESS CAMPAIGN V. KING CNTY. 3

to the bus system. The panel first held that King County

created a limited public forum when it opened the sides of

Metro buses to advertising from outside speakers. The panel

then held that the County’s decision to reject the ad was both

reasonable and viewpoint neutral, and thus did not violate the

First Amendment.

Dissenting, Judge Christen stated that in her view the

County’s policy and practice unmistakably demonstrated an

intent to create a designated public forum on its Metro bus

exteriors. Judge Christen would remand for the district court

to determine in the first instance whether genuine issues of

material fact existed under the appropriate level of scrutiny,

i.e., whether the County’s safety concerns justified

cancellation of the ad.

COUNSEL

Venkat Balasubramani (argued), Focal PLLC, Seattle,

Washington; Jeffrey C. Grant, Skellenger Bender, P.S.,

Seattle, Washington; Sarah A. Dunne,Vanessa T. Hernandez,

M. Rose Spidell, La Rond Marie Baker, ACLU of

Washington Foundation, Seattle, Washington, for PlaintiffsAppellants.

Endel R. Kolde (argued), Daniel T. Satterberg, Cynthia S.C.

Gannett, Jennifer Ritchie, King County Prosecutor’s Office,

Seattle, Washington, for Defendant-Appellee.

Steven A. Reisler, Steven A. Reisler, PLLC, Seattle,

Washington, for Amicus Curiae National Lawyers GuildSeattle Chapter.

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4 SEATTLE MIDEAST AWARENESS CAMPAIGN V. KING CNTY.

OPINION

WATFORD, Circuit Judge:

The Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign (SeaMAC)

submitted an advertisement to run on King County Metro

buses in the Seattle metropolitan area. After initially

accepting the ad, the County revoked its approval, concluding

that displaying the ad would likely result in vandalism and

violence disruptive to the bus system. We are asked to decide

whether the County’s action violated SeaMAC’s First

Amendment rights.

I

King County runs Metro, a public mass transit system

serving hundreds of thousands of passengers in and around

Seattle each day. Metro’s mission is to provide safe and

reliable transportation for its customers. Like many public

transit agencies, Metro helps finance its operations through an

advertising program, which allows advertisers to purchase ad

space on the exterior of Metro buses.

The County runs Metro’s bus advertising program

through a contract with Titan Outdoor LLC. The contract

contains a policy restricting advertising content. At the time

of the events leading to this appeal, that policy prohibited ads

for alcohol and tobacco products; ads for adult movies, video

games rated for mature audiences, and other adult products

and services; ads promoting illegal activity; depictions of

minors or those who appear to be minors engaging in sexual

activities; ads containing flashing lights or other features that

might undermine safe operation of the buses or distract other

drivers; and obscene, deceptive, misleading, or defamatory

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SEATTLE MIDEAST AWARENESS CAMPAIGN V. KING CNTY. 5

material. The policy also contained two “civility clauses,”

§§ 6.4(D) and 6.4(E). Together, these clauses prohibited

material that would foreseeably result in disruption of the

transportation system or incite a response that threatens

public safety.

1

Metro required Titan to enforce these content restrictions

by individually pre-screening each ad. Titan routinely

rejected ads that failed to comply with the restrictions, most

commonly the prohibition on ads for alcohol and tobacco

products. In close cases, Titan sought guidance from County

officials, who then independently reviewed the proposed ad. 

Before this case, County officials had invoked § 6.4(D) on

only one occasion, when they directed Titan to reject a series

of ads with messages such as “NAZI MEDICAL ABUSE

COMMITTED FOR 15 YEARS; State Hate Committed By

Elected Officials & Doctors.”

In late 2010, SeaMAC, a non-profit organization opposed

to United States support for Israel, proposed a Metro ad that

read:

1 Section 6.4(D) prohibited: “Anymaterial that is so objectionable under

contemporary community standards as to be reasonably foreseeable that

it will result in harm to, disruption of, or interference with the

transportation system.”

Section 6.4(E) prohibited: “Any material directed at a person or

group that is so insulting, degrading or offensive as to be reasonably

foreseeable that it will incite or produce imminent lawless action in the

form of retaliation, vandalism or other breach of public safety, peace and

order.”

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6 SEATTLE MIDEAST AWARENESS CAMPAIGN V. KING CNTY.

ISRAELI WAR CRIMES

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK

www.Stop30Billion-Seattle.org

Titan initially approved the ad, but because it considered the

ad “controversial,” the company sent a copy to County

officials, who also approved the ad. Those officials in turn

forwarded the ad to the King County Executive, who agreed

that while the ad was controversial, it did not violate Metro’s

bus advertising policy. Titan slated the ad to run on 12 Metro

buses for four weeks, beginning in the last week of 2010. 

SeaMAC’s contract with Titan, however, provided that the ad

could still be withdrawn if the County disapproved it.

Before the ad ran, a local television station broadcast a

news story about the ad’s approval, which provoked an

unprecedented, hostile response. Metro’s Call Center,

accustomed to managing an average of 50 to 80 emails per

day, received 6,000 emails over the span of ten days, almost

all of them urging the County to pull the ad. The messages

varied in tenor, but several expressed an intent to vandalize

buses or disrupt service. For example, one message said: 

“AN ATTY WHO SAYS THE SIGNS ARE PERMITTED

UNDER THE FIRST AMENDMENT IS FORCING ME TO

CONDUCT VIOLENCE JUST TO PROVE THAT I AM

REALLY UPSET AT THESE HORRIBLE WORLD WAR2

KINDS OF HATRED SIGNS.” Another stated, “I think I

will organize a group to ‘riot’ at your bus stops.” Metro’s

Call Center also received a deluge of angry telephone calls. 

One repeat caller promised to block a tunnel to stop buses

from running, while another said that “Jews would take

physical action” to prevent the ads from going up.

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SEATTLE MIDEAST AWARENESS CAMPAIGN V. KING CNTY. 7

A few days after the story ran, photographs depicting

dead or injured bus passengers and damaged buses—the

aftermath of apparent terrorist attacks—appeared under the

door of the Metro Customer Service Center. The names of

County officials and the phrase “NO TO BUS ADS FOR

MUSLIM TERRORISTS” were scrawled across them. The

Metro Deputy Director interpreted these photos as “a threat

of harm toward Metro or an expression of outrage over the

SeaMAC ad, or both.”

Not all of the feedback expressed anger. Many customers

expressed safety concerns, fearing, for example, “racially

motivated attacks on Jewish and Israeli riders.” The mother

of a 13-year-old boy asked whether her son, who wore a

yarmulke and rode the bus home from school several times a

week, would be able to ride safely. A blind woman, who

relied on the bus system as her only means of transportation,

said she agreed with SeaMAC’s “agenda,” but wanted the ad

pulled so she could travel without fear of violence. Metro bus

drivers also expressed safety concerns. Some refused to drive

buses displaying the ad; others asked the union president to

stop the ad because they feared it would put them “in harm’s

way.”

