Opinion ID: 419596
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Lehman v. City of Shaker Heights

Text: 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