A United States federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday that an anti-Muslim group cannot post ads on buses in Washington showing photos of wanted terrorists and wrongly claiming the FBI offers a $25 million reward for one of their captures.
American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), an anti-Muslim group, claimed that King County had violated its First Amendment right to free speech by refusing to post the advertisements on buses. However, a three-judge panel of the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected their claim and ruled against them.
Read: New York transportation authority bans anti-Islam ads on subways, buses
Pamela Geller, the leader of the group which had earlier organised a Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) cartoon contest in Texas that had ended in violence, has put up similar ads in other cities. She had gone to court after some transportation officials in Washington had refused to display the ads.
Geller’s group had wanted to advertise the “Faces of Global Terrorism” which included 16 photographs of militants with their names listed and the statement “AFDI Wants You to Stop a Terrorist.” Further, they claimed FBI offers a $25 million reward to capture one of the people shown.
The transportation service, King County Metro Transit, chose not to display the ads saying they failed to meet their advertising policy guidelines. According to them, ads that are “false or misleading, demeaning or disparaging or harmful or disruptive to the transit system” were not allowed.
The appeals court agreed that the claim about the reward was false and that the Metro’s rejection was “likely was reasonable.”
“The FBI is not offering rewards at all, and the State Department offers a reward of at most $5 million, not $25 million, for the capture of one of the pictured terrorists,” the court said.
Further, the court said that the group can display its ad in other forums, such as a billboard, newspaper or television.
David Yerushalmi, the group’s lawyer, criticised the Ninth Circuit and said, “There is always some reason for government censorship — that doesn’t make it right or constitutional.”
Read: Two dead, one wounded at Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) cartoon contest in US
The anti-Muslim group has a mixed record on court fights over ads in other cities. It won in New York City twice and a federal judge ruled in its favour when it sued the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority for refusing to run an ad that said “Islamic Jew-Hatred: It’s in the Quran.”
Moreover, the group has sued the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority for refusing an ad that included the winning entry of the “Draw Muhammad Contest.”
However, a federal court and appeals court ruled in favor of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which refused to run two “pro-Israel/anti-jihad” ads on its buses, saying the ads were demeaning to Muslims.
This article originally appeared on Huffington Post
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