## Facts

- Prairie State College, a public junior college, maintained an art gallery that opened directly onto the campus “mall,” a heavily trafficked common area with student services and gathering spaces.
- Albert R. Piarowski, chair of the art department and gallery exhibit coordinator, selected eight of his stained-glass works for a faculty exhibition.
- Five panels were abstract; three were representational and sexually explicit, including depictions of masturbation and sexual acts.
- The college did not contend the works were legally obscene and acknowledged they had some artistic merit.
- College officials received complaints and worried that prominent placement in the main mall could be perceived as institutional endorsement and could harm recruitment and public relations.
- The college directed that the three explicit panels be removed from the mall-adjacent gallery and offered an alternative: display them in a less public exhibition room on an upper floor.
- Piarowski refused to relocate the panels; a college official removed them the next day.
- Shortly thereafter, the art faculty voted to close the entire exhibition one week early.
- Piarowski filed a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action alleging the college’s actions violated the First Amendment; after a bench trial, the district court entered judgment for the college, and Piarowski appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether the mall-adjacent gallery space functioned as a public forum such that restrictions on sexually explicit artwork triggered heightened First Amendment scrutiny.
2. Whether, given Piarowski’s role as a public employee and coordinator of a college-sponsored exhibit, the college violated the First Amendment by requiring relocation of the explicit panels rather than permitting their display in the main mall area.

## Decision

- The Seventh Circuit affirmed judgment for the defendants.
- The court held the gallery was not a public forum for indiscriminate expressive activity.
- The court held the college could require relocation of sexually explicit (but non-obscene) panels to a less public space, particularly where the works were not banned outright.
- The court concluded the college’s action was reasonable and not shown to be viewpoint discriminatory.

## Legal Principles

- Government-controlled property used for curated or invited displays may be treated as a nonpublic (or at most limited) forum, permitting reasonable, viewpoint-neutral regulation of time, place, and manner.
- In a nonpublic/limited forum, content-based placement restrictions can be permissible if reasonable in light of the forum’s purpose and not based on hostility to a viewpoint.
- A public college has greater control over expression presented under its auspices when the speaker is acting within official duties as an employee administering an institutional program.
- Relocation of non-obscene but sexually explicit expression, as opposed to total suppression, can be a constitutionally permissible means of addressing institutional interests such as avoiding perceived endorsement and protecting public relations.

## Conclusion

The Seventh Circuit held that a public college did not violate the First Amendment by directing the relocation of sexually explicit stained-glass panels from a highly visible, mall-adjacent gallery to a less public exhibition space, where the gallery was not a public forum and the restriction was reasonable and viewpoint neutral in the context of a college-sponsored exhibit administered by a faculty employee.


Piarowski v. Ill. Cmty. Coll. Dist. 515, 759 F.2d 625 (7th Cir. 1985)