Determination 19: Citizens for Community Action v. Minneapolis Star & Minneapolis Tribune
Citizens for Community Action (CCA), an anti-life group, complained that the two papers used arbitrary standards when they refused to print as submitted to them a paid advertisement that opposed construction of an abortion clinic in a St. Paul neighborhood. The ad listed the clinic’s officers and sponsors, their home addresses and phone numbers, but the papers insisted that only business addresses be used for the clinic’s officers.
Background: CCA was formed to oppose the building of an abortion clinic by Planned Parenthood of Minnesota (PPM) in a St. Paul neighborhood. To elicit support for its cause, CCA composed an advertisement encouraging people to contact clinic supporters and persuade them to change their minds on the issue. The ad listed the names of officers and sponsors of Planned Parenthood as the names appeared on PPM stationery, along with their home addresses and phone numbers.
The two newspapers refused to publish the ad as submitted: The newspapers objected to printing names, addresses and telephone numbers of those who were not officers of PPM, and asserted that the addresses given for the officers should be the PPM business address unless prior consent was received for using home addresses. The newspapers offered to print the ad with those changes. CCA refused to make the changes and complained that the reasons for the ad’s rejection were arbitrary.
Determination of the Council: A newspaper has the legal right to accept or reject any advertisement, but the paper should establish fair and reasonable standards for advertising and should apply these standards uniformly.
The newspapers did not clearly define their standards regarding the definition of “private persons” whose right to privacy should be protected in advocacy advertisements. The publisher’s claim of right to privacy for the PPM sponsors, as distinguished from the organization’s officers, is rejected: The sponsors’ names appeared with the officers’ names on the organization stationery, and when citizens take a public position in support of an organization functioning in the public arena, they must expect to accept whatever praise or criticism this position brings from members of the public. To this extent, the complaint against the newspapers is upheld. The CCA, however, should not have arbitrarily used the male spouse’s name without discretion. By so doing, they unduly implicated the spouses of women who participated as individuals, and whose husbands were genuinely private persons as regards PPM.
The first complaint against these newspapers is upheld, the second complaint is not upheld.