Petition of the day
on Sep 16, 2015 at 11:00 pm
The petition of the day is:
Issue: (1) Whether the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) created a public forum by accepting for display on its property a wide array of controversial political and public-issue ads, including ads that address the same controversial subject matter as Petitioners’ pro-Israel ad, and thus violated the First Amendment by rejecting Petitioners’ ad based on its content; and (2) regardless of the nature of the forum, whether the MBTA’s rejection of Petitioners’ advertisement based on an advertising guideline that prohibits ads considered by MBTA officials to be “demeaning and disparaging” was a viewpoint-based restriction of speech in violation of the First Amendment.