Opinion ID: 515998
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Disposition of the Complaint

Text: 7 The Armory Board responded to appellants' complaint with a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6). 8 The district court granted the motion in part and denied it in part. The court first found that RFK Stadium is a nonpublic forum on the basis of the authorizing statute, D.C.Code Sec. 2-321, which states that the Stadium was to be built for holding athletic events; the court found the statute to be evidence that RFK Stadium is operated as a purely commercial venture and therefore that no public forum has been created. 6 As a consequence, the Armory Board was bound by the first amendment only to act reasonably and not discriminato rily in pursuing a policy on banners. The court then went on to determine that the Armory Board's policy was indeed reasonable; moreover, the court saw no need to resolve the precise dimensions of the policy because any policy that was not applied so as to discriminate against the viewpoints of particular speakers was reasonable. 9 Based on this reasoning, the district court dismissed all of appellants' claims except for a statutory civil rights claim and what the court termed appellants' viewpoint discrimination claim. Although the complaint included no claim denominated as such, it appears that the surviving viewpoint discrimination claim would have allowed appellants to show that the Armory Board had removed their signs solely to suppress the point of view [appellants] espouse[d] on an otherwise includible subject. Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, 473 U.S. 788, 806, 105 S.Ct. 3439, 3451, 87 L.Ed.2d 567 (1985). Such a showing would prove that the Armory Board had violated the first amendment as it applies to a nonpublic forum. 10 In order to make final the court's dismissal of the bulk of their claims, appellants subsequently voluntarily dismissed without prejudice the viewpoint discrimination claim and the statutory civil rights claim. This appeal was then taken.