| > Signing it (or not) is an act of expression And I myself am not a lawyer in the slightest, but this specific claim feels pretty iffy from a 1A standpoint. The government is not prohibited from setting rules for access to their facilities. If they apply rules unevenly, that is the sense of arbitrary that applies here. Arbitrary administration of rules, not arbitrary in the sense that someone finds the rule itself to be arbitrary. When rules are arbitrarily administered in a situation when constitutional rights are at issue, that is where the rubber the meets the road in a constitutional law sense. This goes (I believe) to the Equal Protection clause of the 14th amendment. If the courts allowed the government to deny a press org access (and thus suppress their speech) according to some obscure rule, while other press orgs that are technically violating the same rule continue to enjoy access, that creates an environment where the government has carte blanche to violate constitutional rights by creating subtle inequity in their admin of the rules. That they can make said rules is well-established - IF the rule itself is constitutional. That is a separate legal concern from the uneven admin scenario. What I'm saying up above is: this isn't uneven admin, less likely there are grounds for a 1A claim. Whether this signature requirement passes muster is entirely different, and I'm less informed on that part of the law. I certainly don't like it, though. |