Reason’s Jacob Sullum writes of a battle going on between the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) and Change the Climate, a drug policy reform group whose aim is to criticize current marijuana policies as excessively punitive and wasteful. Change the Climate wants to advertise on trains and buses in Boston. MBTA says no way.

“As a government agency, forbidden by the First Amendment to pick and choose among viewpoints,” Sullum writes, “the MBTA has to pretend it has other reasons for turning down the ads. In a trial that begins today, a federal judge will decide whether any of these fig leaves is big enough to cover the transit authority’s naked attempt to squelch dissent.”

The Supreme Court has made it clear that speech may not be banned simply because it advocates defiance or repeal of existing laws. The Court also has taken a dim view of government attempts to exclude speakers from public forums because of their opinions.

In a clumsy attempt get around this obstacle, [Lucy Shorter, the MBTA’s director of marketing and communication] asserted that Change the Climate’s ‘mission’ conflicted with the MBTA’s requirement that ads be of ‘reputable character’–a standard so vague that it gives transit officials carte blanche to reject messages that offend them.

[…] The MBTA later distanced itself from Shorter’s explanation, but its new excuses were no more persuasive. MBTA General Manager Robert H. Prince Jr. claimed the ads ran afoul of a 1995 policy against material ‘of a nature to frighten children…showing them language or pictures that describe or depict violent criminal or brutal activities…in a manner which causes a child physical or emotional distress.’

However, as Sullum argues, “the assumption that a bunch of bureaucrats can objectively identify which messages are so ‘harmful to children’ that they can’t be tolerated” is itself ridiculous and arrogant. And “[s]uch an exercise would quickly become a pretext for shutting out controversial viewpoints.”

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