Fostering a Vigorous Public Debate

Washington knows best:

The nation’s major drug policy reform groups today filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority for censoring the speech of those critical of the government’s “War on Drugs.”
. . .
The lawsuit responds to an amendment buried in the 2004 federal spending bill that cuts off more than $3 billion in federal funding from local transit authorities that accept advertisements critical of current marijuana laws and other drug laws. With at least $85 million at stake, the Washington Metro last week rejected an advertisement submitted by a coalition of drug policy reform groups that criticizes marijuana laws for wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and imprisoning non-violent offenders.
The rejected advertisement sponsored by the ACLU, Change the Climate, the Drug Policy Alliance, and the Marijuana Policy Project shows a group of ordinary people standing behind prison bars under the headline, “Marijuana Laws Waste Billions of Taxpayer Dollars to Lock Up Non-Violent Americans.” The same groups that sought to run the advertisement filed today’s lawsuit.

It’s one thing for the federal government to use its spending power to “bribe” state and local governments to adopt federal guidelines (e.g., speed limits). It’s quite another for it to use public money to shield itself from criticism by imposing content-based speech restrictions.
The First Amendment says that’s no good.
Via Volokh Conspiracy.