Court Opinion

ID: 9455190
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:13:58.193009+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:29.929021
License: Public Domain

ROBB, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
The appellants argue that they are subject to invidious discrimination because they are denied the right to erect a structure on the Ellipse, whereas that right has been granted in the past to the Christmas Pageant of Peace. The argument fails for the reason that the appellants’ project and the Christmas Pageant of Peace are not comparable; in other words, there is a reasonable distinction between the two. The Christmas Pageant is a quasi-governmental activity sponsored and participated in by the President and conducted in his own backyard. Other sponsors and participants are numerous government officials and agencies, both federal and state, and foreign nations and their representatives. None of these features is found in the project contemplated by the appellants. Although as the appellants state the Pageant is financed and sponsored by private individuals and groups, these facts do not in my opinion change its fundamental character. I therefore reject the argument that the appellants are the victims of invidious discrimination.
As their second argument the appellants assert that the First Amendment gives them the right to erect and maintain on the Ellipse for a week a structure described by them as “an illuminated three-dimensional display approximately 20 feet long, 8 feet high and 6 feet deep.” The argument does not persuade me. I do not believe that freedom of speech includes the right to deface and clutter the Ellipse with what amounts to billboard advertising, by whatever name it may be called.1 The exercise of their First Amendment rights by the appellants does not entitle them to override *607the right of other citizens to enjoy an unblemished and uncluttered park.
The issue here is not whether the appellants may assemble or make speeches or distribute literature or display flags or placards. There is only one issue before us, namely, whether the park authorities may properly refuse to allow the appellants to erect and maintain their display on the Ellipse.
I would hold that the prohibition of the appellants’ structure by the park authorities is reasonable and proper.

. I doubt that such a display would be permitted beside a Federal-Aid highway. See 23 U.S.Code § 131.