Opinion ID: 201356
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: I. Rejection of Ridley's advertisement

Text: 145 I need not repeat much of the background already provided by the majority. Suffice it to say, the offending guideline allows the MBTA to refuse any advertisement that contains material that demeans or disparages an individual or group of individuals. The guideline states that the MBTA will determine whether the advertising contains such offending language by reference to whether a reasonably prudent person, knowledgeable of the MBTA's ridership and using prevailing community standards, would believe that the advertisement contains material that ridicules or mocks, is abusive or hostile to, or debases the dignity or stature of, an individual or group of individuals. 146 Regardless of how the MBTA's forum should be classified, the MBTA's content-based restrictions must (1) be reasonable in light of the purpose served by the forum, Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Def. & Educ. Fund, 473 U.S. 788, 806, 105 S.Ct. 3439, 87 L.Ed.2d 567 (1985), (2) not discriminate on the basis of viewpoint, see id. at 800, 105 S.Ct. 3439 (Access to a non-public forum ... can be restricted as long as the restrictions are `reasonable and [are] not an effort to suppress expression merely because public officials oppose the speaker's view.' (quoting Perry Educ. Ass'n v. Perry Local Educators' Ass'n, 460 U.S. 37, 46, 103 S.Ct. 948, 74 L.Ed.2d 794 (1983)), and (3) not be so vague as to lead to arbitrary or discriminatory application, see, e.g., Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108, 92 S.Ct. 2294, 33 L.Ed.2d 222 (1972) ([I]f arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement is to be prevented, laws must provide explicit standards for those who apply them.). See also AIDS Action, 42 F.3d at 13 ([The MBTA] will, at the least, need to act according to neutral standards, and it will need to apply these standards in such a way that there is no appearance that `the [government] is seeking to handicap the expression of particular ideas.' (quoting R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, Minn., 505 U.S. 377, 394, 112 S.Ct. 2538, 120 L.Ed.2d 305 (1992)). The MBTA's rejection of Ridley's proposed advertisement fails on all of these points. 147 As indicated in appellant's brief, the prevailing community standards language contained in the offending MBTA rule is the MBTA's attempt to breathe validity into its regulation by interjecting one prong of the three-prong test in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 24, 93 S.Ct. 2607, 37 L.Ed.2d 419 (1973), for determining whether speech is obscene. One out of three prongs, however, is insufficient to cure the guideline's defect. Just because a definition including three limitations is not vague, it does not follow that one of those limitations, standing by itself, is not vague. Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844, 873, 117 S.Ct. 2329, 138 L.Ed.2d 874 (1997) (holding that the Communications Decency Act, which used a contemporary community standards test to regulate obscene speech on the Internet, offended the First Amendment because it was unconstitutionally vague). 148 Indeed, the very idea that the MBTA considers that there is such a thing as a prevailing community standard for demeaning or disparaging expression is itself ridiculous. How would such a rule be discerned? What evidence is there in the record that the third advertisement violated this standard, other than the MBTA's subjective and conclusory assertion that it did? To the contrary, a religious message such as the advertisement in question does not disparage its targets, but rather alerts them to a (perceived) fact concerning their eternal salvation. 2 This is not a case of a hate group defaming the followers of Judaism, Catholicism, or another religion as having some intrinsic individual flaw. Rather, Ridley's advertisement attempts to convert these people to her religion. Telling people they are risking going to hell is, like it or not, a key component of explaining why religious choices are so important, and reasonable minds could most certainly disagree with the conclusion that such a statement in any way demeans or disparages the very people it aims to save. That such a statement was considered hostile, mock [ing], or demean[ing] highlights the ambiguity and unreasonableness of the MBTA's guideline. The prevailing community standard formulation does not rescue the MBTA's guideline from vagueness; rather, it permits MBTA authorities — even if they have the best of intentions — to make subjective, ad hoc determinations about speech that appears controversial because it endorses a minority viewpoint. Cf. Keyishian v. Bd. of Regents, 385 U.S. 589, 603, 87 S.Ct. 675, 17 L.Ed.2d 629 (1967) (stating that the First Amendment protects against an oppressive pall of orthodoxy in schools). The guideline, therefore, is void for vagueness. 3 149 The MBTA has permitted religious advertising in its facilities, but discriminates among religious messages on the basis of their content. The majority claims that this content discrimination does not amount to viewpoint discrimination because all religions are allowed to positively promote their own perspective and even to criticize other positions so long as they do not use demeaning speech in their attacks. Maj. op. at 91. This conclusion assumes that a statement like all good Catholics go to heaven is sufficiently rebutted by replying all good Buddhists go to heaven. From this dialogue, we could draw the heartwarming conclusion that all good Catholics and Buddhists go to heaven. Good or bad, however, this is simply not the type of message that most religions espouse. Especially for small groups like Ridley's, an essential part of proselytizing is explaining that in their view and the view of their prophet, all good Catholics, Buddhists, etc. are not going to heaven; rather, they are going to hell. This belief is central to their message of conversion. It is the clearest statement of the (eternal) consequences for those who do not convert, and it is undoubtedly a fact that they are hoping will propel the message's viewers to go to their website and learn more about their beliefs. 