Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-03-07195/USCOURTS-caDC-03-07195-1/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
District of Columbia
Appellant
Anthony Gittens
Appellant
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued September 10, 2004 Decided July 5, 2005

No. 03-7195

PEOPLE FOR THE ETHICAL TREATMENT OF ANIMALS, INC.,

APPELLEE

v.

ANTHONY GITTENS,

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COMMISSION

ON THE

ARTS AND HUMANITIES, AND DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,

APPELLANTS

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(02-cv00984)

Donna M. Murasky, Senior Litigation Counsel, Office of

the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, argued the

cause for appellants. With her on the briefs were Robert J.

Spagnoletti, Attorney General, and Edward E. Schwab, Deputy

Attorney General.

Arthur B. Spitzer argued the cause for appellee. With him

on the brief was Fritz Mulhauser.

Before: GINSBURG, Chief Judge; RANDOLPH and ROGERS,

Circuit Judges.

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Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge RANDOLPH.

Concurring opinion filed by Circuit Judge ROGERS.

RANDOLPH, Circuit Judge: We remanded the record

because it was uncertain whether the First Amendment issue in

this case was moot. 396 F.3d 416 (D.C. Cir. 2005). On remand,

the district court ruled that its $4,000 award to the People for the

Ethical Treatment of Animals, Inc. -- PETA -- represented

damages for the District of Columbia’s violation of PETA’s

First Amendment rights. The damage award saves the

constitutional issue from mootness. See, e.g., Powell v.

McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, 497-98 (1969). We will therefore

proceed to the merits.

I.

The following recitation of facts is drawn from our earlier

opinion. In the fall of 2001, the District’s Commission on the

Arts and Humanities issued a “Call to Artists” for “Party

Animals,” a program intended to showcase local artists, attract

tourists and enliven the streets “with creative, humorous art.” 

“Party Animals” would be the “largest public art project in the

history of the District of Columbia.” It would consist of preformed sculptures of 100 donkeys and 100 elephants, four and

one-half feet tall and five feet long, installed at prominent city,

federal and private locations. The Commission invited artists to

submit designs for painting and decorating the models. If the

Commission’s selection committee approved the design, the

artist would receive a $1,000 honorarium and $200 for materials

and supplies. The Commission retained ownership of the

decorated donkeys and elephants and planned to sell them at

auction after the exhibit ended.

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The written announcement stated that “Party Animals”

would showcase the “whimsical and imaginative side of the

Nation’s Capital” and that the Commission was looking “for

artwork that is dynamic and invites discovery,” “original and

creative,” “durable” and “safe.” The Commission would not

“allow direct advertising of any product, service, a company

name, or social disrespect,” and would impose “restrictions

against slogans and inappropriate images.” All designs were

“subject to the Selection Committee’s decision.” More than

1,000 artists entered designs, most of which the Selection

Committee rejected.

The Arts Commission also announced that it would accept

designs outside of the general artistic competition from

individuals or organizations who paid $5,000 or more to be

high-level sponsors of the program. These sponsors could

choose their own artist to decorate a donkey or elephant, which

would be placed in a “prime public location.” The written

announcement also stated that the Arts Commission “reserves

the right of design approval” and would own the decorated

donkey or elephant.

On the base of each sculpture there would be a plaque with

the artist’s name and the following statement:

DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities

Anthony A. Williams, Mayor

www.partyanimalsdc.org

An organization contributing $2,000 or more also was entitled

to have its name on the plaque.

In mid-March 2002, PETA submitted a sponsorship

package, a check for $5,000, and a sketch of its proposed design,

drawn by a cartoonist. PETA describes itself as a nonprofit

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corporation, founded in 1980, to support “the principle that

animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for

entertainment.” Brief of Appellee at 5. The sketch PETA

submitted depicted an elephant with a sign tacked to its side

stating:

The CIRCUS is Coming

See: Torture

Starvation

Humiliation

All Under the Big Top

A selection committee member informed PETA that its design

was unacceptable. A few days later, PETA submitted two new

designs, one of a happy circus elephant, the other of a sad,

shackled circus elephant with a trainer poking a sharp stick at

him. The committee member called PETA’s representative to

say that the Commission had accepted the happy elephant, but

rejected the sad one. PETA then submitted a fifth design,

depicting a shackled elephant crying. A sign tacked to the

elephant’s side read: “The Circus is coming. See SHACKLES -

BULL HOOKS - LONELINESS. All under the ‘Big Top.’”

