A federal judge ruled that Philadelphia’s public transit service must run anti-Muslim ads with the message, “Jew Hatred: It’s in the Quran.” In response to the ruling, a staff attorney for the Council on American Islamic Relations said, “The First Amendment protects everyone, the hateful and the loving alike. Instead of suppressing dishonest and offensive speech, the American tradition is to respond with speech of our own. You can be sure we will.” (The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 13, 2015, by Jeremy and Michael Matza)
The New Hampshire non-profit that developed the ads that link Muslims to Hitler said that the judge’s ruling vindicated the non-profit in finding that the transit authority’s ban was content- based in violation of free speech rights. (CBSPhilly, March 11, 2015, by Cherri Gregg)
Shortly after the Philadelphia ruling, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Seattle transit district could reject the ads of an anti-Israel group on the grounds that ads reading “Israeli War Crimes Your Tax Dollars at Work” would provoke violence. (Metropolitan News-Enterprise, March 19, 2015, by Kenneth Ofgang)