In late April, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted to ban all advocacy ads from MTA property, including the New York City subway and bus systems, and last Thursday Washington, D.C.’s Metro system adopted a similar ban. In both instances the agencies were responding to controversial ads proposed by an anti-Muslim group that has been running similar ads across the country and that sponsored an anti-Muslim event in Texas last month that ended in the shooting death of an assailant who apparently was targeting the event.

Transit systems have been a First Amendment flashpoint for decades, but many transit agencies have adopted a commendable free-speech approach. Indeed, as recently as September 2012 the MTA, faced with different anti-Muslim ads, rejected a proposal to ban advocacy ads, declaring that “in our enlightened civil democracy, the answer to distasteful and uncivil speech is more, and more civilized, speech.” But as in many walks of life, victories in the civil liberties world are often fragile, and the free-speech protections in our nation’s transit systems are now unraveling. Given that transit systems—most notably the enormous New York City subway and bus system—serve as a public square for many millions of people every day, the prospect of political speech disappearing from these systems poses an enormous threat to free speech and public discourse.

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