The Commission rejected this design. According to an affidavit

of its executive director, PETA’s proposal was “a political

billboard, not art, and unlike any other design submission, it

sought merely to promote a single issue and was not an artistic

expression consistent with the goals, spirit and theme of the art

project. The Party Animals arts project was designed to be

festive and whimsical, reach a broad based general audience and

foster an atmosphere of enjoyment and amusement. PETA’s

proposed fifth design did not complement these goals, and

indeed was contrary to the Party Animals’ expressive, economic,

aesthetic, and civic purpose.”

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The Party Animals exhibit opened at the end of April 2002.

One month later, PETA filed an action against the executive

director of the Arts Commission and the District of Columbia,

seeking a preliminary and permanent injunction and damages.

While the case was pending, PETA submitted a sixth design to

the Commission, slightly altering its fifth design. Again the

Commission rejected it, for reasons similar to those given for

rejecting PETA’s previous submission. All the while, the

Commission held PETA’s $5,000 check without cashing it.

After proceedings unnecessary to recount, the district court

issued a preliminary injunction, finding that the Commission

had violated PETA’s freedom of speech and requiring the

Commission to display PETA’s final elephant. People for the

Ethical Treatment of Animals v. Gittens, 215 F. Supp. 2d 120

(D.D.C. 2002). PETA had its elephant installed at Connecticut

Avenue and Q Street, N.W. It remained there from the end of

August until the end of September 2002, when “Party Animals”

closed. In November 2003, the court issued a memorandum

opinion and order granting PETA’s motion for summary

judgment, denying the District’s cross-motion, and ordering the

Commission to “refund” $4,000 of the $5,000 PETA had paid

because PETA’s elephant had been “excluded from the public

eye” for four of the exhibit’s five months. In late December

2003, the Clerk of the court entered the judgment.

The District noted an appeal from the order granting the

preliminary injunction (No. 02-7106), from the November 2003

memorandum and order granting summary judgment (No. 03-

7190), and from the December 2003 judgment for $4,000 (No.

03-7195). We dismissed the first two appeals in our earlier

decision. 396 F.3d at 425. Only the December 2003 judgment

is before us. 

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II.

Donkeys and elephants are the symbols of the two major

political parties. Restricting the “Party Animals” exhibit to only

these symbols excluded the symbols of all other political parties.

But there is no claim that the Commission thereby violated the

First Amendment. See, e.g., City of Cincinnati v. Discovery

Network, Inc., 507 U.S. 410 (1993). Nor is there any claim that

the Commission’s written design criteria -- no advertising, no

“social disrespect,” no “slogans and inappropriate images” --

were unconstitutional on their face.

As PETA sees the case, the Commission “would have had

a leg to stand on in rejecting PETA’s design” if it had accepted

“only whimsical or lighthearted designs” and had rejected “all

designs with political or social messages . . ..” Brief of Appellee

at 31. But PETA claims the Commission did not do so. Instead,

it approved “numerous designs that were not whimsical,” such

as tributes to heroes and victims of the September 11 terrorist

attacks and designs commemorating civil rights leaders. Id. at

30. And the Commission approved designs “with political or

social messages or slogans,” such as designs incorporating the

“butterfly ballot” used in Palm Beach County, Florida in the

2000 presidential election and a design containing quotations

from politicians or about politics. Id. at 11-12, 30. PETA’s

argument -- with which the district court agreed -- is that the

Commission modified its design criteria in practice and that

“Party Animals” was a “limited public forum,” at least for those

who donated $5,000 or more. Id. at 34, citing inter alia

Rosenberger v. Rector & Visitors of Univ. of Virginia, 515 U.S.

819 (1995); and Lamb’s Chapel v. Ctr. Moriches Union Free

Sch. Dist., 508 U.S. 384 (1993). Because each of PETA’s

“proposed designs satisfied the Party Animals ‘design criteria,’

as published and as applied by the Commission,” the

Commission engaged in viewpoint or content discrimination, in

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violation of the First Amendment, when it rejected those

designs.

The District, of course, disagrees. It argues that as a patron

of the arts, the Commission had discretion “to select those

messages that it wants to promote without running afoul of the

First Amendment.” Brief for Anthony Gittens, et al. at 23,

citing inter alia National Endowment forthe Arts v. Finley, 524

U.S. 569 (1998); Arkansas Educ. Television Comm’n v. Forbes,

523 U.S. 666 (1998); and Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173 (1991);

see also United States v. Am. Library Ass’n, 539 U.S. 194

(2003) (plurality opinion). The District also attempts to

distinguish PETA’s examples of non-whimsical designs from

the designs, which it approved, containing slogans or political

messages in order to show that the Commission reasonably

rejected PETA’s submissions as inconsistent with the goals and

spirit of the art project. Brief for Anthony Gittens, et al. at 32-

34.