As the uproar mounted, Metro employees became unable

to read or listen to each message, much less respond to all of

them. Metro officials tried to identify the most disturbing

emails and phone calls for purposes of investigation by law

enforcement. This process brought Metro’s internal

operations to a halt. The Call Center had to set aside

customer inquiries of the more routine sort, while the Deputy

Director could not use her flooded email account to do any

other work. Metro Transit Police and the Operations Section

of Metro began planning for a potentially violent and

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8 SEATTLE MIDEAST AWARENESS CAMPAIGN V. KING CNTY.

disruptive reaction to SeaMAC’s ad, a reaction they

anticipated would be targeted at buses and their passengers. 

That threat wasn’t covered by the existing security protocol

because, as Metro’s OperationsManager stated, it represented

“a totally new and different situation that we [had not]

confronted before.” The bus drivers’ concerns added to these

operational challenges.

Four days after the news story broke (but before

SeaMAC’s ad was scheduled to run), two pro-Israel

groups—the Horowitz Freedom Center (HFC) and the

American Freedom Defense Initiative/Stop Islamization of

America (AFDI)—entered the fray by submitting their own

ads. The HFC ad read:

PALESTINIAN WAR CRIMES

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK

One version depicted a burning bus, while the other showed

injured, bloody passengers in a damaged bus. The AFDI ads

contained seven different images, including one of Adolf

Hitler, along with the text:

IN ANY WAR BETWEEN THE CIVILIZED MAN AND

THE SAVAGE, SUPPORT THE CIVILIZED MAN.

Support Israel, Defeat Islamic Jihad

SeaMAC’s ad, and the counter-ads, were thus pending before

the County at the same time.

Shortly thereafter, the King County Sheriff contacted the

King County Executive to advise against running the

SeaMAC ad. She worried that “buses, and bus-passengers,

were vulnerable to spontaneous, emotion driven attacks, like

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SEATTLE MIDEAST AWARENESS CAMPAIGN V. KING CNTY. 9

thrown rocks or bricks.” Seeking advice, the County

Executive contacted the United States Attorney for the

Western District of Washington, who advised caution in light

of the fact that public transit systems were “targets of choice”

for terrorists.

After unsuccessfully asking SeaMAC to withdraw its

proposed ad, the County Executive withdrew his approval of

SeaMAC’s ad and, at the same time, rejected the HFC and

AFDI ads. The County Executive explained that “the context

had changed dramatically” and that all of the pending ads on

the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were non-compliant with

§§ 6.4(D) and 6.4(E). Metro simultaneously revised its

advertising policy to exclude all political or ideological ads

from that point forward.

SeaMAC sued the County under 42 U.S.C. § 1983,

alleging a violation of its First Amendment rights. The

district court denied SeaMAC’s motion for a preliminary

injunction requiring the County to run its ad, and SeaMAC

chose not to take an interlocutory appeal. Following

discovery, the district court granted the County’s motion for

summary judgment, reasoning that the County’s exclusion of

SeaMAC’s ad did not violate the First Amendment because

Metro’s bus advertising program created a limited public

forum and the County’s decision to exclude the ad was

reasonable and viewpoint neutral.

II

SeaMAC contends it has a First Amendment right to use

government property—the sides of Metro buses—to promote

its message. To resolve that issue, we must first determine

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10 SEATTLE MIDEAST AWARENESS CAMPAIGN V. KING CNTY.

whether the sides of Metro buses are a forum for public

expression and, if so, which type of forum.

The parties agree that Metro’s bus advertising program

creates a forum of some sort, as the County has opened the

sides of Metro buses to speakers other than the government

itself. See Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum, 555 U.S.

460, 469 (2009). The more difficult question is determining

which type of forum the County has created. The Supreme

Court has classified forums into three categories: traditional

public forums, designated public forums, and limited public

forums. Int’l Soc’y for Krishna Consciousness, Inc. v. Lee

(ISKCON), 505 U.S. 672, 678–79 (1992).2In traditional and

designated public forums, content-based restrictions on

speech are prohibited, unless they satisfy strict scrutiny. 

Pleasant Grove, 555 U.S. at 469–70. In limited public

forums, content-based restrictions are permissible, as long as

they are reasonable and viewpoint neutral. See id. at 470.

Metro’s bus advertising program isn’t a traditional public

forum. That category encompasses places like “streets and

parks which have immemorially been held in trust for the use

of the public and, time out of mind, have been used for

purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between

citizens, and discussing public questions.” Perry Educ. Ass’n

v. Perry Local Educators’ Ass’n, 460 U.S. 37, 45 (1983)

2 We will refer to this last category as “limited public forums,” Christian

Legal Soc’y Chapter of Univ. of Cal., Hastings Coll. of Law v. Martinez,

561 U.S. 661, 679 n.11 (2010), although in past cases they’ve sometimes

been labeled “nonpublic” forums. E.g., Arkansas Educ. Television

Comm’n v. Forbes, 523 U.S. 666, 677 (1998); Hopper v. City of Pasco,

241 F.3d 1067, 1074 (9th Cir. 2001). The label doesn’t matter, because

the same level of First Amendment scrutiny applies to all forums that

aren’t traditional or designated public forums.

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SEATTLE MIDEAST AWARENESS CAMPAIGN V. KING CNTY. 11

(internal quotation marks omitted). The question, then, is

whether Metro’s bus advertising program is a designated

public forum. If not, the rules governing limited public

forums apply.

The government creates a designated public forum when

it intends to make property that hasn’t traditionally been open

to assembly and debate “generally available” for “expressive

use by the general public or by a particular class of speakers.” 

Arkansas Educ. Television Comm’n v. Forbes, 523 U.S. 666,

677–78 (1998). The defining characteristic of a designated

public forum is that it’s open to the same “indiscriminate

use,” Perry, 460 U.S. at 47, and “almost unfettered access,”

Forbes, 523 U.S. at 678, that exist in a traditional public

forum. The principal difference between traditional and

designated public forums is that the government may close a

designated public forum whenever it chooses, but it may not

close a traditional public forum to expressive activity

altogether. Perry, 460 U.S. at 45–46. Otherwise, the two are

treated the same: When the government creates a designated

public forum by imbuing its property with the “essential

attributes of a traditional public forum,” Pleasant Grove,

555 U.S. at 469, it is “bound by the same standards as apply

in a traditional public forum.” Perry, 460 U.S. at 46.

To determine whether the government has imbued its

property with the essential attributes of a traditional public

forum, we focus on the government’s intent. Cornelius v.