150 Further, while the majority concludes that an advertisement may criticize other religions as long as it does so in a non-demeaning way, it is apparent from the rejection of Ridley's third advertisement that even a text-based criticism about religion 4 will be more likely to strike MBTA authorities as hostile, mocking, or demeaning, simply because it names that religion. Indeed, the third advertisement did not say anything that was not implicit in the second advertisement, which declared that there were over 1,000 (unnamed) false religions. If the guidelines permit the second advertisement, they cannot reasonably be applied to forbid the third. 5 Thus, the MBTA's position is intrinsically viewpoint oriented. 151 The religious nature of Ridley's advertisement increases the MBTA's burden, for religious advertising is a form of religious activity [that] occupies the same high estate under the First Amendment as do worship in the churches and preaching from the pulpits. Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105, 109, 63 S.Ct. 870, 87 L.Ed. 1292 (1943); see also Jews for Jesus, Inc. v. Mass. Bay Transp. Auth., 984 F.2d 1319, 1324 (1st Cir.1993) (prohibiting ban on religious leafletting at MBTA stations). The principle that government may not enact laws that suppress religious belief or practice [merely because it is unorthodox] is so well understood that few violations are recorded in our opinions. Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520, 523, 113 S.Ct. 2217, 124 L.Ed.2d 472 (1993) (striking down attempted suppression of religious rites that included animal sacrifices). 152 Simply put, the First Amendment does not recognize state authority to regulate religious expression merely because it might offend other persons. It is firmly settled that ... the public expression of ideas may not be prohibited merely because the ideas are themselves offensive to some of their hearers. Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46, 56, 108 S.Ct. 876, 99 L.Ed.2d 41 (1988) (quoting Street v. New York, 394 U.S. 576, 592, 89 S.Ct. 1354, 22 L.Ed.2d 572 (1969)). Religious speech — especially that of a proselytizing nature most often found in mass advertising by religious organizations — is intended to strike at the core of people's strongest beliefs; in that sense, it is inevitably hostile to those beliefs. Placing the government in a position of deciding whether to allow the expression of those beliefs depending on whether they are hostile or demeaning to the community strikes at the heart of the First Amendment's prohibitions against state regulation of speech. Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 414, 109 S.Ct. 2533, 105 L.Ed.2d 342 (1989) (If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.). Any religious speech will be viewed as hostile by at least some, if not all, of those who do not share the belief it proclaims. See Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652, 673, 45 S.Ct. 625, 69 L.Ed. 1138 (Holmes, J., dissenting) (Every idea is an incitement.). 153 Religious belief is quintessentially a matter of viewpoint. The government cannot allow dissemination of one viewpoint that it finds inoffensive or bland, and prohibit the dissemination of another viewpoint that it finds offensive or demeaning, because the point of all speech protection ... is to shield just those choices of content that in someone's eyes are misguided, or even hurtful. Hurley v. Irish-Am. Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group, 515 U.S. 557, 574, 115 S.Ct. 2338, 132 L.Ed.2d 487 (1995). Such distinctions are viewpoint based, not merely reasonable content restrictions. 154 By its very nature, a prohibition against ads that are hostile to an individual or a group of individuals is viewpoint based. The guideline would permit ads from Catholics, Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Muslims and others stating their beliefs — their viewpoints — that their religions were set up by God. 6 The MBTA, however, refuses to permit Ridley to state the opposite viewpoint: her belief that these religions were not set up by God, but are false, and that only her belief is correct. This is unquestionably viewpoint discrimination, as [t]he essence of viewpoint-based discrimination is the state's decision to pick and choose among similarly situated speakers in order to advance or suppress a particular ideology or outlook. Berner v. Delahanty, 129 F.3d 20, 28 (1st Cir.1997). 155 The MBTA's justification for censoring Ridley's religious expressions in the third advertisement is the suggestion that some riders might take offense to its content. This is not a sufficient reason to stifle speech protected by the First Amendment. See Planned Parenthood Ass'n/Chicago Area v. Chicago Transit Auth., 767 F.2d 1225, 1230 (7th Cir.1985) (We question whether a regulation of speech that has as its touchstone a government official's subjective view that the speech is `controversial' could ever pass constitutional muster.); see also Penthouse Int'l, Ltd. v. Koch, 599 F.Supp. 1338, 1349-50 (S.D.N.Y.1984) (poster cannot be prohibited in subway stations because its content is offensive to some). What the MBTA fails to understand is that [z]ealots have First Amendment rights too. Pinette v. Capitol Square Review and Advisory Bd., 30 F.3d 675, 680 (6th Cir.1994), aff'd on other grounds, 515 U.S. 753, 760, 115 S.Ct. 2440, 132 L.Ed.2d 650 (1995). I invite the majority to take note of that principle and conclude, as I do, that the MBTA engaged in viewpoint discrimination in refusing Ridley's third submission.