Although the District invokes some of the Supreme Court’s

“government speech” cases, the latest of which is Johanns v.

Livestock Marketing Ass’n, 125 S. Ct. 2055 (2005), it is not

clear which speech it has in mind. We think it important to

identify precisely what, if anything, constituted speech of the

government. As to the message any elephant or donkey

conveyed, this was no more the government’s speech than are

the thoughts contained in the books of a city’s library. It is of no

moment that the library owns the books, just as the District of

Columbia owned the donkeys and elephants. Those who check

out a Tolstoy or Dickens novel would not suppose that they will

be reading a government message. But in the case of a public

library, as in the case of the Party Animals exhibit, there is still

government speech. With respect to the public library, the

government speaks through its selection of which books to put

on the shelves and which books to exclude. In the case before

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us, the Commission spoke when it determined which elephant

and donkey models to include in the exhibition and which not to

include. In using its “editorial discretion in the selection and

presentation of” the elephants and donkeys, the Commission

thus “engage[d] in speech activity”; “compilation of the speech

of third parties” is a communicative act. Forbes, 523 U.S. at

674.

This takes us part of the way toward resolving this case.

The First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause does not limit the

government as speaker, see Rosenberger, 515 U.S. at 833,

although other constitutional constraints not at issue here, such

as the Equal Protection Clause, might. The curator of a stateowned museum, for example, may decide to display only busts

of Union Army generals of the Civil War, or the curator may

decide to exhibit only busts of Confederate generals. The First

Amendment has nothing to do with such choices.

PETA argues here, as it did in the district court, that we

should treat the sponsorship portion of the “Party Animals”

program as a “designated” public forum, a forum in which

government can limit the subject of the program but cannot,

consistent with the First Amendment, discriminate on the basis

of viewpoint. See, e.g., Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Defense &

Educ. Fund, Inc., 473 U.S. 788, 802 (1985). We believe that

public forum principles “are out of place in the context of this

case.” Am. Library Ass’n, 539 U.S. at 205 (plurality opinion).

The situation here is far removed from one in which, for

instance, a private organization is planning a parade and the

permitting authorities restrict the points of view the organization

may express. Then the government would be performing the

role of regulating private speech. To illustrate further, the

authorities in charge of a city park must make content-neutral

and viewpoint-neutral decisions when passing on applications

for demonstrations in the park. See, e.g., Clark v. Community

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for CreativeNon-Violence, 468 U.S. 288 (1984). But those First

Amendment constraints do not apply when the same authorities

engage in government speech by installing sculptures in the

park. If the authorities place a statue of Ulysses S. Grant in the

park, the First Amendment does not require them also to install

a statue of Robert E. Lee. 

In many instances it is quite clear that the government is not

regulating private speech. The government may produce films

and publications. It may run museums, libraries, television and

radio stations, primary and secondary schools, and universities.

In all such activities, the government engages in the type of

viewpoint discrimination that would be unconstitutional if it

were acting as a regulator of private speech. See Frederick

Schauer, Principles, Institutions, and the First Amendment, 112

HARV. L. REV. 84, 104-05 (1998). As Professor Schauer

forcefully argues, the First Amendment problems posed by

similar kinds of government activity cannot be solved by

applying public forum analysis. Id. at 99. Public forums and

designated public forums give private speakers an easement to

use public property. Nothing of the sort occurred here. Instead,

the question we face is whether the “Party Animals” program,

or at least the sponsorship portion of it, was “one of the

government enterprises which may control for content or

viewpoint, and as to this question public forum doctrine offers

no assistance.” Id.

Four Justices in American Library Ass’n agreed with

Professor Schauer’s reasoning, as did Justice Breyer in his

concurring opinion, 539 U.S. at 215-16, which makes a

majority, although Justice Breyer would have applied strict

scrutiny in that case. The issue in American Library Ass’n was

whether Congress could condition funding to libraries on their

implementation of internet filter software. Writing for a

plurality, Chief Justice Rehnquist stated that “forum analysis

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and heightened judicial scrutiny are incompatible” with the

government’s role as patron of the arts, television broadcaster,

and librarian. Id. at 204-05. Arkansas Educational Television

Commission v. Forbes, 523 U.S. 666, and National Endowment

for the Arts v. Finley, 524 U.S. 569, had suggested as much. As

a television broadcaster, the government must “exercise . . .

journalistic discretion,” Forbes, 523 U.S. at 674; as an arts

patron, the government must “make esthetic judgments,” Finley,

524 U.S. at 586; and as a librarian, the government must “have

broad discretion to decide what material to provide to [its]

patrons.” Am. Library Ass’n, 539 U.S. at 204 (plurality

opinion). 

