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Page Number: 23.0

4  MANHATTAN COMMUNITY ACCESS CORP. v. HALLECK 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

II 
  I  would  affirm  the  judgment  below.    The  channels  are 
clearly a public forum: The City has a property interest in 
them,  and  New  York  regulations  require  that  access  to 
those channels be kept open to all.  And because the City 
(1) had a duty to provide that public forum once it granted 
a cable franchise and (2) had a duty to abide by the First 
Amendment once it provided that forum, those obligations 
did not evaporate when the City delegated the administra-
tion  of  that  forum  to  a  private  entity.    Just  as  the  City 
would  have  been  subject  to  the  First  Amendment  had  it 
chosen  to  run  the  forum  itself,  MNN  assumed  the  same 
responsibility when it accepted the delegation. 

A 
  When  a  person  alleges  a  violation  of  the  right  to  free 
speech, courts generally must consider not only what was 
said but also in what context it was said. 
  On  the  one  hand,  there  are  “public  forums,”  or  settings 
that  the  government  has  opened  in  some  way  for  speech 
by  the  public  (or  some  subset  of  it).    The  Court’s  prece-
dents subdivide this broader category into various subcat-
egories, with the level of leeway for government regulation 
of  speech  varying  accordingly.    See  Minnesota  Voters 
Alliance  v.  Mansky,  585  U. S.  ___,  ___  (2018)  (slip  op., 
at 7).  Compare Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U. S. 474, 480 (1988) 
(streets and public parks, traditional public forums), with 
Southeastern  Promotions,  Ltd.  v.  Conrad,  420  U. S.  546, 
555  (1975)  (city-leased  theater,  designated  public  forum), 
with  Christian  Legal  Soc.  Chapter  of  Univ.  of  Cal.,  Has-
tings College of Law v. Martinez, 561 U. S. 661, 669, 679, 
and n. 12 (2010) (program for registered student organiza-
tions,  limited  public  forum).    But  while  many  cases  turn 
on  which  type  of  “forum”  is  implicated,  the  important 
point here is that viewpoint discrimination is impermissi-
ble  in  them  all.    See  Good  News  Club  v.  Milford  Central