She can’t understand why Santa Ana wouldn’t want locals to know what government officials already know
In mid-August, with parents prepping children for the new school year and classrooms being swept and decorated to welcome them, Brenda Lebsack was thinking about advertising.
So, she called a phone number on the city’s bus stops and asked about advertising that fact in Spanish and English on bus benches and shelters. She even proposed including aThe woman on the other end of the line “told me some of the basic parameters and rules of the ads, basically that they cannot be political,” Lebsack recalls. “She said she would email me information within a day.
The First Amendment declares, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
I followed with a question about how Focus makes these decisions. “Does your company interpret those guidelines in order to determine whether advertising content is permissible?” I asked. “Or do you send all advertising content to city staff for their direct approval?” In the meantime, school has started and Lebsack worries that she’s lost what parents and educators like to call “the teachable moment,” in this case the time just before classrooms opened – when Lebsack might really have drawn the public’s attention to the city’s failing schools.
These would seem to be clear violations of the First Amendment, says Julie Hamill, president of the California Justice Center.
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