By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
In deciding to reject advertisements critical of Israel that had been scheduled to run on King County Metro buses late last year, a federal judge granted summary judgment in favor of the county, ruling it had acted appropriately.
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Jones said last week that while the court saw the need to defend free speech, in this instance the ads were “viewpoint neutral” and that the content about Israel was not at issue. He cited the response that followed after news outlets reported on the ad campaign, which would have appeared for a month on 12 Seattle buses, that resulted in thousands of calls to the county and a possible threat to public safety. The county’s decision, Jones said, was a “reasonable restriction in a limited public forum.”
King County has since decided that any advertisement that takes a political position would not be allowed.
Local Jewish groups had called the ads one-sided and unfair, while supporters of the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign, the organization that bought the ads, had called the campaign “perfectly legitimate messages that are asking U.S. citizens to think about where their tax dollars are going,” as JTNews reported in December.
SeaMAC and the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in federal court in February, where Jones denied a preliminary injunction. An appeal to the 9th District Court may be forthcoming, a SeaMAC spokesperson said.