First Amendment challenge in Minneapolis

By Michael Fraase

Wednesday, 28 June 2006 10:00AM CST

Section: Censorship

imageIs the First Amendment (and the rest of the Bill of Rights—and the Constitution, for that matter) inviolate or are there times when abridging speech is necessary? That’s the question confronting the Minneapolis City Council just now as one of its members has filed a complaint against the city’s public access cable television network. The dispute has spilled into the mayor’s office and across the rest of the City Council. Few seem to be aware that the question has already been answered.

According to my associate Craig Cox’s account republished in the Twin Cities Daily Planet, City Council president Barbara Johnson asked Minneapolis Television Network’s (MTN) executive director Pam Colby why community standards haven’t been developed. Colby’s response was that standards would be “pushing up against our need to be a First Amendment and free speech forum.” Colby added that the network acts to mitigate programming some viewers may find offensive by airing controversial programs only once and scheduling potentially offensive programming after 10:00PM. Furthermore, any one who feels they’ve been offended or slighted by programming “is invited to submit a response.”

The policy of inviting the offended to submit a response is adequate enough remedy for the complaint to be dismissed, and I’m confused as to why the city is continuing to be distracted by this issue. As Justice Louis Brandeis argued in Whitney v. California, the danger in speech cannot be considered clear and present if there is time to answer. Brandeis believed that while legislatures had an obligation to restrict truly dangerous expression, they were required to clearly define the nature of that danger; fear of or frustration with unpopular ideas isn’t enough. Brandeis’s position was eventually adopted by the US Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio.

Here’s the crux of Brandeis’s most eloquent argument:

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