NAACP Legal Def. & Educ. Fund, Inc., 473 U.S. 788, 802

(1985). The government does not create a designated public

forum through inaction or by permitting only limited

discourse. Id. Instead, the government must intend to grant

“general access” to its property for expressive use, either by

the general public or by a particular class of speakers. 

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12 SEATTLE MIDEAST AWARENESS CAMPAIGN V. KING CNTY.

Forbes, 523 U.S. at 679; see also Widmar v. Vincent,

454 U.S. 263, 267–68 (1981) (designated public forum

created for student groups). In contrast, when the

government intends to grant only “selective access,” by

imposing either speaker-based or subject-matter limitations,

it has created a limited public forum. Forbes, 523 U.S. at

679; Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 806.

We rely on several factors to gauge the government’s

intent. Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 802. We look first to the terms

of any policy the government has adopted to govern access to

the forum. Id. If the government requires speakers seeking

access to obtain permission, under pre-established guidelines

that impose speaker-based or subject-matter limitations, the

government generally intends to create a limited, rather than

a designated, public forum. Forbes, 523 U.S. at 679–80;

Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 804; Perry, 460 U.S. at 47. Granting

selective access in that fashion negates any suggestion that

the government intends to open its property to the

“indiscriminate use by all or part of the general public”

necessary to create a designated public forum. Hills v.

Scottsdale Unified Sch. Dist. No. 48, 329 F.3d 1044, 1050

(9th Cir. 2003) (per curiam); see also Forbes, 523 U.S. at

679; Perry, 460 U.S. at 47.

Two other factors help us ascertain the government’s

intent. If the government has adopted a policy governing

access to the forum, we examine how that policy has been

implemented in practice. Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 802. If the

policy requires speakers to obtain permission under

guidelines whose terms are routinely ignored, such that in

practice permission is granted “as a matter of course to all

who seek [it],” the government mayhave created a designated

public forum. Perry, 460 U.S. at 47. We also take into

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SEATTLE MIDEAST AWARENESS CAMPAIGN V. KING CNTY. 13

account the nature of the government property at issue. 

Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 802. If the property is “designed for

and dedicated to expressive activities,” id. at 802–03, courts

will more readily infer the intent to create a designated public

forum. See Southeastern Promotions, Ltd. v. Conrad,

420 U.S. 546, 555 (1975) (municipal theater). On the other

hand, if the property is used primarily as part of a

government-run commercial enterprise, and the expressive

activities the government permits are only incidental to that

use, that fact tends to support finding a limited public forum. 

See ISKCON, 505 U.S. at 682 (airport terminal); Lehman v.

City of Shaker Heights, 418 U.S. 298, 303 (1974) (public

transit system).

Applying these three factors here, we think it’s clear the

County intended to create a limited, rather than a designated,

public forum. First, the County adopted a formal policy

requiring everyone seeking access to Metro’s bus advertising

program to obtain permission through a pre-screening

process. The policyestablished fixed guidelines that imposed

categorical subject-matter limitations, excluding (for

example) ads for alcohol and tobacco products and ads for

adult-oriented products and services. Collectively, the

policy’s exclusions indicate that the County intended to grant

only “selective access,” rather than “almost unfettered

access,” to its bus advertising program. Forbes, 523 U.S. at

678–79.

Second, the County’s implementation of the policy

confirms its intent to grant only selective access. The record

establishes that the County pre-screened all proposed ads and

consistently rejected ads that were non-compliant. No

evidence suggests that, notwithstanding the formal terms of

its policy, the County granted permission “as a matter of

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14 SEATTLE MIDEAST AWARENESS CAMPAIGN V. KING CNTY.

course to all who seek [it].” Perry, 460 U.S. at 47. That fact

distinguishes this case from Hopper v. City of Pasco,

241 F.3d 1067 (9th Cir. 2001), where we held that the city

had created a designated public forum for the display of

artwork at Pasco’s city hall. There, the city “retained no

substantive control over the content of the arts program” and

had never previously excluded a work for any reason, even

though some of the accepted works didn’t comply with the

city’s policy. Id. at 1078. Here, in contrast, the undisputed

evidence establishes that the County has consistently rejected

proposed ads that fail to comply with the bus advertising

program’s subject-matter limitations. “By consistently

limiting ads it saw as in violation of its policy,” the County

“evidenced its intent not to create a designated public forum.” 

Ridley v. Massachusetts Bay Transp. Auth., 390 F.3d 65, 78

(1st Cir. 2004); see also Arizona Life Coal. Inc. v. Stanton,

515 F.3d 956, 970 (9th Cir. 2008).

When analyzing implementation of the County’s access

policy at this stage of the analysis, we focus on the County’s

enforcement of the policy as a whole, not just the specific

provision invoked to exclude the ads at issue. We are asking

whether the forum as a whole is a designated public forum,

not whether § 6.4(D) itself has created one. Thus, that the

County had rejected proposed ads under § 6.4(D) on only one

prior occasion is not determinative. For forum-classification

purposes, the relevant question is whether the County has

granted generalized access to the forum as a matter of course

by routinely accepting even non-compliant ads,

notwithstanding the terms of its access policy. No evidence

in the record supports that conclusion here.

Finally, the third factor—the nature of the government

property—also supports the conclusion that the County

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SEATTLE MIDEAST AWARENESS CAMPAIGN V. KING CNTY. 15

intended to create a limited public forum. The principal

purpose of the bus advertising program is to generate revenue

for the bus system. The expressive activities the city permits

are therefore “incidental to the provision of public

transportation,” and “a part of the commercial venture.” 

Lehman, 418 U.S. at 303 (plurality opinion). As with any

business, when the government is engaged in commerce,

“allowing certain expressive activity might harm advertising

sales or tarnish business reputation.” Hopper, 241 F.3d at

1081. For that reason, use of the property as part of a

commercial enterprise is generally incompatible with

granting the public unfettered access for expressive activities. 

See Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 804. We would therefore be

reluctant to infer that the County intended to open the sides

of Metro buses to all comers absent clear indications of such

an intent. See id. We find none here.

We thus hold that Metro’s bus advertising program is a

limited public forum. We recognize that other courts have

held that similar transit advertising programs constitute

designated public forums.3 Some of those courts, in our view,

mistakenly concluded that if the government opens a forum

and is willing to accept political speech, it has necessarily

signaled an intent to create a designated public forum. See,

e.g., New York Magazine v. Metropolitan Transp. Auth.,

136 F.3d 123, 130 (2d Cir. 1998); Lebron v. Washington

Metro. Area Transit Auth., 749 F.2d 893, 896 & n.6 (D.C.

 

3

See, e.g., United Food & Commercial Workers Union, Local 1099 v.

