A federal district judge ruled that Philadelphia had failed to justify their rejection of a ad to run at the airport by the National Association of Colored People (NAACP) on the disparity between spending on education and prisons. The airport ran the ad briefly then adopted a policy against political or noncommercial ads. The judge sensed that the city had an unwritten policy of rejecting ads they thought did not present a positive image of the city, but, he wrote, “…they cannot create a forum for private speech and then exclude speakers they do not agree with. The city allows nongovernment actors to speak in the airport so long as they toe the government’s line. By stifling speech that the city dislikes, the city risks creating an environment where nongovernment speakers whistle in unison a happy, secretly government-sanctioned tune.” (Courthouse News Service, August 12, 2014, by Rose Bouboushian)
NAACP attorney Sandy Bilus said that the city could not chose only “positive” ads at the expense of robust discussion of public issues and that snack food ads should not preempt ads on important issues such as the underfunding of education in poor sections of the city. She also said the government could not shut down speech solely because they object to its content. (Law360, August 4, 2014, by Kelly Knaub with Zach Winnick and Linda Chiem)