Wingnut Pam Geller Wins Court Battle To Place Anti-Islam Ad On NYC Transit

Infamous anti-Islam blogger Pam Geller has won the court battle to place the above ad on NYC public transit. Apparently Geller believes a lasting peace can be won by calling 700,000 New Yorkers “savages.”

The ruling comes from U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. His decision said the MTA’s ban on “demeaning” speech was unconstitutional. The MTA had refused to run an anti-jihad advertisement that, according to the MTA, referred to Israel’s enemies as savages who engaged in jihad. The MTA flagged the advertisement that was set to run on the exterior of its buses, claiming that it violated the MTA’s policy against displaying “images or information that demean an individual or group of individuals on account of race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, gender, age, disability or sexual orientation.” But the court noted that politically controversial speech, even demeaning speech, already had been allowed on the buses, and the MTA was restricting only that speech which “demeaned specific groups or individuals that fit within the MTA’s protected classes.” The ruling came as a result of a lawsuit filed by the AFLC on behalf of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer.

Also defending Geller was the anti-gay Thomas More Center, which earlier this month won the right to defend Cook County, Illinois against two pending marriage equality suits. In January 2011 the Southern Poverty Law Center named Geller and her group to its list of religion-based hate groups. Last summer Norway’s mass murderer of 77 people was revealed to be a reader and participant in Geller’s blog. He also cited Geller’s “work” in his deranged manifesto.