Southwest Ohio Reg’l Transit Auth., 163 F.3d 341 (6th Cir. 1998);

Christ’s Bride Ministries, Inc. v. Southeastern Penn. Transp. Auth.,

148 F.3d 242 (3d Cir. 1998); New York Magazine v. Metropolitan Transp.

Auth., 136 F.3d 123 (2d Cir. 1998); Planned Parenthood Ass’n/Chicago

Area v. Chicago Transit Auth., 767 F.2d 1225 (7th Cir. 1985); Lebron v.

Washington Metro. Area Transit Auth., 749 F.2d 893 (D.C. Cir. 1984).

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16 SEATTLE MIDEAST AWARENESS CAMPAIGN V. KING CNTY.

Cir. 1984). Neither the First Amendment nor the Supreme

Court’s public forum precedents impose that categorical rule. 

Any such rule would undermine the Court’s efforts to

“encourage the government to open its property to some

expressive activity in cases where, if faced with an all-ornothing choice, it might not open the property at all.” Forbes,

523 U.S. at 680. Municipalities faced with the prospect of

having to accept virtually all political speech if they accept

any—regardless of the level of disruption caused—will

simply close the forum to political speech altogether. First

Amendment interests would not be furthered by putting

municipalities to that all-or-nothing choice. Doing so would

“result in less speech, not more”—exactly what the Court’s

public forum precedents seek to avoid. Id.

Our holding that the sides of Metro buses are a limited

public forum does not mean the government may impose

whatever arbitrary or discriminatory restrictions on speech it

desires. As discussed in the next section, for the period in

which the government elects to keep open the limited public

forum, any subject-matter or speaker-based limitations must

still be reasonable and viewpoint neutral.

III

Having concluded that Metro’s bus advertising program

is a limited public forum, we must next decide whether the

subject-matter limitation invoked to exclude SeaMAC’s ad is

valid. The County justified exclusion of the ad under

§§ 6.4(D) and 6.4(E) of its access policy. We conclude that

the County’s application of § 6.4(D) was reasonable and

viewpoint neutral, and therefore have no occasion to address

the validity of § 6.4(E).

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SEATTLE MIDEAST AWARENESS CAMPAIGN V. KING CNTY. 17

A

A subject-matter or speaker-based exclusion must meet

two requirements to be reasonable in a limited public forum. 

First, it must be “reasonable in light of the purpose served by

the forum.” Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 806. This requirement

focuses on whether the exclusion is consistent with “limiting

[the]forum to activities compatible with the intended purpose

of the property.” Perry, 460 U.S. at 49; see also DiLoreto v.

Downey Unified Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ., 196 F.3d 958, 967

(9th Cir. 1999). Second, exclusions must be based on a

standard that is definite and objective. That requirement has

been developed most prominently in the context of time,

place, and manner restrictions in traditional public forums,

see, e.g., Forsyth Cnty., Ga. v. Nationalist Movement,

505 U.S. 123, 132–33 (1992); Shuttlesworth v. City of

Birmingham, 394 U.S. 147, 150–51 (1969), but it applies with

equal force in this context. See Hopper, 241 F.3d at 1077.

Section 6.4(D) meets both requirements. It excludes

speech that “is so objectionable under contemporary

community standards as to be reasonably foreseeable that it

will result in harm to, disruption of, or interference with the

transportation system.” That exclusion is consistent with

limiting the bus advertising program to speech that is

“compatible with the intended purpose of the property.” 

Perry, 460 U.S. at 49. The intended purpose of the property

at issue here—Metro buses—is to provide safe and reliable

public transportation. Any speech that will foreseeably result

in harm to, disruption of, or interference with the

transportation system is, by definition, incompatible with the

buses’ intended purpose. See Children of the Rosary v. City

of Phoenix, 154 F.3d 972, 979 (9th Cir. 1998). Restrictions

on speech that will foreseeably disrupt the intended function

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of government property have generally been held reasonable

in limited public forums. See, e.g., ISKCON, 505 U.S. at

683–84; United States v. Kokinda, 497 U.S. 720, 732–33

(1990) (plurality opinion); Perry, 460 U.S. at 51–52 & n.12. 

We see no justification for refusing to apply that general rule

here.

The standard established by § 6.4(D) is also sufficiently

definite and objective to prevent arbitrary or discriminatory

enforcement by County officials. The Supreme Court has

held an analogous standard (albeit one developed in a

different First Amendment context) sufficiently definite and

objective to pass constitutional muster. In Tinker v. Des

Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S.

503 (1969), the Court concluded that school officials may

exclude student speech if the speech could reasonably lead to

“substantial disruption of or material interference with school

activities.” Id. at 514. That standard is constitutionally

adequate to limit the discretion of school officials, the Court

later held, because “the prohibited disturbances are easily

measured by their impact on the normal activities of the

school.” Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 112

(1972). We think the same can be said of § 6.4(D). Because

its standard is tied to disruption of or interference with the

normal operations of the transit system, § 6.4(D) supplies

courts with a sufficiently definite and objective benchmark

against which to judge the “disruption” assessments made by

County officials.

We acknowledge that, standing alone, § 6.4(D)’s

reference to material that is “objectionable under

contemporarycommunity standards” would be too vague and

subjective to be constitutionally applied. But, as we observed

in Hopper, “community standards of decency” may play a

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role in the regulation of limited public forums, so long as

such standards are “reduced to objective criteria set out in

advance.” 241 F.3d at 1080. Section 6.4(D)’s ultimate

criterion is an objective one: reasonably foreseeable harm to,

disruption of, or interference with the transportation system. 

Thus, we are not left with the specter of a “standardless

standard” whose application will be immune frommeaningful

judicial review. Id.

SeaMAC contends that the County’s application of

§ 6.4(D) is unconstitutional because SeaMAC’s proposed ad

does not actually violate § 6.4(D). In particular, SeaMAC

argues that the threat of disruption posed by its ad was merely

“speculative,” and that the County’s attempts to organize a

law enforcement response plan indicated any threat could

have been “neutralized.” We must independently review the

record, without deference to the threat assessment made by

County officials, to determine whether it “show[s] that the

asserted risks were real.” Sammartano v. First Judicial Dist.

Court, 303 F.3d 959, 967 (9th Cir. 2002), abrogated on other

grounds by Winter v. Natural Res. Def. Council, Inc.,

555 U.S. 7 (2008).

We agree with the district court that the threat of

disruption here was real rather than speculative. The County

identified three types of potential disruption, each of which is

supported by the record: (1) vandalism, violence, or other acts

endangering passengers and preventing the buses from

running; (2) reduced ridership because of public fear of such

endangerment; and (3) substantial resource diversion from

Metro’s day-to-day operations. As discussed earlier, the

County received numerous threats to vandalize or block

Metro buses, which were sufficiently credible to cause Metro

to seek the advice of law enforcement. In addition, riders and

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drivers threatened not to ride or drive, citing legitimate safety

concerns generated by the negative reaction to SeaMAC’s

proposed ad. And Metro had to divert substantial resources

away from its normal day-to-day operations in order to

address those safety concerns. Taken together, we think these

facts establish that, if permitted to run, SeaMAC’s ad would

foreseeably have resulted in “harm to, disruption of, or

interference with the transportation system,” as § 6.4(D)

requires.4

The record does not support SeaMAC’s alternative

contention that the threat of disruption could have been

neutralized byimplementation of a law enforcement response

plan. But even if SeaMAC were right on that score, it would

not change the outcome. We do not apply a least restrictive

means test in this context. See Sammartano, 303 F.3d at 967. 

