Today the Fourth Circuit struck down a prohibition on so-called “political” advertising on the Greater Richmond Transit Company’s buses as facially violative of the First Amendment.
We first sued in 2017. My client, the White Coat Waste Project, sought to run this advertisement criticizing animal testing at the Richmond, Virginia Veterans Affairs Hospital.
The Greater Richmond Transit Company rejected the ad claiming it violated the bus company’s prohibition on “political” advertisement.
But the transit system could never offer a sensible definition of what “political” meant. It ran ads for a Vice Presidential debate. It ran ads for a pro-free speech art exhibit. It said it would run an advertisement stating, “Support our troops” if run by the federal government but would not run the same ad by a private veterans’ organization. It even ran other ads against animal cruelty, including one against dog fighting, telling viewers “don’t stand for cruelty.”
The Fourth Circuit held that the bus company’s “vaguely defined policies and even vaguer unwritten rules make it impossible for a reasonable person to identify what violates their advertising policy and what does not.”
And the Fourth Circuit found that this prohibition was not just unconstitutional as applied to White Coat Waste’s advertisement, but unconstitutional on its face. It thus affirmed the district court on the bus company’s appeal and reversed the district court’s ruling on White Coat Waste’s cross-appeal.
This was a long-fought victory but my office is happy we finally got to the right result.