The same is true here. Consider two analogies. First,

suppose that instead of placing the elephants and donkeys on

sidewalks and in parks, the Commission placed them in one of

the District’s public buildings. There could be no persuasive

argument that the First Amendment would prohibit the

Commission from engaging in viewpoint discrimination when

it decided which designs to accept and which to reject. The

hypothetical is indistinguishable from a government art museum

and from this case. It should make no constitutional difference

that “Party Animals” was an outdoor art exhibit or that some of

the donkeys and elephants were placed on private property.

Second, suppose that the Commission put on a parade of

elephants and donkey floats, making the same design decisions

as it did here. Once again we can see no First Amendment

problem with the Commission making arbitrary or viewpointbased decisions about which donkeys and elephants it wanted in

its parade. No one could plausibly argue that an Inauguration

Parade has to have balance, or that the losing Presidential

candidate must -- if he requests -- be allowed to have a float of

his own. See Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual

Group of Boston, 515 U.S. 557, 568-70 (1995).

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As against this, PETA argues its First Amendment rights

were violated because the sponsorship portion of the “Party

Animals” program, as distinguished from the “Call to Artists”

portion, required those participating to pay the Commission

$5,000. It is true that anyone who paid this amount had greater

privileges than those who engaged in the general competition:

sponsors had more design leeway, they could select their own

artists and, if their designs were accepted, they would have their

donkey or elephant displayed for five months in a prominent

location with a plaque bearing their name. While the

Commission’s failure to abide by any of these commitments

might give rise to a contract claim, we cannot see how any of

this matters under the First Amendment. If the head of the

government’s National Gallery of Art solicited corporate

sponsorship to defray the costs of an exhibition, this would

hardly transform the National Gallery into a limited public

forum. We think the same would be true if the National Gallery

gave the sponsor some role in selecting which works of art the

museum would exhibit and the curator rejected the sponsor’s

choice, for subjective and arbitrary reasons. “[E]sthetic

judgments,” Finley, 524 U.S. at 586, often may appear to be

arbitrary, and sometimes are.

Much of PETA’s argument revolves around what degree of

control the Commission retained over the designs sponsors

submitted. The literature sent to potential sponsors included the

statement that the Commission “reserves the right of design

approval.” PETA believes this statement means nothing more

than that the Commission “reserved the right to enforce its

established criteria, and not a right to act with utter

arbitrariness.” Brief of Appellee at 29. But PETA offered no

evidence that this is what the Commission had in mind when it

reserved the right to reject designs. The declaration from the

Commission’s Executive Director, on which PETA relied, stated

something quite different. According to the declaration, the

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Commission retained discretion to reject designs that in the

Commission’s view “conveyed controversial messages,” which

is consistent with the Commission’s written announcement that

it would impose restrictions against what it considered to be

“inappropriate images.” The Commission rejected PETA’s

designs on that ground (and on the ground that they were not

art). Apart from the evidentiary point, PETA’s contention

founders on the legal principle that the Commission, in deciding

which designs to accept or reject -- that is, in using its “editorial

discretion in the selection and presentation of” the various

designs -- “engage[d] in speech activity.” Forbes, 523 U.S. at

674. As we noted before, “compilation of the speech of third

parties” is a communicative act. Id. As a speaker, and as a

patron of the arts, the government is free to communicate some

viewpoints while disfavoring others, even if it is engaging -- to

use PETA’s words -- in “utter arbitrariness” in choosing which

side to defend and which side to renounce. The First

Amendment’s Free Speech Clause does not apply to the

government as communicator, and it did not restrict the

Commission in its decisions about PETA’s elephants. 

Reversed.

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ROGERS, Circuit Judge, concurring: Without adopting the

court’s statement on mootness, Op. at 2, see PETA v. Gittens,

396 F.3d 416, 426-27 (D.C. Cir. 2005) (Rogers, J., concurring

in part and dissenting in part), I concur in the holding that the

Commission did not violate PETA’s First Amendment rights.

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