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

Heading: The Context of the Display Advertising Facilities at National and Dulles

Text: 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.