ANN ARBOR — The Ann Arbor Transportation Authority (AATA), a bus agency that falls under the public transit system in Ann Arbor, is not open to advertising anti-Israeli ads.

That’s what resident and activist Blaine Coleman learned back in 2011, when he made an attempt to purchase spots for an ad that included the statement “Boycott Israel-Boycott Apartheid,” with the hope of advertising it on the sides of public buses. The AATA, at the time, claimed that such content would be in violation of their advertising policy.

Coleman took issue with this policy, as the AATA is a government entity, and can, in no shape or form, censor any kind of speech, unless it is considered a threat to the safety of the public.

In November 2011, The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) represented Coleman and filed a lawsuit against the bus agency, claiming that the policy was unconstitutional. One argument used against the AATA was related to their policy guidelines, which read that all advertising must be in “good taste.”  The ACLU argued that this statement was vague and unclear. The AATA had used that reference in their policy to support their argument against Coleman’s advertisement.

After an Ann Arbor resident’s attempt to advertise an “anti-Israel” ad, the City’s public transit system changed its policy to not allow political ads on the sides of buses all together.

A federal judge disagreed with the AATA and, after a drawn out court process, in September 2012, ruled that the AATA’s advertising policy was, in fact, vague and unconstitutional. However, that decision still did not provide Coleman with a window to finally advertise his message.

In November 2012, the AATA held a special meeting to amend their policy and removed the vague sentence from their guidelines. In turn, they added more modicfications to the policy and decided that they weren’t going to allow any sort of political content in their advertising. That meant that Coleman’s anti-Israeli ad would be rejected, once again, under this new policy.

With the new policy in place, a federal Judge ruled, in June 2013, that the bus agency had legal grounds to not run an anti-Israeli ad, based on these new changes. The agency claimed that their new focus would be advertising consumer messages and commercial products.

The anti-Israeli ad that Ann Arbor resident Blaine Coleman had hoped to display on sides of buses.

On July 17, the parties involved reached a settlement agreement. While those details remain confidential, it was made public that Coleman did not ask for any money from the settlement. The ACLU did accept a small payment from the bus agency to cover attorney fees.

ACLU Attorney Dan Korobkin said that they had originally picked up the case, in order to support the principles of free speech. They were not taking a stand against Israel, but more-so, defending an individual’s rights.

“We’ve tried to be clear the entire time that we don’t take a position on the merits of the ad, whether we agree with it, or not. The issue is whether the public transit agency should be in the business of deciding what political speech would be okay and what political speech would need to be censored. We wanted to make sure the government was not allowed to censor speech for unconstitutional reasons,” Korobkin told The Arab American News.

Korobkin added that, despite Coleman still being denied placement of his anti-Israeli ad, the case should be deemed a victory for free speech. He says that only a private company should be able to dictate the content of ad space.

“A private company can reject an ad, if it doesn’t like what it says, but when the space is being sold and operated by a public agency, they cannot make those distinctions between speech that is popular and speech that is offensive. We do think their new policy is a vast improvement over the old one, and in that sense, the case was successful in making sure that they can’t make unconstitutional distinctions.”

Coleman’s pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli stance in Ann Arbor dates back some years. He, along with other local activists there, have been demanding a boycott against Israel for years now, appearing at city council meetings, university student government meetings, and at many demonstrations and vigils. Coleman had even come to the defense of one of his friends and fellow activist, Henry Herskovitz, when an Ann Arbor neighborhood had signed a petition last summer to have Herskovitz remove an anti-Israeli flag from his front lawn.

But Coleman and his fellow group of activists routinely experience a variety of challenges from Ann Arbor locals, city officials, university heads, and now, the public transit system, who continue to dismiss their message.

Phone calls to The Ann Arbor Transportation Authority were made by The Arab American News, but none were returned as of press time.