“The Government’s decision to restrict access to a nonpublic

forum need only be reasonable; it need not be the most

reasonable or the only reasonable limitation.” Cornelius,

473 U.S. at 808. We believe the County’s decision to reject

SeaMAC’s ad was indeed reasonable, given the serious threat

of disruption running the ad would have posed.

SeaMAC argues that there are material factual disputes as

to the seriousness of the disruption threat, but that argument

4 That the anticipated disruption had not actually materialized by the

time the County acted is irrelevant. Section 6.4(D) requires only a

“reasonably foreseeable” threat of disruption, a standard that is

constitutionally permissible in this context. The government may not

manufacture a fear of disruption as a pretext to censor speech it dislikes. 

But where the threat of disruption is real, the government “need not wait

until havoc is wreaked” before excluding potentially disruptive speech

from a limited public forum. Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 810; see also Perry,

460 U.S. at 52 n.12.

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misapprehends the summary judgment standard. All agree as

to the existence and content of the calls and emails the

County received and the operational burdens they imposed. 

The disputes that exist relate not to the facts, but to the legal

conclusions to be drawn from those facts. See Ridley,

390 F.3d at 71. The district court correctly concluded that the

County’s exclusion of SeaMAC’s proposed ad was

reasonable as a matter of law.

B

In addition to being reasonable, the government’s

exclusion of speech from a limited public forum must be

viewpoint neutral. Pleasant Grove, 555 U.S. at 470. On its

face, at least, § 6.4(D) is viewpoint neutral: It excludes all

ads—whatever their viewpoint—that may foreseeably result

in harm to, disruption of, or interference with the

transportation system. But that does not foreclose SeaMAC’s

claim that the County applied § 6.4(D) in a viewpointdiscriminatory manner. See Rosenbaum v. City & Cnty. of

San Francisco, 484 F.3d 1142, 1158 (9th Cir. 2007). 

Prevailing on this as-applied claim requires evidence that the

government intended to “suppress expression merely because

public officials oppose the speaker’s view.” Perry, 460 U.S.

at 46; see also Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 806. After carefully

reviewing the record, we conclude that no reasonable jury

could find that County officials rejected SeaMAC’s ad

because they opposed SeaMAC’s views on the IsraeliPalestinian conflict.

We begin by recapping the sequence of events that led to

the County’s rejection of SeaMAC’s ad. A local news

broadcast about SeaMAC’s proposed ad sparked an intense

controversythat became the subject of international attention. 

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This materially increased the risk of physical violence and

consequent harm to Metro buses and their passengers. Four

days after the publicity surrounding SeaMAC’s proposed ad

began, two pro-Israel groups—HFC and AFDI—proposed

inflammatory counter-ads of their own promoting the

opposite viewpoint of SeaMAC’s ad. Faced with the choice

between protecting the bus system and displaying competing

ads on a conflict that has provoked deadly violence, the

County simultaneously rejected all pending ads on the IsraeliPalestinian conflict pursuant to § 6.4(D). As the County

Executive explained, he rejected all the ads “at the same

time” because, in his view, the counter-ads were “at least as

likely to elicit a response that would result in harm to our

transit system as the SeaMAC ad.” In effect, the County

decided that, given the threat of disruption posed to the transit

system, the County could not safely run ads on either side of

the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The County’s decision to reject SeaMAC’s ad as part of

a single, blanket decision to reject all submitted ads on the

Israeli-Palestinian conflict negates any reasonable inference

of viewpoint discrimination. To be sure, excluding all speech

on a particular subject—whatever the viewpoint expressed—

is content discrimination, but it’s not viewpoint

discrimination. Content discrimination is generallyforbidden

in a traditional or designated public forum, but it’s

permissible in a limited public forum, which is what we are

dealing with here. Kokinda, 497 U.S. at 735 (plurality

opinion); Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 809–10; Perry, 460 U.S. at

52. In a limited public forum, the government may impose

content-based restrictions on speech as a “means of ‘insuring

peace’” and “avoiding controversy that would disrupt” the

business of the forum. Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 809–10. That

is all the County did here.

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The “heckler’s veto” concerns raised by the dissent would

be troubling in a traditional or designated public forum, but

they do not carry the same weight in a limited public forum. 

Excluding speech based on “an anticipated disorderly or

violent reaction of the audience” is a form of content

discrimination, generally forbidden in a traditional or

designated public forum. Rosenbaum, 484 F.3d at 1158. In

a limited public forum, however, what’s forbidden is

viewpoint discrimination, not content discrimination. That

does not mean “heckler’s veto” concerns have no relevance

in a limited public forum: A claimed fear of hostile audience

reaction could be used as a mere pretext for suppressing

expression because public officials oppose the speaker’s point

of view. That might be the case, for example, where the

asserted fears of a hostile audience reaction are speculative

and lack substance, or where speech on only one side of a

contentious debate is suppressed.

As we have explained, in this case the County’s fears

were real and substantial, and the County rejected speech

from opposing sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In

addition, Metro had previously run ads with the same

viewpoint as SeaMAC’s ad, when doing so had not presented

a reasonably foreseeable threat of disruption. These facts

confirm that the County’s asserted fear of disruption was not

used as a mere pretext for discriminating against SeaMAC

because of the point of view it wished to express.

Because the County simultaneously rejected all of the

proposed ads on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—from

opposing viewpoints—no reasonable jury could find that it

engaged in viewpoint discrimination. The record instead

supports a viewpoint-neutral content-based limitation, which

the County imposed after scrupulously considering whether

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it could “have this public discussion take place in a way that

didn’t present the dangers [it was] seeing.”

* * *

King County created a limited public forum when it

opened the sides of Metro buses to advertising from outside

speakers. The County’s decision to reject SeaMAC’s ad was

both reasonable and viewpoint neutral, and thus did not

violate the First Amendment. We affirm the district court’s

entry of summary judgment in the County’s favor, and

dismiss the County’s conditional cross-appeal as moot.

AFFIRMED in part; DISMISSED in part.

CHRISTEN, Circuit Judge, dissenting:

The majority and I part ways at the starting line. In my

view, the district court erred by concluding that King County

created only a limited public forum. The County’s policy and

practice unmistakably demonstrate an intent to create a

designated public forum on its Metro bus exteriors. 

