A federal appeals court ruled that a Pennsylvania transit agency, the Allegheny County Port Authority, violated the free speech rights of a nonprofit group who had sought to run a bus ad to inform ex-cons of their voting rights. The agency rejected the ad on the grounds that it did not accept noncommercial ads, but in fact they had accepted ads from other nonprofit groups.
A lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union said, “The 3rd Circuit recognized that government agencies like the Port Authority in this case cannot pick and choose which messages they want to display once they have opened up a space to outside speakers for speech.What the Port Authority did in this case was the essence of viewpoint discrimination.” -db
From a commentary from the First Amendment Center, August 11, 2011, by David L. Hudson Jr.