Visitors sue Air and Space Museum, encounter Fed Courts doctrine?

Visitors to the Air and Space Museum sued the museum, agency, and several Doe officers, alleging that the officers forced them to remove hats with the logo "Rosary Pro Life" while visiting the museum; they allege free speech, equal protection, and RFRA violations and seek damages and injunctive relief. Eugene Volokh reports that the Museum admits this happened and that it should not have. He also argues that the free speech analysis is obvious here--the museum is a non-public forum in which officials can make reasonable content-based distinctions but not viewpoint-based distinctions (such as not promoting "equality").

But I am not sure we reach those merits:

    • Plaintiffs should lack standing for an injunction. The plaintiffs cannot show this will happen again in the immediate future. Not only is it unlikely they can show concrete plans to return to the museum. And they cannot show they will suffer this injury if they do return, given the museum's response and the seeming randomness of the officers' conduct.

    • This is an extension of Bivens--the Court has never allowed a free-speech claim. And the usual special factors arise--Congress should create causes of action and has not done so and, post-Egbert, agency disciplinary-complaint procedures offer sufficient mechanism for deterring misconduct. This is not a national-security case so that over-arching factor is absent. But lower courts emphasize the new single question of "Isn't Congress is better suited to balancing the costs and benefits of causes of action?" (to which the answer is always "yes") to reject actions outside national security.

    • RFRA provides a cause of action for suits against government officials, so plaintiffs do not need Bivens for their religion claims. But plaintiffs must show this was religious rather than speech discrimination--does the word Rosary on the hats mean the officers knew the message was religious and forced them to remove the hats because of that religious (as opposed to political or ideological) message?

    • If this is religious discrimination and/or they convince the Court that no special factors counsel hesitation, they must overcome qualified immunity. There is almost certainly no case law about making someone remove a hat because of its religious or political message in a museum. The court must fall back on general First Amendment principles, the sort of high-generality analysis courts usually reject. It might be interesting to see how the court uses the museum's mea culpa--does that show that it was clearly established that officers could not make visitors remove hats and other clothing because of the message?