ANN ARBOR — At a meeting on Nov. 17, a vote from the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority affirmed its decision to reject a proposed advertisement from community activist Blaine Coleman. 

The American Civil Liberties Union has argued that restricting the ads are unconstitutional, however. 

The proposed ad features the phrases “Boycott ‘Israel'” and “Boycott Apartheid” along with an image of a spider-looking creature with a large skull for a head. 

An August 12, 2011 letter was written by the ACLU according to the Ann Arbor Chronicle on behalf of Coleman’s request, stating that rejecting the AATA’s policy on whether or not to accept certain advertising is unconstitutional. 

The ACLU is arguing that the AATA has established itself through past ads as a “public forum,” although the agency states in its policy that the organization does not intend to do so through its ad program. 

At the Nov. 17 meeting, AATA board members entered a closed session to discuss a written opinion from its legal council, which is part of the Michigan Open Meetings Act, for more than an hour before voting on the resolution affirming its policy not to accept the ads. 

Coleman and the ACLU have been invited to discuss the policy, which is administered by Transit Advertising Group, according to the Chronicle report. Coleman said in spring of this year that his requests had been ignored several times by the AATA before the issue was finally acknowledged and taken up by the organization. 

Pro-Palestinian groups have in the past felt that their ads have been unfairly censored, including a situation in Seattle where bus ads protesting Israeli war crimes and U.S. military aid were not allowed on the sides of buses, in part because a federal judge cited threats from opponents as raising safety concerns; the ACLU had argued on behalf of the ads in that case as well.