Blasphemous Cartoon Ad Blocked From D.C. Buses and Train Stations
The cartoon is a sketch by Bosch Fawstin. It won an offensive cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, that was unsuccessfully attacked by two gunmen earlier this month.
Pamela Geller, the anti-Islam blogger who made the advertising request and hosted the Garland event through her group, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, says the decision is “an end run around the First Amendment.”
“These cowards may claim they are making people safer, but I submit to you the opposite,” she says. “They are making it far more dangerous for Americans everywhere. Rewarding terror with submission is defeat. Absolute and complete defeat” , U.S.News reported.
The contest’s sponsor, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, was also paying for the ad, which was intended to appear in five subway stations and on 20 buses throughout June at cost of $20,000.
The board of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority made the decision Thursday afternoon and plans to enforce the ban until completion of a review of its policies.
Without the broad ban, Washington-area officials likely would have been forced to publish the insulting cartoon.
Courts have repeatedly ruled in favor of Geller in her bids to display controversial ads.
In April, she won a federal court ruling that New York City’s subway system must carry anti-Muslim ads. In March, a federal judge forced Philadelphia’s mass transit system to allow ads that say “Islamic Jew-Hatred: It’s in the Quran.”
In New York, transit authorities recently banned all political advertising to ward off future controversies.
It’s unclear if opponents of such a viewpoint-neutral ban could prevail in court or if Geller will sue.
