John C. Brantley and Raleigh-Durham International Airport have found it hard to say good-bye to each other, and the RDU board this week persuaded Brantley to stay a few months longer as airport director.

Brantley announced in March that he would retire July 31 from the job he has held since 1982. But board members don’t want to appoint a temporary replacement, and they asked him to stay until they hired a permanent successor.

“He’s flexible, and we certainly want to minimize any gap in leadership,” Terry Yeargan of Willow Spring, the RDU Authority board chairman, said today. “We agreed it would be good if he stayed on through the fall.” ... [MORE]

Duke University officials aren't yet sure whether a recent court ruling related to the powers given police officers at Davidson College, a religious institution, might apply on the Durham campus.

The N.C. Court of Appeals recently ruled that giving arrest powers to Davidson police runs afoul of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

"We're studying it," said Michael Schoenfeld, a Duke spokesman. "We don't think this particular ruling would have any impact on Duke."

In North Carolina, the attorney general can certify police departments at private, non-profit colleges. But the three-member appeals court deemed that doing so in Davidson's case was a constitutional violation.

Davidson was established by Presbyterians in 1837, and its close ties to the denomination were a factor in the court's decision.

Duke is affiliated with the United Methodist Church but the connection isn't as close,  Schoenfeld said.

"Duke does not have a specific requirement for faculty, staff, students or the president to be a particular denomination or to attend church," he said.

Davidson students, faculty and staff aren't required to go to church or have a specific religious affiliation, but students are required to take a religion course and faculty members must be Christians or "non-Christian persons who can work with respect for the Christian tradition even if they cannot conscientiously join it and who can live in harmony with the purpose of the college," according to the court ruling.

Attorney General Roy Cooper's office will ask the N.C. Supreme Court to review the appeals court ruling.

The Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority said today it will surrender after a six-year court fight over its efforts to restrict newspaper sales in the airport, and it will install newspaper coin vending boxes -- but not inside the passenger terminal concourses.

The announcement came two days after the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to hear RDU's appeal of earlier rulings that its flat ban on news racks violated the First Amendment rights of newspaper publishers and readers. RDU has spent $503,000 to fight a 2004 lawsuit by The News & Observer and three other newspaper companies. ... [MORE]

The Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority cannot violate the First Amendment rights of newspaper publishers and readers simply because they pose "the slightest administrative inconvenience" to airport administrators, a federal appellate judge said this week. [Update 7/16/10: RDU concedes defeat, but N&O publisher doesn't like surrender terms. "We want to be right next to the Redbox."]

J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a judge on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, issued a withering rebuke of RDU and its rationale for a blanket ban on newspaper vending boxes at the airport.  

"It must be remembered that a newsrack ban like the one in place primarily restricts political speech and that political speech, of course, is at the core of what the First Amendment is designed to protect," Wilkinson wrote. "An informed citizenry is at the heart of this democracy, and narrowing the arteries of information in the manner sought by the Authority will only serve to impair our country's coronary health." ... [MORE]

While the RDU Airport Authority's lawyers continue defending the airport ban on newspaper vending racks, RDU has installed Redbox DVD vending machines in its passenger terminals.

Maybe they'll bring in some money to help defray RDU's legal bills -- more than a half million dollars -- in the newspaper case.

RDU says its ban is reasonable because newspaper vending boxes would pose security risks, impede passenger flow through the terminals, degrade airport aesthetics and reduce airport authority revenues from shops.

Apparently the big Redbox units are OK on all those points. ... [MORE]

Lawyers for the Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority have asked the full 13-member U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to hear its challenge to a 2-1 ruling in which a panel from the same court held that RDU is violating the First Amendment with its ban on newspaper coin vending racks.

The Fourth Circuit panel upheld three earlier rulings by U.S. District Judge Terrence W. Boyle in favor of The News & Observer and three other newspaper companies that sued RDU in 2004.

In a 24-page brief submitted Friday afternoon to the court in Richmond, RDU's lawyers argued that, in its March 12 ruling, the Fourth Circuit improperly substituted its own judgment for that of officials and experts employed by the airport authority.

The panel also misapplied the precedents set in an earlier Fourth Circuit ruling that overturned a South Carolina airport's newsrack ban, RDU lawyers said. ... [MORE]

The First Amendment comes up for a hearing tomorrow by the Durham City Council.

Citizens Richard Wark and Lee Mortimer claim their free-speech rights were violated at the Durham Performing Arts Center last November, and plan to ask the council to bring its policies in line with the U.S. Constitution.

They're on the work-session agenda for the citizens' comment period at 4 p.m., but they may be moved earlier when the session begins at 1 p.m.

The legal bills are mounting as the Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority decides whether to continue fighting for the right to ban newspaper coin vending racks from the public airport.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 2-1 split decision Friday that the ban violates newspapers' constitutional right, as spelled out in the First Amendment, to disseminate the news. Members of the RDU authority board (appointed by the Raleigh, Durham, Wake County and Durham County governments, which own the airport) are considering whether to appeal or to comply with the ruling.

The plaintiffs (The News & Observer and three other papers) say they need news racks so they can reach all their potential customers at the airport. RDU says news racks will cut into newspaper and other sales at airport shops, reducing the airport authority's income.

Meanwhile, there's plenty of income for lawyers on both sides of the case. Unless RDU prevails on appeal, the airport authority will be required to reimburse the plaintiffs' legal fees - estimated by a newspaper attorney at more than $300,000 so far.

And RDU spokeswoman Mindy Hamlin said today that RDU's legal bills, also to be paid with public funds, have reached $503,000.

Lawyers for Raleigh-Durham International Airport have struck out after three attempts to have a federal judge consider new evidence they say would justify the airport’s long-standing ban on newspaper coin vending racks.

Now they’re getting ready for oral arguments Oct. 27 in Richmond, Va., where they will appeal a November 2008 ruling by U.S. District Judge Terrence W. Boyle that the ban violates newspapers’ First Amendment right to distribute the news.

The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments from lawyers for the airport and for The News & Observer and three other newspaper companies that want to sell papers from coin boxes in the RDU passenger terminals.

Boyle refused in April and again last month to consider new evidence offered by RDU to bolster its argument that airport travelers have ample opportunity to buy newspapers from newsstands and bookstores. The Fourth Circuit rejected a similar request Thursday.

Airport officials contend that newspaper boxes would cause visual clutter, ... [MORE]