Opinion ID: 419596
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The First Amendment Interests at Stake

Text: 43 In applying the proper legal standard to the status quo at National and Dulles, and to the district court's decision in this case, it is appropriate to begin by discussing the first amendment costs imposed on the airports' public areas by the FAA's ban on political advertisements. Specifically, by creating premiere message spaces at the airports, but then prohibiting their use for political advertisements, the FAA has affected first amendment values in public forums in three ways. 44 First, the FAA's subject matter restriction allows the government significant control over the type of ideas to which the public will be exposed at National and Dulles. Although subject matter restrictions may not present the same dangers as more specific, viewpoint-based prohibitions, their costs in first amendment terms should not be understated: 45 The First Amendment's hostility to content-based regulation extends not only to restrictions on particular viewpoints, but also to prohibition of public discussion of an entire topic.... To allow the government the choice of permissible subjects for public debate would be to allow that government control over the search for political truth. 46 Consolidated Edison Co. v. Public Service Commission, 447 U.S. 530, 537-38, 100 S.Ct. 2326, 2333-2334, 65 L.Ed.2d 319 (1980) (striking down government prohibition on utility's discussing controversial issues of public policy in bill inserts). See generally Stone, Restrictions of Speech Because of its Content: The Peculiar Case of Subject Matter Restrictions, 46 U.CHI.L.REV. 81 (1978). In the present case, the government's ban on political advertisements implicates one of the central purposes of the first amendment: uninhibited, robust, and wide open debate on matters of public affairs. New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 270, 84 S.Ct. 710, 721, 11 L.Ed.2d 686 (1964). The first amendment affords broad protection to such speech to assure individual interests in self-expression, see, e.g., Police Department of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U.S. 92, 95-96, 92 S.Ct. 2286, 2289-2290, 33 L.Ed.2d 212 (1972), as well as to assure [the] unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people. Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 14, 96 S.Ct. 612, 632, 46 L.Ed.2d 659 (1976) (per curiam) (quoting Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 484, 77 S.Ct. 1304, 1308, 1 L.Ed.2d 1498 (1957)). Of course, the fact that the prohibited messages are to be presented in the form of paid advertisements does not diminish the first amendment recognition to which they are entitled; editorial advertisements constitute an important outlet for the promulgation of information and ideas by persons who do not themselves have access to publishing facilities.... New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. at 265-66, 84 S.Ct. at 718-719. 47 The particular political-commercial distinction drawn by the FAA's advertising policy implicates a second, related concern--that the policy operates in part to screen out only controversial, but not noncontroversial, political messages. Although the Supreme Court has noted the commonsense differences between speech that does no more than propose a commercial transaction and other speech, Virginia Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Consumer Council, 425 U.S. 748, 771 n. 24, 96 S.Ct. 1817, 1830 n. 24, 48 L.Ed.2d 346 (1976) (quoting Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Human Relations Commission, 413 U.S. 376, 384, 93 S.Ct. 2553, 2558, 37 L.Ed.2d 669 (1973)), the capacity of commercial speech to communicate simultaneously political and social messages can be discerned by anyone who gives second thought to a public relations advertisement by an industrial manufacturer of defense-related equipment or an advertisement for commercial abortion services available at a family planning clinic. See, e.g., Bigelow v. Virginia, 421 U.S. 809, 822, 95 S.Ct. 2222, 2232, 44 L.Ed.2d 600 (1975) (advertisement of available abortion services has newsworthy aspects). Indeed, the hazy line between ideological and commercial speech is reflected in the record of this case. Before expressing its doubts about the Council's political advertisement, TDI had expressed its preliminary approval of a travel-type poster of Namibia, which had been submitted earlier by the Council, as neither political nor objectionable. See Affidavit of Barbara Settle, TDI Account Executive, RD 14 at 1. But when one recalls that the international controversy over Namibia largely revolves about questions of political sovereignty, a travel poster of Namibia on behalf of the government of Southwest Africa/Namibia would be no more politically neutral than a travel poster concerning the Falkland/Malvinas Islands by the government of Argentina or a travel poster concerning the island of Taiwan by the Peoples' Republic of China. Yet TDI felt that such a poster fell on the commercial, rather than political, side of the line. The point is not that the distinction between commercial and political speech is entirely unworkable--there is little doubt that it can operate successfully at the extremes to screen out patently political from wholly commercial advertisements. Rather, the point is that there is a gray area near the middle in which this particular subject matter restriction tends to operate as a sub rosa penalty on presenting political viewpoints in controversial, as opposed to more benign commercial, forms. Cf. Metromedia, Inc. v. City of San Diego, 453 U.S. 490, 540, 101 S.Ct. 2882, 2909, 69 L.Ed.2d 800 (1981) (Brennan, J., concurring) (line between ideological and nonideological speech is uncertain). As has been noted in another context, the use of the controversial nature of speech as the effective touchstone for regulation threatens a value at the very core of the First Amendment, the 'profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.'  Consolidated Edison, 447 U.S. at 548 n. 9, 100 S.Ct. at 2339 n. 9 (Stevens, J., concurring) (quoting New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. at 270, 84 S.Ct. at 721). 48 There is a third, and final, first amendment interest at stake in this case. Even viewing the FAA's subject matter distinction at the extremes, where it works best, the government's approval of paid commercial, but not political, advertisements reverses the normal preference in our jurisprudence for noncommercial speech. See Virginia Pharmacy Board, 425 U.S. at 770-73, 96 S.Ct. at 1829-31. Although noting that government-created forums may create special problems, a plurality of the Supreme Court recently invalidated a municipal limitation on outdoor display advertising because the municipal scheme accorded a greater degree of protection to commercial than to noncommercial advertisements; such a scheme, the plurality stated, effectively inverts the relative values of commercial and noncommercial speech. See Metromedia, 453 U.S. at 513 & n. 19, 101 S.Ct. at 2896 & n. 19 (plurality opinion). 49 In short, the nature of the Council's proposed advertisement and the character of the FAA's restriction on speech combine to implicate a variety of different first amendment values.