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]