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Anti-abortion group wins free speech victory

Posted by Ampersand | June 17th, 2003

Kudos to the Texas anti-abortion group which sued for their right to set up fifteen-foot photos of dead fetuses. Not only are they protecting the general free speech rights of students, their fixation on grossing people out also hurts the public image of the entire pro-life movement. It’s a win-win situation.

The pro-life group says that it was their political views which were being censored, but I bet that if PETA had set up fifteen-foot high gore photos of slaughterhouses in the same plaza, they would have gotten the same reaction. The university claimed that their actions weren’t censorship, because they merely wanted demonstrators confined to “free speech zones.” I figure anything that’s bad for free speech “zones” (shouldn’t the entire country be such a zone?) is good.

Link via the Volokh Conspiracy.

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3 Responses to “Anti-abortion group wins free speech victory”

  1. John Isbell Writes:
    June 17th, 2003 at 6:39 am

    I think you pretty much said everything. Talkleft has more on the Bush protester you quote at the end, on the whole country being a free speech zone. They’re denying him a jury trial, because why should you get one of those just because they’re sending you to prison?

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  2. PG Writes:
    June 17th, 2003 at 12:03 pm

    The whole country is not a free speech zone — owners of private property can kick people off it for speech that they don’t like.
    But a public university theoretically should be a free-speech zone.

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  3. Jonathan Edelstein Writes:
    June 17th, 2003 at 2:26 pm

    There’s a point at which private property shades into public space; for instance, a “company town” in which all common areas are privately owned. A series of cases going back to Marsh v. Alabama holds that the business districts of company towns are treated as public spaces for free speech purposes. In California and a few other states, the same is true of shopping malls on the principle that malls serve as many suburbs’ main public meeting-place.

    I’m in favor of free-speech zones being as wide as possible, especially as more of the country is privatized.

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