Opinion ID: 419596
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Type of Public Property At Issue

Text: 18 The trial court below analyzed the display advertising areas at National and Dulles as separate nonforums within the airports' terminals, akin to the advertising spaces at issue in Lehman v. City of Shaker Heights, 418 U.S. 298, 94 S.Ct. 2714, 41 L.Ed.2d 770 (1974). Lehman upheld a governmental scheme by which the City of Shaker Heights leased car cards on municipal buses for commercial and public service, but not political, advertisements. Id. at 303, 94 S.Ct. at 2717. Reasoning that the factual pattern in the present case is similar to the factual pattern presented in Lehman, the district court concluded that the FAA should enjoy the same latitude to impose subject matter restrictions on advertising at the airports as the City of Shaker Heights enjoyed to impose limitations on advertising on its buses. Memorandum Decision, RD 23 at 6. 19 We think that the district court's analogy to Lehman is factually flawed and the situation at National and Dulles far more complex than the district court's easy nonforum classification reflects. In particular, the district court was wrong to consider the advertising display cases as discrete, self-contained forums--apart from the airport terminals in which they are located. Although we readily acknowledge the fact that the airports' advertising facilities are physically distinct parts of the terminals--access to which is limited to those willing to pay and to meet certain format requirements--we note that these facilities are for the most part physically separated from the terminals only by glass panels or translucent plexiglass whose sole purpose is to frame or project messages of outside organizations to the terminals' public users. Given the peculiar role of these facilities as the self-described premiere communications medium at National and Dulles, see, e.g., TDI, Airport Advertising--The Blue Chip Medium, RD 15 (Attachment 4), any restrictions placed on the subject matter of airport advertisements are also placed on one of the dominant forms of speech--if not the dominant medium of outside communication--within the airport terminals themselves. Accordingly, to appraise accurately the public forum/nonforum nature of the public properties at issue in this case, we must evaluate the nature of the airport terminals of which the display advertisement areas are an organic part. Our consideration of the airport terminals in this case parallels the Supreme Court's consideration of the functions and physical limitations of the buses at issue in Lehman. 318 U.S. at 306, 94 S.Ct. at 2718 (Douglas, J., concurring) ([b]ut a streetcar or bus is plainly not a park or sidewalk or other meeting place for discussion ....); see infra at 766-767 (discussing Lehman ); cf. Greer v. Spock, 424 U.S. 828, 96 S.Ct. 1211, 47 L.Ed.2d 505 (1976) (public area of military base properly regarded as a nonforum in light of the larger historical and symbolic context of the military base as a whole). 20
21 The Council seeks to place its advertisements in those open areas of National and Dulles Airports that contain many of the facilities and services of a fair-sized municipality. Roughly eighteen million people pass through the concourses and walkways of these two airports each year, enjoying the benefits of restaurants and snack bars, two post offices, various specialty shops, two medical stations, at least five bars, a barber shop, drug stores, banks, newsstands, and police stations. See generally Affidavit of George N. Terris (Attachment 3), RD 15; Fiscal Year 1982 Appropriations: Hearings Before the Subcomm. on Aviation of the House Comm. on Public Works and Transportation, Part 2, 97th Cong., 1st Sess. 158 (Dept. of Transportation submission). Although not every form of speech is necessarily consistent with the airports' primary use, it seems clear that the public places in these airports are far more akin to such public forums as streets and common areas than they are to such nonforums as prisons, buses, and military bases. 22 Although this court has not heretofore had occasion to analyze the public areas at National and Dulles for first amendment purposes, our categorization of those areas as public forums is supported by the similar conclusions of other courts. In Chicago Area Military Project v. City of Chicago, 508 F.2d 921 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 421 U.S. 992, 95 S.Ct. 1999, 44 L.Ed.2d 483 (1975), for example, the Seventh Circuit held that the spacious, city-owned common areas [of Chicago's O'Hare Airport] ... resemble those public thoroughfares which have been long recognized to be particularly appropriate places for the exercise of constitutionally protected rights to communicate ideas and information, id. at 925; accord Kuszyski v. City of Oakland, 479 F.2d 1130, 1131 (9th Cir.1973) (Oakland Airport); Fernandes v. Limmer, 465 F.Supp. 493 (N.D.Tex.1979), aff'd, 663 F.2d 619 (5th Cir.1981), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 103 S.Ct. 5, 73 L.Ed.2d 1395 (1982) (Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport); International Society for Krishna Consciousness v. Wolke, 453 F.Supp. 869 (E.D.Wis.1978) (General Mitchell Field, Milwaukee); International Society for Krishna Consciousness of Western Pennsylvania, Inc. v. Griffin, 437 F.Supp. 666 (W.D.Pa.1977) (Greater Pittsburgh International Airport); International Society for Krishna Consciousness v. Rochford, 425 F.Supp. 734 (N.D.Ill.1977), aff'd in part, rev'd in part, 585 F.2d 263 (7th Cir.1978) (O'Hare Airport); International Society for Krishna Consciousness v. Engelhardt, 425 F.Supp. 176 (W.D.Mo.1977) (Kansas City International Airport). 