Source: https://w1.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1028/viewpoint-discrimination
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 18:29:18+00:00

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Viewpoint discrimination is a form of content discrimination particularly disfavored by the courts. When the government engages in content discrimination, it is restricting speech on a given subject matter. When it engages in viewpoint discrimination, it is singling out a particular opinion or perspective on that subject matter for treatment unlike that given to other viewpoints.
For example, if an ordinance banned all speech on the Iraq War, it would be a content-based regulation. But if the ordinance banned only speech that criticized the war, it would be a viewpoint-based regulation.
Because the government is essentially taking sides in a debate when it engages in viewpoint discrimination, the Supreme Court has held viewpoint-based restrictions to be especially offensive to the First Amendment. Such restrictions are treated as presumptively unconstitutional.
Boos v. Barry (1988) offers a vivid example of a viewpoint-based regulation. In that case, the Supreme Court struck down a District of Columbia statute that criminalized the display of any sign criticizing a foreign government within five hundred feet of its embassy.
On its face, this statute was viewpoint discriminatory because it singled out one particular perspective — criticism of foreign governments — for suppression.
Viewpoint discrimination is not always written into the text of a speech regulation. More often, it is carried out less visibly — through the exercise of governmental discretion.
A good example is Congregation Lubavitch v. City of Cincinnati (6th Cir. 1993), which dealt with expressive access to Fountain Square, a public square in downtown Cincinnati.
For many years, the city had allowed a broad range of private groups to erect expressive signs and exhibits on the square and to leave them there for short periods of time. But the city was not so agreeable when it was approached, separately and persistently, by a Jewish congregation and the Ku Klux Klan, both of which sought to erect overnight displays on Fountain Square.
Instead of granting these requests, the city quickly enacted a new ordinance that banned all overnight displays on the square, except those sponsored or co-sponsored by the city. Thus the new ordinance gave the city complete freedom to discriminate between favored groups — such as the Kiwanis Club, an Oktoberfest committee, and a librarians’ organization — and disfavored groups — such as the Jewish congregation and the Klan.
Because the city was using its new ordinance to invite or exclude each group based on its identity and message, the city was engaged in viewpoint discrimination.
First Amendment precedent prevents the exercise of viewpoint discrimination by prohibiting permit schemes that give unchecked discretionary power to speech-licensing officials.
A seminal decision in this area was Schneider v. State (1939), in which the Supreme Court struck down ordinances that banned leafleting without a license, but gave the licensing official unlimited discretion when granting or denying an application.
The Court’s core concern in Schneider was that speech-licensing officials would be free to engage in viewpoint discrimination if limits were not imposed on their regulatory discretion.
That concern has been borne out by the many successful challenges in the wake of Schneider. Time and time again, those challenges were brought by speakers who were barred from expressing controversial political views. Each time, the Court reaffirmed that any speech-licensing scheme that gives unfettered discretion to the licensing official would be struck down under the First Amendment.
Moreover, U.S. courts have been particularly hostile to licensing schemes that require a prospective speaker to disclose his intended message when applying for a permit.
A good example is offered by Rubin v. City of Santa Monica (C.D. Calif. 1993), in which the court struck down a permit scheme governing demonstrations in public parks because the licensor had unbridled discretion to inquire into the applicant’s intended message when deciding whether to grant a permit.
Although viewpoint discrimination often involves political speech, it can also arise when the government treats religious speakers less favorably than nonreligious speakers.
The Supreme Court made this abundantly clear in two decisions from the mid-1990s: Lamb’s Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District (1993) and Rosenberger.
In Rosenberger, the Court held that a student religious journal at the University of Virginia was entitled to the same subsidy from student activity funds received by secular student journals.
Viewpoint discrimination also arises when the government censors a private speaker. This principle remains one of the leading principles in First Amendment law. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled in Matal v. Tam (2017) that a federal trademark law prohibiting disparaging marks violated the First Amendment, because it constituted impermissible viewpoint discrimination.
A glaring exception to the viewpoint discrimination principle is government speech. When expression is classified as government speech, the First Amendment inquiry ends and there is no finding of viewpoint discrimination.
For example, the Supreme Court ruled in Walker v. Sons of Confederate Veterans (2015) that the state of Texas could refuse to sanction specialty license plates that bore the image of the Confederate flag. The Sons of Confederate Veterans contended that the refusal to sanction their specialty license plates constituted impermissible viewpoint discrimination. The Supreme Court disagreed in Walker, finding that the specialty license plate program was a form of government speech.
Heins, Marjorie. “Viewpoint Discrimination.” Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly 24 (1996): 99–169.
Hudson, David L., Jr. “Supreme Court Rules that Trademark Laws Can’t Discriminate on the Basis of Viewpoint,” Freedom Forum Institute, June 20, 2017.
Ferrucci, David N. “Giving Offense is a Viewpoint”: Supreme Court Holds It Is Viewpoint Discrimination To Deny Trademark Protection For Allegedly Offensive Marks." National Law Review, June 26, 2017.
Smith, Isaac. "Viewpoint Discrimination by Any Other Name: Ohio University's Retaliatory Closure of a Designated Public Forum." Jurist, Feb. 2, 2018.

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