The legal team from the American Freedom Law Center announced Wednesday the filing of a lawsuit against New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority because the government bureaucracy refused to run a "Hamas Killing Jews" advertisement on MTA buses.
"This will now be the third time we have sued the MTA, and it will likely be the third successful time," said AFLC senior counsel David Yerushalmi. "A word of advice to government bureaucrats doing the Muslim Brotherhood's bidding: We will sue you, and you will lose. Act accordingly."
The action was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of the sponsors of the ad, the American Freedom Defense Initiative and co-founders Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer.
The ad, drawing from a quote from Hamas TV, states: "Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah." It continues: "That's His Jihad. What's yours?"
A note at the bottom says: "This is a paid advertisement sponsored by American Freedom Defense Initiative. The display of this advertisement does not imply MTA's endorsement of any view expressed."
But the agency declined the ad, the complaint explains.
A "security assessment" by the MTA claimed it feared some New Yorkers "(presumably Muslims) would likely take the Hamas quote to kill Jews as a religious instruction and engage in imminent violence (presumable against Jews)."
The law firm argued: "Ms. Geller's message is timely in light of the fact that Hamas continues to call for Israel's destruction. Moreover, the Israel/Palestinian conflict has drawn intense international media attention as Hamas uses human shields (mostly women and children) to protect its rockets and jihadis as they set about to murder innocent Jewish men, women, and children."
Yerushalmi noted the AFLC has "successfully litigated cases where government transit authorities permit Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas front groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations to run ads misleading the public about jihad and Islamic Jew hatred."
"When our clients run ads exposing this Jew hatred, all of a sudden the transit authorities are worried about the 'tone' of the conversation or conjure up some threat of violence," he said.
AFLC co-founder Robert Muise said the MTA’s "prior restraint on our client's speech is not only wrongheaded, it is clearly unconstitutional."
"Under the First Amendment, the government is not permitted to impose special prohibitions on speech out of fear that some members of the public might react violently to its content. Quite simply, the First Amendment knows no heckler's veto," Muise said.
"If the MTA can get away with this obvious ploy to manufacture a threat when this ad has already run without incident in Chicago and San Francisco for months, it will use this pretext to shut down all unwanted speech," he said. "This would not only make a mockery of the First Amendment, it would actually encourage the thuggery and violence the MTA now claims it fears."
It was just a few days earlier that Geller voluntarily withdrew another ad. It said: "Executioner who beheaded reporter after becoming devout. It's Islamorealism."
The ad included an image of slain U.S. reporter James Foley, beheaded by Islamic terrorists. At the request of the family, the ad was discontinued.
Yerushalmi explained the decision to pull the ad.
"As a mother, and one who still feels the pain of the hideous murders of many in her extended family by the Nazis, and with friends in Israel brutally affected by Islamic terrorism as a constant of daily life, Ms. Geller understands and feels intimately the pain your clients are suffering. For this reason, and this reason alone, my clients have reached out as early as (Sept. 28) to the New York and San Francisco transit authorities' respective advertising agents to pull the displays depicting the captive Mr. Foley prior to his beheading."
The previous conflicts with the MTA also involved images from the AFDI.
In a commentary several years ago by Geller, she explained how the AFDI wanted to run pro-Israel ads after the MTA "ran a series of anti-Israel ads in the New York subways."
The agency refused, and the dispute went to court. Geller said at that time: "Federal Judge Paul Engelmayer wrote a wonderful, brilliant opinion, establishing a precedent that will do much to protect free speech all over the country. The money quote from Friday's ruling was when Engelmayer explained that 'the AFDI ad is not only protected speech – it is core political speech. The ad expresses AFDI's pro-Israel perspective on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in the Middle East, and implicitly calls for a pro-Israel U.S. foreign policy with regard to that conflict. The AFDI ad is, further, a form of response to political ads on the same subject that have appeared in the same space. As such, the AFDI ad is afforded the highest level of protection under the First Amendment.'"
Explained Geller: "It is a super opinion. Illustrating the MTA's inconsistency, Engelmayer noted that 'under MTA's no-demeaning standard, an advertiser willing to pay for the privilege is today at liberty to place a demeaning ad on the side or back of a city bus that states any of the following: 'Southerners are bigots'; 'Upper West Siders are elitist snobs'; 'Fat people are slobs'; 'Blondes are bimbos'; 'Lawyers are sleazebags'; or 'The store clerks at Gristedes are rude and lazy.''"
She wrote: "Engelmayer concluded: 'Whatever weight might be assigned to the governmental interest in banning demeaning speech on the exterior of New York City buses on an even-handed basis, there is no good reason for protecting some individuals and groups, but not others, from such abuse. MTA's no-demeaning standard, as currently formulated, is, therefore, inconsistent with the First Amendment.'"