23 That these judicial conclusions should apply with equal force to National and Dulles is evidenced by the fact that, as part of the Aviation Safety and Noise Abatement Act of 1979, Congress ordered the FAA to promulgate rules regulating access to public areas at National and Dulles for individuals and organizations desiring to solicit funds or distribute written material. 49 U.S.C. Sec. 1359 (Supp. V 1981). During the subsequent administrative rulemaking, the FAA specifically observed that at these two airports 24 [t]here is a considerable amount of social and commercial interchange in the terminals and, in many respects, the terminals are like any other public thoroughfare where there is no question that the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech, the exercise of religion and the right to peaceable assembly apply. These activities enjoy the protection of the First Amendment, and they may not be regulated by airport authorities in the same manner as commercial activity. 25 45 Fed.Reg. 35,314 (1980). We note that, pursuant to the FAA's solicitation and leafletting rules, 14 C.F.R. Secs. 159.91-.94 (1982), nonprofit organizations such as the Council are among those allowed to apply for leafletting and/or solicitation permits. 26 Given the considerable caselaw regarding airports in general and the specific congressional and administrative judgments regarding first amendment access to National and Dulles in particular, it is not surprising that the court below acknowledged the importance of the terminals as public forums. Memorandum Decision, RD 23 at 4-6. Yet, as discussed above, the trial court tossed aside all consideration of the larger forum and focused exclusively on the airports' display advertising areas as the only relevant forum at issue: 27 [T]he plaintiff does not seek to set up a booth, solicit donations, distribute leaflets, or proselytize in face-to-face encounters.... 28 . . . . 29 Rather, the forum in which plaintiff seeks to assert its political views is the display advertising areas reserved for commercial use under the TDI-FAA contract.... In structure, purpose, and operation, the commercial advertising displays thus constitute a separate forum for expression from the remainder of the terminal. The advertising display facilities are the particular method of communication at issue in this case. 30 Memorandum Decision, RD 23 at 4-5. To the extent the district court meant to focus particular attention on the governmental interests at stake in the integrity of the FAA-TDI advertising medium, the court's point is well taken. An appropriate assessment and weighing of the government's unique, nonspeech interests in the display advertising areas is obviously important. And the district court would make another fair point if it meant to underscore the fact that Congress' mandate to provide first amendment access to National and Dulles, like the public forum caselaw regarding other airports, arose in the context of leafletting and soliciting and not in the context of display advertising. But the trial court was wrong to hold that the Council's challenge to the FAA's advertising policy realistically could be analyzed in isolation, removed from the fact that the advertisements are placed in terminals that the FAA has itself deemed public thoroughfares where there is no question that the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech ... apply. 45 Fed.Reg. 35,314 (1980). 31 The trial court's artificially narrow focus in this case effectively writes out of the first amendment calculus the very consideration of place that underlies the concept of the public forum. See generally Stone, Fora Americana: Speech in Public Places, 1974 SUP.CT.REV. 233; Kalven, The Concept of the Public Forum: Cox v. Louisiana, 1965 SUP.CT.REV. 1. We are not presented here with a situation where public forum status is claimed for a public facility simply because of that facility's nearness to a recognized public forum. Cf. United States v. Grace, --- U.S. ----, ----, 103 S.Ct. 1702, 1709, 75 L.Ed.2d 736 (1983) (traditional public forum property will not lose its character merely because it abuts nonforums). Rather, we are asked to evaluate a governmental restriction on speech within a facility that