From PETA v. Shore Transit, decided last week by Chief Judge James Bredar (D. Md.):
On May 12, 2020, PETA submitted two proposed advertisements to Shore Transit [a public transit agency] …. Both included the text "No one needs to kill to eat. Close the slaughterhouses: Save the workers, their families, and the animals." One has the word "kill" superimposed on a bloody cleaver; the other includes an image of a child holding a chicken…. [Shore Transit responded]: "After considerable consideration, we will decline the PETA ads. We find them too offensive for our market and political in nature." …
The court evaluated PETA's claims under the First Amendment standard applicable to speech in a nonpublic forum, which is pretty much the same as that applicable to speech in a limited public forum. ("Because PETA's claims survive dismissal under the more lenient standard applicable to a nonpublic forum, the Court does not find it necessary at this stage to conclusively determine whether Shore Transit's advertising space is a public or nonpublic forum.") And it concluded that this standard—that any restrictions on such ads must be reasonable and viewpoint-neutral—wasn't met here:
