A federal judge has ruled that Syracuse Hancock International Airport violated the First Amendment when it refused to run a sexual harassment awareness advertisement submitted by a New York workplace harassment attorney, calling the airport’s justification for rejecting the ad “nonsense.”
Weeks later, the advertisement still has not appeared.
The dispute began when Megan Thomas, an attorney who represents employees in sexual harassment and discrimination cases, submitted an advertisement to the airport’s advertising program. The ad’s message was pointed: “When HR called it harmless flirting … we called it exhibit A.”
Airport officials initially approved the ad and the space it would occupy. Soon after, they asked Thomas to revise the language, suggesting that the message was too sharp. When she declined to change it, the airport reversed its decision, rejecting the ad as “inflammatory,” “unprofessional,” and “unnecessary,” even though similar commercial advertisements remained on display throughout the terminal.
Thomas sued the Syracuse Hancock Regional Airport Authority in September, arguing that the rejection amounted to unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination by a publicly owned entity.
In a sharply worded decision, U.S. District Judge Anthony Brindisi agreed. The airport, he wrote, could not plausibly argue that Thomas’s ad was false or misleading while simultaneously approving clearly promotional slogans from national brands. Comparing her message to a Chick-fil-A campaign featuring cartoon cows, the judge dismissed the airport’s reasoning outright.
“This is nonsense,” he wrote.
The court denied the airport authority’s motion to dismiss the case and granted Thomas a preliminary injunction, finding that she was likely to prevail on the merits of her First Amendment claim. Rather than ordering an immediate remedy, Judge Brindisi directed both sides to submit briefs proposing how the violation should be addressed. A hearing is scheduled for later this month.
Despite the ruling, the ad remains unposted — a delay that has become central to the case’s broader significance.
“Initially, I felt elated and relieved,” Thomas said. “All that hard work of late-night writing paid off. I also felt vindicated because the airport had been so dismissive, telling me there was no First Amendment issue. Now I am feeling frustrated that the airport is not just putting my advertisement up immediately. It feels like they will take all the delays they can before my advertisement goes up.”
At its core, the case asks a simple question: once a publicly owned airport agrees to run an ad, how much say does it really have over the message? Courts have generally drawn a clear line. Airports can decide where ads go and how big they are. What they cannot do is pull one simply because it makes officials uneasy.
Thomas says that unease is precisely what doomed her ad.
“I think there are still a lot of men who are very nervous when we talk about accountability around sexual harassment in the workplace,” she said. “Sadly, there are still people who are regularly engaging in inappropriate workplace behaviors. Awareness and education are key to helping more women to come forward about these bad behaviors, and perpetrators don’t want that.”
Nearly a decade after the #MeToo movement pushed workplace harassment into the open, Thomas argues that the subject still makes institutions uncomfortable — particularly when messaging challenges how harassment is handled internally. Publicly, organizations emphasize zero tolerance. Privately, she says, speech that questions those systems can still be treated as a problem.
In this case, airport officials did not object to profanity or explicit imagery. They objected to the tone. The message, they said, went too far. To Thomas, that response illustrates how speech about harassment is still judged differently from other forms of advertising, even in public spaces.
The location of the proposed ad also matters. Thomas has said that many of her clients report harassment or coercion during work-related travel: on business trips involving flights, hotels, and conferences. Airports, she argues, are not incidental venues for this message, but relevant ones.
Initially, the ad was scheduled to appear in a relatively low-traffic area. Following the ruling, Thomas has indicated that she will seek a more visible placement, potentially before the security checkpoint, arguing that anything less would fall short of meaningful compliance.
“Unfortunately, there are many governmental entities that are not abiding by the laws around free speech in publicly owned places,” Thomas said. “They are treating the spaces they hold leadership positions in as private entities for free speech purposes when they are public.”
She added, “The reality is, if I didn’t have the wherewithal and resources to file a lawsuit, the airport would have been able to reject an advertisement simply because the content made them uncomfortable. We need to hold public entities accountable to ensure our rights are being upheld.”
The airport authority has not publicly commented on the ruling and did not respond to requests for comment from local media.
For now, travelers passing through Syracuse Hancock International Airport will not see Thomas’s advertisement. The judge has ruled. The First Amendment claim has been vindicated. But the message—both literal and legal—remains on hold.