Accordingly, the First Amendment requires that the County’s

decision to restrict SeaMAC’s speech must be necessary to

serve a compelling state interest and narrowly drawn; in other

words, it must survive strict scrutiny. This is not to pre-judge

the outcome of the case. The safety of public transit systems

is of paramount importance, and it may be that credible

threats created a compelling state interest. But it also may be

that the County inappropriately bowed to a “heckler’s veto”

and suppressed speech that should have been protected. To

faithfully apply our precedent to the actual facts established

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by the record, we should remand for the district court to

determine in the first instance whether genuine issues of

material fact exist under the appropriate level of scrutiny, i.e.,

whether the County’s safetyconcerns justified cancellation of

the ad.

The outcome of this dispute hinges on whether the

County created a designated public forum or a limited public

forum. The essential question in differentiating between the

types of fora is what the government intended at the time it

opened the forum, not when it closed it. We must consider

the government’s policy and practice to glean its intent. 

Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Def. &Educ. Fund, Inc., 473 U.S.

788, 802 (1985).

I. Metro’s policy establishes the County’s intent to

create a designated public forum.

A policy that makes government property “generally

available to a certain class of speakers” signals an intent to

create a designated public forum, whereas a policy that

“reserve[s] eligibility for access . . . to a particular class of

speakers, whose members must then, as individuals, obtain

permission” signals an intent to create a limited public forum. 

Ark. Educ. Television Comm’n v. Forbes, 523 U.S. 666, 679

(1998) (internal quotation marks omitted). The operative

inquiry in this case is not, as the majority suggests, whether

Metro’s policy makes its buses generally available to all

advertisements, but rather whether it makes its buses

generally available to noncommercial, political

advertisements. See id. at 680 (“[W]ith the exception of

traditional public fora, the government retains the choice of

whether to designate its property as a forum for specified

classes of speakers.”).

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Although Metro’s policy required all proposed ads to be

screened, Metro had no standards, written or otherwise, to

guide application of the subjective restriction on

“objectionable” and “offensive” content contained in its

“civility clauses.” This fact alone strongly suggests that the

County created a designated public forum. See Hopper v.

City of Pasco, 241 F.3d 1067, 1077 (9th Cir. 2001)

(“Standards for inclusion and exclusion in a limited public

forum must be unambiguous and definite . . . .” (alteration

and internal quotation marks omitted)). Metro’s civility

clauses are so broad and permit so much official discretion

that they cannot validly serve a “selective” function for

purposes of forum analysis. See Forsyth Cnty., Ga. v.

Nationalist Movement, 505 U.S. 123, 130 (1992)

(government scheme regulating competing uses of a public

forum “may not delegate overly broad licensing discretion to

a government official”); Planned ParenthoodAss’n/Chi.Area

v. Chi. Transit Auth., 767 F.2d 1225, 1230 (7th Cir. 1985)

(“We question whether a regulation of speech that has as its

touchstone a government official’s subjective view that the

speech is ‘controversial’ could ever pass constitutional

muster.”). What is even more troubling is that Metro’s

guidelines actually invite a heckler’s veto by expressly

authorizing the censorship of speech whenever it is

“reasonablyforeseeable” that there will be strong objections.1

1

In this case, many of the most vehement objections appear to have

been expressed anonymously over the telephone or Internet. It requires

little risk or effort to express threats and vitriol through such faceless and

frequently traceless communications. To quote the popular Seattle

hip-hop artist Macklemore: “Have you read the YouTube comments

lately?”—it’s easy to hide “behind the keys of a message board” or

similarly anonymous medium. I do not discount the possibility that Metro

received credible threats, but whether the threats were credible is best left

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The majority emphasizes that SeaMAC’s ad and the

counter ads were “pending before the County at the same

time” and “rejected . . . ‘at the same time.’” To the contrary,

the record is crystal clear that SeaMAC’s ad was approved by

Titan, Metro officials, and the KingCounty Executive. It was

only after SeaMAC’s ad had been accepted and objections

were received that the County reversed its decision and

refused to run SeaMAC’s ad. When it made that decision, it

also decided to reject the counter ads proffered in response to

SeaMAC’s ad.

The County reversed its initial approval of SeaMAC’s ad

because of continued negative publicity and angry responses. 

When the controversy began, the Metro Transit Police

reviewed SeaMAC’s ad and settled on a “mid-range” plan to

address any security issues it might cause. Metro’s general

manager concurred in the police proposal, stating that it

“looks like a good plan of action.” Only when the

controversy failed to die down after a few days did the

County change its tune. Whether the County had compelling

reasons for reversing itself remains an open question.

Metro’s contract with Titan permitted Titan to sell ad

space for almost any ad of a controversial or political nature,

thereby demonstrating an intent to grant general, not

selective, access. See Forbes, 523 U.S. at 679. Metro’s

patently subjective policy with respect to such ads—the

subjective nature of which was clearly evidenced in the

acceptance and subsequent rejection of SeaMAC’s

ad—distinguishes this case from other transit agency cases

addressing clear policies excluding political, religious, or

to law enforcement authorities; it is not relevant to what type of forum

Metro created.

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noncommercial advertising. See, e.g., Lehman v. City of

Shaker Heights, 418 U.S. 298, 299–300 (1974) (ban on

political advertising); Am. Freedom Def. Initiative v.

Suburban Mobility Auth. for Reg’l Transp. (SMART),

698 F.3d 885, 890–92 (6th Cir. 2012) (same); Children of the

Rosary v. City of Phoenix, 154 F.3d 972, 976–78 (9th Cir.

1998) (ban on noncommercial advertising). The majority’s

holding impermissibly allows the County to create a

designated public forum for purposes of selling ad space, and

then engage in discretionary, content-driven evaluation of

speech on an ad hoc basis by invoking its infinitely

amorphous “civility clauses.”

II. Metro’s consistent application ofthe policy establishes

the County’s intent to create a designated public

forum.

Even if Metro’s policy could be described as

demonstrating an intent to create a limited forum, controlling

case law would still require us to determine whether, in

practice, Metro consistently enforced its civility clauses. See

Hopper, 241 F.3d at 1075 (“[A]n abstract policy statement

purporting to restrict access to a forum is not enough. What

matters is what the government actually does—specifically,

whether it consistently enforces the restrictions on use of the

forum that it adopted.”). The history of Metro’s actual

practices undeniably reveals an intent to create a designated

public forum.