is designed solely to operate as an organ of communication within a larger facility. Given this context, the display advertising areas at National and Dulles cannot be wholly divorced--by structure, function, or fiat--from the nature of the public place in which they occur. The poster graphics and backlighted dioramas on the airport walls, and the freestanding island showcases and carousels in the midst of the airport concourses, are described in FAA literature as an integral part of the terminal environment. See FAA, A Study of Airports--Design, Art & Architecture 4 (1981), RD at Defendant's Exhibit 1. TDI's promotional literature repeatedly emphasizes that the design of airport terminals and the attendant concentration of people are part of the advertising medium that it offers for sale. See TDI, Airport Advertising--The Blue Chip Medium, RD 15 (Attachment 4). One need not be a Marshall McLuhan to realize that the 200-plus advertising displays at National and Dulles have a significant effect on setting the subjects for discussion, introspection, or inquiry (or lack thereof) in concourses and walkways that the FAA has characterized in many respects ... like any other public thoroughfare for first amendment purposes. 45 Fed.Reg. 35,314 (1980). Whatever commonsense differences may exist in the forms of free speech allowable in airports, as opposed to parks and streets, an unusual consensus of judicial, legislative, and administrative opinion would classify the public areas of National and Dulles squarely within the public forum family. The district court's one-sided focus on the advertising display cases, without regard to the larger forum of which they are physically and functionally a part, distorts the first amendment realities of this particular medium of communication at these particular public places.
32 This point is reinforced by the Supreme Court's opinion in Lehman v. City of Shaker Heights, 418 U.S. 298, 94 S.Ct. 2714, 41 L.Ed.2d 770 (1974). As mentioned above, Lehman involved the exclusion of political advertising from car cards on city-owned buses that were otherwise open to commercial and public service messages. Although the Court's 5-4 decision upheld the exclusion, Justice Blackmun's plurality opinion and Justice Douglas' concurring opinion contain the bases for two important points of distinction between the on-board advertising space at issue in Lehman and the advertising space in transportation terminals such as those at National and Dulles. 33 First, the majority found that the government's ability to exclude political ads from buses was permissible, in part, because the exclusion did not affect the type of wide-open public forum where the free flow of information is especially vital. For example, in describing the buses at issue in Lehman, the plurality observed: Here, we have no open spaces, no meeting hall, park, street corner, or other thoroughfare. Id. at 303, 94 S.Ct. at 2717. And Justice Douglas explicitly noted in his concurrence: 34 If the streetcar or bus were a forum for communication akin to that of streets or public parks, considerable problems would be presented. The privilege of a citizen of the United States to use the streets and parks for communication of views on national questions may be regulated in the interests of all ... but it must not, in the guise of regulation, be abridged or denied. 35 Id. at 305, 94 S.Ct. at 2718 (quoting Hague v. CIO, 307 U.S. 496, 515, 59 S.Ct. 954, 964, 83 L.Ed. 1423 (1939) (emphasis added). Access to the advertising spaces in the public areas at National and Dulles thus presents precisely the type of situation left open by the Lehman Court. 36 A second, related distinction lies in the difference in intrusiveness between a political advertisement on a city bus and a similar ad placed in the more expansive, open areas of an airport terminal. For the Lehman plurality, the crowded confines of buses were inappropriate forums for political advertisements in part because they presented the risk of imposing upon a captive audience. 418 U.S. at 304, 94 S.Ct. at 2717. For Justice Douglas, the point was dispositive: In my view the right of the commuters to be free from forced intrusions on their privacy precludes the city from transforming its vehicles of public transportation into forums for the dissemination of ideas upon this captive audience. Id. at 307, 94 S.Ct. at 2719. The captive audience concerns of the Lehman Court, however, are obviously lessened in the open parts of airport terminals that the FAA likens to public thoroughfares. Indeed, one year later in Erznoznik v. City of Jacksonville, 422 U.S. 205, 95 S.Ct. 2268, 45 L.Ed.2d 125 (1975), the Court interpreted Lehman as recognizing that the degree of captivity and the resultant intrusion on privacy is significantly greater for a passenger on a bus than for a person on the street. Id. at 209-10 n. 5, 95 S.Ct. at 2272-2273 n. 5. A person in the airports' concourses or walkways who considers an advertisement--commercial