I assume Fort Worth was relying on Lehman v. Shaker Heights (1974), which held that a bus system can accept commercial advertising and exclude all political advertising.
Lehman assumed that a commercial/political line did not involve viewpoint discrimination. Alan is of course right that Rosenberger, Good News Club, and similar cases say that a religious/secular line is viewpoint discrimination, and therefore cast doubt on whether Fort Worth's reliance on Lehman is justified or even reasonable. But one can imagine distinguishing advertising slogans that will fit on a placard or the side of a bus from the serious discussions at issue in Rosenberger and Good News. On Mon, 20 Dec 2010 11:35:03 -0800 "Brownstein, Alan" <aebrownst...@ucdavis.edu> wrote: > >I saw a newspaper story a few days ago (I'm sorry, but I don't recall all the >details) reporting that a city prohibited all religious advertising on buses >because people were annoyed with advertisements expressing a message by >Atheists suggesting that there is no G-d. Wouldn't that regulation constitute >unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination under Rosenberger and Good News >Club? I have serious problems with some of the Court's decisions that >characterize discrimination against religious expressive activities as >viewpoint discrimination. But if that's the rule, it would certainly seem to >apply in this case as well. > >Alan Brownstein >UC Davis School of Law >_______________________________________________ >To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu >To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see >http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw > >Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. > Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people >can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward >the messages to others. Douglas Laycock Armistead M. Dobie Professor of Law University of Virginia Law School 580 Massie Road Charlottesville, VA 22903 434-243-8546 _______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
