The County appealed, and the Ninth Circuit reversed in part, vacated in part, and remanded for further proceedings. Faith Center Evangelistic Ministries v. Glover, 480 F.3d 891, 919 (9th Cir. 2007). This case requires the Court "to navigate between two equally important interests: [Faith Center's] right to access a government building that is open to other groups, and the [County's] right to preserve its property for its intended uses."

Nothing in the Constitution requires the Government freely to grant access to all who wish to exercise their right to free speech on every type of Government property without regard to the nature of the property or to the disruption that might be caused by the speaker's activities. . . . [T]he Government "no less than a private owner of property, has power to preserve the property under its control for the use to which it is lawfully dedicated. . . ." Id. at 799-800, 105 S.Ct. 3439 (citation omitted) (quoting Greer v. Spock, 424 U.S. 828, 836, 96 S.Ct. 1211, 47 L.Ed.2d 505 (1976)); see also Faith Ctr. Church Evangelistic Ministries v. Glover, 480 F.3d 891, 906-07 (9th Cir.2007). Accordingly, we apply a forum analysis to determine when the government has legitimate interests in restricting the use of a forum to certain intended purposes that outweigh a speaker's interest in using the forum for a different purposes.

He also alleges that "at the same time [the library] is a place of conspicuous political speech" with occasional conversation. (Id.) Forum analysis divides government property into public fora (property, like public streets and parks, that by tradition has been devoted to assembly and debate), designated public fora (property that the government has intentionally dedicated to expressive conduct), and nonpublic fora (any public property that is not, either by tradition or designation, a forum for public communication). Faith Ctr. Church Evangelistic Ministries v. Glover, 480 F.3d 891, 907 (9th Cir. 2007). The Ninth Circuit has also identified the `limited public forum,' a sub-category of the designated public forum, where the government opens a nonpublic forum but reserves access to it for only certain groups or categories of speech.

The Supreme Court has also "identified another category — the 'limited public forum' — to describe a nonpublic forum that the government intentionally has opened to certain groups or for the discussion of certain topics." Faith Ctr. Church Evangelistic Ministries v. Glover, 480 F.3d 891, 908 (9th Cir. 2007), petition for cert. filed (U.S. Jun. 7, 2007) (No. 06-1633).

We have no trouble concluding that Arizona's purpose was to open up its license plate forum to a certain class of organizations for expressive activity. Cf. Faith Ctr. Church Evangelistic Ministries v. Glover, 480 F.3d 891, 908 (9th Cir. 2007) (stating that the County intended to open its library meeting room to expressive activity when it allowed all "[n]on-profit and civic organizations, for-profit organizations, schools and governmental organizations" to use the meeting room for "meetings, programs, or activities of educational, cultural or community interest") (internal quotation marks omitted). As the Commission correctly notes in its brief, "[h]istorically, Arizona's license plates have served the purely governmental function of vehicle and vehicle owner identification and have been a nonpublic forum."

Those circuits that distinguish the term "designated public forum" from the term "limited public forum" query whether the forum in question has been indiscriminately open for use by the general public (designated public forum) or whether the forum has been open just to certain categories of speakers and subjects (limited public forum). See e.g., Bronx Household of Faith v. Bd. of Educ. of Cty. of New York, 492. F.3d 89, 97 (2d Cir. 2007); Donovan v. Punxsutawney Area Sch. Bd. Dist., 336 F.3d 211, 225 (3d Cir. 2003); Chiu, 260 F.3d at 345-46; Bowman v. White, 444 F.3d 967, 976 (8th Cir. 2006); Faith Center church Evangelistic Ministries v. Glover, 480 F.3d 891, 908 (9th Cir. 2007); Summum v. City of Ogden, 297 F.3d 995, 1002 n. 4 (10th Cir. 2002). As Judge Moore of the Sixth Circuit noted in a concurring opinion, "The distinction is important because our sister circuits have held that restrictions on speech in a limited public forum are allowed if they are content-neutral and reasonable, while restrictions in a designated public forum must be analyzed under the strict-scrutiny standard."

The deputies argue that a sheriff's substation lobby is traditionally a non-public forum, but apparently there was an official policy to hold this lobby open to the public for the purpose of lodging complaints. Therefore, the lobby must be considered a limited public forum,see Faith Center Church Evangelistic Ministries v. Glover, 480 F.3d 891, 908 (9th Cir. 2007) abrogated onother grounds in Winter v.Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 129 S. Ct. 365 (2008), and free speech in the lobby is not an unfettered right. "Restrictions governing access to a limited public forum are permitted so long as they are viewpoint neutral and reasonable in light of the purpose served by the forum." Id. The question is whether the deputies' "restriction," i.e., demanding that Dirks leave and arresting him when he didn't, was reasonable in light of the purpose served by the forum.

For those reasons, the decisions of courts in other circuits upholding the exclusion of worship services are distinguishable from the facts of this case. See Bronx Household of Faith v. Bd. of Educ. of City of New York , 650 F.3d 30 (2d Cir.2011) ; Faith Ctr. Church Evangelistic Ministries v. Glover , 480 F.3d 891 (9th Cir.2007) abrogated on other grounds by Winter v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc. , 555 U.S. 7, 129 S.Ct. 365, 172 L.Ed.2d 249 (2008). In Faith Center, the Ninth Circuit held that a public library's exclusion of worship services was a “permissible limitation on the subject matter that may be discussed” in the forum, and thus did not constitute viewpoint discrimination.

To the contrary, it applied for a permit to conduct "Christian worship services," and the evidence suggests no reason to question its own characterization of its activities. Cf. Christian Legal Soc'y, 130 S.Ct. at 2982-84; Faith Ctr. Church Evangelistic Ministries v. Glover, 480 F.3d 891, 918 n. 18 (9th Cir. 2007), abrogated on other grounds by Winter v. Natural Res. Def. Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7, 129 S.Ct. 365, 172 L.Ed.2d 249 (2008). This argument, furthermore, overlooks the nature of the duties placed on government officials by the Establishment Clause (as well as the Free Exercise of Religion Clause). As we outlined above, while other clauses of the First Amendment prohibit government officials from discriminating on the basis of religious viewpoint, the Establishment Clause prohibits them from taking action that would constitute establishment of religion.

" Id. Inasmuch as "other student publications were free to discuss the topic of religion from a myriad of views other than the prohibited perspective, the University had discriminated on the basis of viewpoint." Faith Center Church Evangelistic Ministries v. Glover, 462 F.3d 1194, 1208 (9th Cir. 2006), opinion amended and superseded on denial of rehearing, 480 F.3d 891 (9th Cir. 2007), cert. den., 128 S.Ct. 143 (U.S. Oct. 1, 2007), summarizing the holding inRosenberger. SeeLamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School Dist., 508 U.S. 384, 393 (1993) (applying theRosenberger test to unanimously hold denial of access to a school facility by a religious group seeking to show a film series on child rearing from a Christian perspective because of the school district's policy barring use of the rooms for religious purposes "discriminate[d] on the basis of viewpoint [by] permit[ting] school property to be used for the presentation of all views about family issues and child rearing except those dealing with the subject matter from a religious standpoint").