White Coat Waste Project v. Greater Richmond Transit Co., 35 F.4th 179

Greater Richmond Transit Company (Richmond Transit) is a corporation formed after a Virginia statute and city resolution authorized the city to create a public-transit corporation; the city and Chesterfield County appoint board members and own the stock.
Richmond Transit sells advertising space on buses and has a written advertising policy that forbids, among other categories, “all political ads,” but provides no clear definition of “political” or “public issues.”
An outside contractor submits ads to Richmond Transit; the Director of Communications (Pace) has applied an informal test: reject ads that are "not viewpoint neutral" or submitted by purported "political action" groups (determined by website review).
White Coat Waste Project sought to run an ad criticizing taxpayer-funded dog experiments at a local VA medical center; Richmond Transit rejected it as political and suggested partnering with government as a workaround.
White Coat sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 seeking declaratory and injunctive relief; the district court held Richmond Transit was a state actor and enjoined application of the policy to White Coat but denied facial relief.
The Fourth Circuit affirmed state-action, held the advertising ban is an unreasonable nonpublic‑forum restriction under Mansky, and ruled the policy facially unconstitutional and unenforceable as written.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether Richmond Transit is a state actor subject to §1983	Richmond: transit was created under specific state and city authority and is government-controlled	Richmond Transit: it is a private corporation, not government	Held: Richmond Transit is a government-created-and-controlled corporation under Lebron and thus a state actor
Forum classification for bus ad space	White Coat: treat as nonpublic forum (or at least not government speech)	Richmond Transit: non-argument; accepts nonpublic forum label	Held: Bus ad space is a nonpublic forum (not government speech)
Whether the political-ad ban is a reasonable restriction in a nonpublic forum	White Coat: the policy is vague, inconsistently applied, and not "capable of reasoned application" (Mansky)	Richmond Transit: a ban on political ads is permissible (Lehman); prior practice shows workable application	Held: The policy is not capable of reasoned application—unreasonable under Mansky—and thus violates the First Amendment
Facial vs. as-applied relief	White Coat: policy is facially invalid because it cannot ever be reasonably applied	Richmond Transit: policy could be constitutional in some applications (Lehman) so relief should be limited	Held: Facial invalidity affirmed—the policy lacks any legitimate sweep and is unenforceable as written

Lebron v. Nat'l R.R. Passenger Corp., 513 U.S. 374 (1995) (government-created-and-controlled corporations are part of the government for First Amendment/state-action purposes)
Minn. Voters All. v. Mansky, 138 S. Ct. 1876 (2018) (nonpublic‑forum restrictions must be "capable of reasoned application" and guided by objective, workable standards)
Lehman v. City of Shaker Heights, 418 U.S. 298 (1974) (transit advertising is a nonpublic forum and political-ad bans can be permissible if reasonably applied)
Brentwood Acad. v. Tenn. Secondary Sch. Athletic Ass'n, 531 U.S. 288 (2001) (framework for determining when private conduct is "fairly attributable" to the state)
West v. Atkins, 487 U.S. 42 (1988) (§1983 requires action under color of state law)
Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Def. & Educ. Fund, Inc., 473 U.S. 788 (1985) (forum analysis: traditional, designated, and nonpublic forums and the attendant standards)
Am. Freedom Def. Initiative v. Suburban Mobility Auth. for Reg'l Transp., 978 F.3d 481 (6th Cir. 2020) (applied Mansky to strike a transit political‑ad ban)
Ctr. for Investigative Reporting v. Se. Pa. Transp. Auth., 975 F.3d 300 (3d Cir. 2020) (applied Mansky and invalidated a broad transit prohibition on political/issue ads)