Political ads banned on public transport in New York

The board of New York City’s transport authority voted yesterday to ban all political advertising on its buses and trains after a judge ruled that it could not reject an anti-Islamic advertisement campaign.

The new policy takes effect immediately and prohibits any advertisement that is “political in nature,” the New York Times said.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority, America’s largest mass transport system, has been at the centr-e of a debate over free speech since last week when a Manhattan federal judge ruled that the agency’s rejection of an anti-Islam poster’s publication on its subways and buses would breach First Amendment rights.

The campaign, sponsored by the pro-Israeli and anti-Muslim group American Freedom Defence Initiative, features an advertisement displaying the phrase “Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah,” next to a picture of a man with a scarf across his face.

The transit authority had previously rejected the advertisement, arguing that it could be interpreted as a call to violence.

New York joins several other cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia, which have already approved similar measures to ban political advertisements on public transport.

Advertisements sponsored by the same group have run in other US cities, including Washington and Philadelphia.

In early April, a federal judge ruled that Philadelphia buses must run advertisements in which Palestinian Muslim leader Hajj Amin Al-Husseini is depicted chatting with Adolf Hitler under the headline, “Islamic Jew-Hatred: It’s in the Quran.”

The incident prompted the Southern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority to revise its policy to allow it to reject these types of advertisements without violating the First Amendment.