Metro’s advertising program project manager, who has

worked for the County since 1985, declared that it was not “a

goal of the [advertising program] to create an open forum for

public debate,” but she tellingly acknowledged that Metro

“has always accepted noncommercial advertising, including

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candidates for elected office, ballot measures, and ‘cause’

advertising.” See United Food & Commercial Workers

Union, Local 1099 v. Sw. Ohio Reg’l Transit Auth., 163 F.3d

341, 355 (6th Cir. 1998) (“[A] governmental entity may not

avoid First Amendment scrutiny simply by declaring that it

is not creating a public forum . . . .”). The advertising

program manager defined a “public issue” (“cause”)

advertisement as one that “conveys . . . a particularized

message of a social, religious, ideological or philosophical

nature,” “lacks a commercial purpose,” and therefore “is

primarily public communication” (emphasis added). The

advertising program manager also acknowledged that Metro

“accepted noncommercial advertising generally” (emphasis

added). For example, in 2009 Metro ran a pro-atheism ad

(“YES, VIRGINIA . . . THERE IS NO GOD”) that generated

a large number of comments.

Metro’s actual history of accepting ads for a variety of

political subjects, whether controversial or not, demonstrates

that the County created a designated public forum. See

DiLoreto v. Downey Unified Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ., 196 F.3d

958, 967 (9th Cir. 1999) (distinguishing school district’s

practice of excluding political, religious, or controversial

public issue advertising from cases where “the city or transit

authority controlling the bus sign advertisements historically

accepted advertisements on a wide variety of subjects”); N.Y.

Magazine v. Metro. Transp. Auth., 136 F.3d 123, 130 (2d Cir.

1998) (“Allowing political speech . . . evidences a general

intent to open a space for discourse . . . .”); Planned

Parenthood, 767 F.2d at 1232 (transit agency’s history of

accepting political ads and wide variety of controversial

public issue ads indicated intent to create public forum). In

addition to its longstanding practice of generally accepting

“cause” advertising, Metro approved three prior controversial

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ads specifically relating to the Middle East conflict. One ad,

sponsored by the Arab American Community Coalition,

stated “SAVE GAZA!” Another stated, “END SIEGE OF

GAZA!” A third ad, sponsored by the Jewish Federation of

Greater Seattle, stated “THOUSANDS HAVE FALLEN IN

PURSUIT OF PEACE, Remember Israel’s soldiers and

victims of terror. Join us in a moment of Silence on April 28

at 11:00 am.” The County’s attempt to distinguish the other

ads related to the Middle East controversy boils down to the

fact that the previous ads did not spark public outcry. If this

is the most salient distinction, then it is plain that Metro’s

civility clauses amount to a memorialization of a heckler’s

veto and a content-driven suppression of speech.

The majority observes that Titan rejected proposed ads

that did not comply with the contract. But the record does not

support the majority’s assertion that such rejection was

“routine,” and when ads were rejected, it was usually based

on the policy’s separate and specific restriction on alcohol

and tobacco content. Despite its supposedly selective

screening process, it appears that Metro had rejected only one

set of ads under the civility clauses prior to this case.

In 2009, pursuant to the civility clauses, Metro directed

Titan to reject a proposed series of ads submitted by “Citizens

for Home Safety.” These ads included language like “HATE

CRIMES COMMITTED BY CULTS ARE DESTROYING

THE USA” and “NAZI MEDICAL ABUSE COMMITTED

FOR 15 YEARS: State Hate Committed by Elected Officials

& Doctors.” The sponsors of this set of ads ended up

withdrawing their application before it was formally denied. 

There is no evidence of Metro ever rejecting any other ad

under the civility clauses in the 30-plus-year history of its

advertising program. On the County’s motion for summary

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judgment, the district court should have weighed this single

example against the ads Metro did accept, drawing all

appropriate inferences in SeaMAC’s favor. Consideration of

these ads tips the balance sharply toward the conclusion that

the County created a designated public forum.

The argument that Metro’s advertising policy was

consistently applied is also severely undermined by the

undisputed facts leading up to the cancellation of the

SeaMAC ad. Metro’s advertising program manager initially

approved the ad. It was then forwarded to Metro’s General

Manager, who also approved it as consistent with Metro’s

policy. Finally, the ad was sent to the King County

Executive, who “recognized that [the ad] was potentially

offensive to some of the community,” but “didn’t feel that it

rose to the level of violating [Metro’s civility] policy.” In

other words, it was approved at all levels in the County.

The County adhered to its opinion that the ad was

compliant with Metro’s policy for a period of time even after

a local television news station ran a story about the ad that

provoked complaints from the public. Only when the

heckling became louder did the County reverse itself. 

Notably, the reversal came after the Metro Transit Police had

reviewed the ad and adopted a mid-range security plan it

considered sufficient to handle any potential disruptions.2

2 The majority asserts the potential disruption “wasn’t covered by the

existing security protocol because, as Metro’s Operations Manager stated,

it represented ‘a totally new and different situation that we [had not]

confronted before.’” But Metro’s Operation Manager made this statement

in the course of explaining that Metro did not have any pre-existing

“security plan for dealing with a disruption that had to do with a public

demonstration ofsome sort that had to do with what was on a bus.” Metro

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One of the virtues of a consistently-applied rule is knowing

how it will be applied in the future. If SeaMAC’s ad had

actually run afoul of a consistently applied policy, as the

majority opines, surely it would not have made it past three

separate gatekeepers.

Perhaps recognizing that there is no actual track record of

consistent application of the civility clauses, the majority

argues that the court should “focus on the County’s

enforcement of the policy as a whole, not just the specific

provision invoked to exclude the ads at issue.” But the other

policy restrictions were narrow and specific, and applying

them did not require the County to look beyond the content

of the ad. They prohibited the promotion or depiction of

subjects like alcohol and tobacco, adult entertainment or

services, sexual or excretory activities, and material that is

false or defamatory. Allowing the County to piggyback its

ambiguous disruption and civility standards on its consistent

rejection of alcohol and tobacco ads opens a back door to

official arbitrariness and a heckler’s veto. With regard to the

civility clauses, the only consistent practice demonstrated by

the record in this case is Metro’s historically consistent

practice of allowing virtually any political ad. This wellestablished pattern “trump[s] the general rule that no public

forum is created when the government requires speakers to

obtain permission before engaging in expressive activity in

the forum.” Hopper, 241 F.3d at 1077 (discussing Christ’s

Bride Ministries, Inc. v. Se. Pa. Transp. Auth., 148 F.3d 242,

252–55 (3d Cir. 1998)).

crafted a plan specifically for SeaMAC’s ad, which Metro’s Operations

Manager believed was sufficient to handle any potential disruptions.

