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Ruling on Weekly’s
news-rack suit
expected this week

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By Treena Shapiro
Star-Bulletin

A federal judge is expected to issue a written ruling this week regarding the Honolulu Weekly's discrimination suit against the city for holding separate lotteries for coin-operated and no-coin racks in Waikiki.

U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway granted the Weekly a preliminary injunction in December, ruling that the city couldn't bar publications from bidding for either type of newspaper rack based on whether or not they charge. Her summary judgment should come this week.

Jim Bickerton, the Weekly's attorney, argued yesterday that segregating the paid-for and free publications is discriminatory, and putting the Weekly with the free publications gives it less display. While the daily newspapers face outward with their headlines showing, freebies lie down in bins, forcing people to peer in to see the covers.

"We don't think we should be segregated off with the restaurant guides. We are a newspaper and we should be with other newspapers," he said.

Paid-for publications also have a 60 percent chance of getting the rack locations they want, whereas freebies have only a 20 to 30 percent chance, Bickerton said.

However, Jon Van Dyke, a University of Hawaii law professor representing the city, argued that the two-lottery system is "logical and carefully linked," and is meant to be "orderly, attractive, and aesthetically pleasing," while promoting pedestrian safety.

It is necessary to separate the two types of publications because their paid or free status determines whether they need to be put into a coin-operated box, he said. Putting free publications into coin-operated boxes is "wasting space."

Laurie Carlson, Weekly publisher, said the city's efforts to change the system hasn't resulted in reduced circulation, but has impeded it, since the publication lost 10 of its original 21 boxes.

"I'm hopeful that things will change in Waikiki since we seem to be neither fish nor fowl and somewhere in-between," she said.