or noncommercial--to be objectionable enjoys the freedom simply to walk away that a passenger on a bus does not. 37 By focusing only on the similarity in advertising schemes involved in the present case and in Lehman, the district court overlooked the wholly different types of public places in which these governmental schemes operate. Yet, as Lehman itself demonstrates, a government prohibition of political advertisements cannot be analyzed in isolation--the Lehman Court specifically tied its analysis to a consideration of the place from which the advertisements were to be banned. Unlike the buses at issue in Lehman, therefore, the government's ban on political advertising at the airport terminals at National and Dulles must be analyzed in light of the public forums in which it operates. 38
39 The distinctions we have drawn with Lehman v. City of Shaker Heights are not meant to obscure the similarities that exist between the governmental interest in making money from display advertising on buses and in making money from display advertising at airport terminals. Rather, the distinctions are important because they highlight the different first amendment considerations that come into play when the government seeks to capitalize on property with public forum characteristics. In this hybrid situation, unlike the wholly commercial nonforum at issue in Lehman, the mere fact that a collateral commercial venture is involved cannot obscure the first amendment interests at stake. See Southeastern Promotions, Ltd. v. Conrad, 420 U.S. 546, 549 n. 4, 555, 95 S.Ct. 1239, 1241 n. 4, 1242, 43 L.Ed.2d 448 (1975) (municipal theatre recognized as a public forum even though the theatre was managed as a nonprofit commercial venture); cf. Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 365 U.S. 715, 81 S.Ct. 856, 6 L.Ed.2d 45 (1961) (state action found for purposes of equal protection analysis under the fourteenth amendment, even though State of Delaware involved in a commercial venture). See generally Karst, Public Enterprise and the Public Forum: A Comment on Southeastern Promotions, Ltd. v. Conrad, 37 OHIO ST.L.J. 247 (1976). The government's ban on political advertisements at the airports, therefore, must be judged by a standard that reflects both the government's proprietary interests in its advertising medium as well as the first amendment interests in the public forum of which the advertisements are a part. 40 In choosing the proper standard, we are mindful of the emphasis placed by the Supreme Court on the character of the governmental restriction in issue. As mentioned above, subject matter restrictions on speech in public forums traditionally have been invalidated, although the Court has stated that such restrictions may be justified if shown to be truly necessary and finely tailored to serve substantial or compelling state interests. See cases cited supra p. 763. On the other hand, the Court repeatedly has sanctioned the use of reasonable, content-neutral time, place, and manner regulations in public forums if the regulations are narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest and if they leave open ample alternative channels of communication. See, e.g., United States v. Grace, --- U.S. at ----, 103 S.Ct. at 1707; Heffron v. International Society for Krishna Consciousness, 452 U.S. 640, 647, 654, 101 S.Ct. 2559, 2563, 2567, 69 L.Ed.2d 298 (1981). In the present case, the district court rejected the contention that the FAA's ban on political advertising could be analyzed as a content-neutral place or manner regulation: Because the FAA's policy does not restrict all display advertising but restricts only political advertising, a time, place, and manner analysis is inapposite. Memorandum Decision, RD 23 at 4 n. 8. The government does not contest this conclusion on appeal, nor do we see any reason to reject the district court's appraisal. Applying a content-neutral time, place, and manner analysis to the FAA's ban on political advertising would seriously understate the distinct first amendment interests at stake when the government chooses the proper subjects for communication in a given medium. Accordingly, we must recognize the FAA's ban on political advertising for the subject matter restriction that it is. 41 This subject matter restriction is not necessarily impermissible, however. Given that the airport advertising areas exist solely to raise revenue, see Affidavit of George N. Terris, RD 15, it follows that the FAA's revenue interest may constitute a sufficiently substantial or compelling interest to justify the FAA's distinction between political and commercial advertisements if: (1) there exists a convincing factual basis for treating the FAA's ban on political ads as a financial necessity; and (2) the revenue-threatening aspects of political advertisements cannot be ameliorated by less restrictive means. With this standard in mind, we turn to an evaluation of the FAA's subject matter restriction and its asserted justifications. 42