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The Third Circuit’s opinion in Christ’s Bride is

particularly instructive. There, a transit agency removed a

poster that declared “Women Who Choose Abortion Suffer

More & Deadlier Breast Cancer” after it received numerous

complaints, including a letter from the Assistant Secretary of

Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

stating that the ad was misleading and inaccurate. 148 F.3d

at 245–46. The transit authority’s policy restricted “libelous,

slanderous, or obscene advertising,” and reserved the right to

remove any advertising material that was later deemed

“material[ly] objectionable.” Id. at 250–51. The transit

agency claimed it had not created a public forum because its

written policy retained for it the sole discretion to reject or

remove ads it found objectionable. Id. at 251. But the Third

Circuit begged to differ, noting the transit authority had

accepted “a broad range of advertisements for display,”

including two prior ads favoring reproductive rights. Id. at

251–52. Additionally, though the main purpose of the

advertising program in Christ’s Bride was to generate

revenue, the record showed a secondary goal of “promoting

‘awareness’ of social issues and ‘providing a catalyst for

change.’” Id. at 249. Given the transit authority’s “practice

of permitting virtually unlimited access to the forum,” the

Third Circuit ruled the transit authority had created a

designated public forum. Id. at 252.

This case closely parallels Christ’s Bride. Like the transit

authority there, Metro’s “written policies . . . specifically

provide for the exclusion of only a very narrow category of

ads,” and Metro’s “goals of generating revenues through the

sale of ad space” and its “practice of permitting virtually

unlimited access to the forum” plainly establish that the

County created a designated public forum. Id. After

litigation was initiated, Metro’s General Manager declared

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34 SEATTLE MIDEAST AWARENESS CAMPAIGN V. KING CNTY.

that “[i]t has never been a part of Metro’s mission to provide

a forum for public debate, especially on non-transit issues,”

but the record also includes a February 2009 email from a

Titan representative that speaks volumes about the historic

application of the policy. The representative was one of a

handful of individuals responsible for responding to the

controversy. The email, on which Metro’s advertising

program manager was copied, succinctly explains that

Metro’s restrictions “are there to allow the freedom and

opportunity for all organizations and associations either

political or non-profit to benefit from using transit as a form

of advertising their ‘cause’” (emphasis added). Postlitigation declarations aside, Metro’s history of actually

allowing virtually unfettered access to anyone willing to

purchase advertising space on its bus exteriors establishes

that the County intended to open its government property to

public discourse, without the specific restrictions constitutive

of a limited public forum.

III. The nature of the forum does not compel a

contrary conclusion.

The purpose of a public bus system is to provide an

efficient and orderly means of public transportation; unlike a

public park, buses are not necessarily the type of government

property traditionally used for expressive activity. But

according to Metro’s advertising program manager, the

predominant purpose of the advertising program Metro chose

to create was to “generate revenue for Metro,” and Metro

decided to accept “noncommercial advertising, including

candidates for elected office, ballot measures, and ‘cause’

advertising.” See N.Y. Magazine, 136 F.3d at 130 (holding

that because MTA generally accepted both commercial and

political speech, the outside of MTA buses was a designated

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SEATTLE MIDEAST AWARENESS CAMPAIGN V. KING CNTY. 35

public forum).3 There is nothing about selling ad space on

the exterior of Metro buses that is inconsistent with the

traditional use of Metro’s buses. Unlike judicial or municipal

buildings where expressive activity could interfere with

courtrooms or security, see, e.g., Sammartano v. First

Judicial Dist. Ct., 303 F.3d 959, 966 (9th Cir. 2002), the

record here contains no evidence that allowing expressive

activity interfered with Metro’s ability to operate as a transit

authority. In fact, it appears Metro was able to maximize its

ability to generate revenue to benefit the transit system by

opening up its advertising program to noncommercial

advertising.

I agree with the majority that the First Amendment does

not require a “categorical rule” designating a public forum

wherever the government has permitted some political

speech. The County could have allowed political campaign

advertising but not “cause” advertising, as many other transit

agencies have chosen to do. But when a government entity

3

In American Freedom Defense Initiative v. Washington Metropolitan

Area Transit Authority, 898 F. Supp. 2d 73 (D.D.C. 2012), the plaintiff

contracted with the transit authority to display a similar ad to the

counter-ad at issue here that said: “In any war between the civilized man

and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” 

Id. at 75. The transit authority indefinitely postponed the ad after a video

disgracing the prophet Mohammed led to anti-American violence in

several countries. Id. at 77. The district court noted that the D.C. Circuit

previously held that the transit authority had converted its subway stations

into public fora by accepting other political advertising. Id. at 79 n.6

(citing Lebron v. Wash . Metro. Area Transit Auth., 749 F.2d 893, 896

(D.C. Cir. 1984)). The district court, applying strict scrutiny, concluded

that the transit authority’s concerns of passenger and employee safety

were compelling, but the transit authority’s failure to consider alternatives

“plus the open-ended and purely subjective duration of its postponement

were not narrowly tailored as required.” Id. at 76.

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36 SEATTLE MIDEAST AWARENESS CAMPAIGN V. KING CNTY.

decides to permit a “wide array of political and public-issue

speech,” including controversial political advertising, it

cannot escape the conclusion that it has opened the forum for

such speech generally, and it may not close the forum, after

the fact, to justify a content-based rejection of speech. See

United Food, 163 F.3d at 355.

The majority’s view seems to be that the government may

“elect[] to keep open” a designated public forum or a limited

public forum for as long as it sees fit, and close such a forum

“whenever it chooses.” I agree that outside of traditional

public fora, the government may choose not to permit certain

categories of speech on its property, but it must make that

choice up front. The court’s opinion suggests the government

may open and shut a forum, willy-nilly, in response to public

uproar—a particularly dangerous precedent in light of

modern technology. Emails, text messages, and tweets can

zing through the airwaves to and from countless devices in a

matter of seconds, generating scores of impetuous responses

just as fast. Given today’s modern and often anonymous

communication technology, public outcrycan be frequent and

fleeting. Granting the government license to close a forum it

previously made open in response to such outcry confers

broad power on hecklers to stamp out protected speech they

find objectionable.

The First Amendment by no means puts the government

in a straightjacket; an essential aspect of the designated public

forum is that the government may adopt specific,

consistently-applied limitations, such as permitting only

commercial ads. But properly applied, First Amendment

doctrine plays a fundamental role in restraining the

government from picking and choosing which speech is

“uncivil,” or from succumbing to a heckler’s veto. This was

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SEATTLE MIDEAST AWARENESS CAMPAIGN V. KING CNTY. 37

the logic behind well-reasoned decisions from other circuits

like N.Y. Magazine, Planned Parenthood, and Christ’s Bride,

with which this court professes accord, see Children of the

Rosary, 154 F.3d at 978, but from which the majority opinion

now distances itself.

Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to

SeaMAC, it is clear that even if Metro initially intended to

limit access to its bus exteriors, it abandoned that intent by

allowing ads on controversial subjects “as a ‘matter of

course.’” Christ’s Bride, 148 F.3d at 254. Because we

should remand for the district court apply strict scrutiny in the

first instance, I respectfully dissent.

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