City buses are used to post placards, with a designated administrator who can approve or deny. An animal rights group seeks to post a placard; the administrator denies it on the basis of content. The space on the buses qualifies as a designated public forum. The denial triggers strict scrutiny. What result?

• A. Yes, because a public official may not refuse to permit the dissemination of a message in a public forum solely on the basis of its content unless that denial is necessary to serve a compelling government interest.
• B. No, because the administrator can limit the forum to commercial messages only.
• C. Yes, because the space qualifies as a designated public forum regardless of content.
• D. No, because the placards are not well-suited for the forum.

Answer: (A)

In a designated public forum, the government cannot ban a message based solely on its content. Restrictions tied to what the message says are treated as content-based, and they trigger strict scrutiny. That means the government must show a compelling interest and that the restriction is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest (and it must be the least restrictive means).

Here, the bus space is a designated public forum, and the administrator denied an animal rights placard because of its content. That denial is a content-based restriction and thus subject to strict scrutiny. The government would have to prove a compelling interest and show the restriction is narrowly tailored to that interest; without such a showing, the denial cannot stand. Hence the correct reasoning is that the denial is unconstitutional unless the government can meet strict scrutiny, so the placard should be allowed if no valid compelling justification is shown.

The other choices are off because they either treat the forum as automatically allowing or as being limited to commercial messages, or they claim inappropriately that the forum’s designation alone resolves the issue without addressing the content-based nature of the denial.