A Tennessee publisher, Geoffrey Davidian, uses his newspaper,
The Putnam Pit and its web site, PutnamPit.com, to accuse the local
government of many forms of incompetence and corruption.
Davidian brought a court action against the City of Cookeville,
Tennessee, in 1997 for refusing to include a link to his site on
the city’s web site. The Cookville site linked to other local
organisations.
Davidian claimed that his site was overlooked because city
officials disagreed with his views. He argued that this infringed
his rights under the First Amendment on free speech.
The case was initially rejected in 1998 but last week the
Appeals Court decided that the dispute had merit and referred the
case to the District Court for reconsideration.
The Appeals Court said that, according to US case law, if a web
site can be seen as a city-owned forum, government officials have
the right to make restrictions as to who may participate.
However, the judge ruled that the city may not do so “based on
viewpoint... In other words, Davidian has no entitlement to a link
to the city’s web site, however, he may not be denied one solely
based on the controversial views he espouses”.
Since Davidian’s action was raised, the city has introduced a
policy of only linking to sites which promote the city. At the time
of the action, there was no linking policy.
