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"... Battle flag at center of Supreme Court free speech case
Published March 23, 2015
Associated Press
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texas supreme court license plate.jpg

March 23, 2015: This image provided by the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles shows the design of a proposed Sons of Confederate Veterans license plate. (AP)

Texas commemorates the Confederacy in many ways, from an annual celebration of Confederate Heroes Day each January to monuments on the grounds of the state Capitol in Austin. Among the memorials is one that has stood for more than a century, bearing an image of the Confederate battle flag etched in marble.

But you're out of luck if you want to put that flag on your license plate. Texas says that would be offensive.

Now the Supreme Court will decide whether the state can refuse to issue a license plate featuring the battle flag without violating the free-speech rights of Texans who want one. The justices hear arguments Monday in a challenge brought by the Texas division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

The group sued over the state's decision not to authorize its proposed license plate with its logo bearing the battle flag, similar to plates issued by eight other states that were members of the Confederacy and Maryland.

The First Amendment dispute has brought together some unlikely allies, including the American Civil Liberties Union, anti-abortion groups, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, civil libertarian Nat Hentoff and conservative satirist P.J. O'Rourke.

"In a free society, offensive speech should not just be tolerated, its regular presence should be celebrated as a symbol of democratic health -- however odorous the products of a democracy may be," Hentoff, O'Rourke and others said in a brief backing the group. ... "

The First Amendment dispute has brought together some unlikely allies, including the American Civil Liberties Union, anti-abortion groups, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, civil libertarian Nat Hentoff and conservative satirist P.J. O'Rourke.

Big RR wrote:since when have license plates become bumper stickers? I would suggest that rather than fight the lawsuit, Texas just do away with vanity plates altogether and issue the same plate for all. It makes a lot more sense than trying to defend content restrictions on the exercise of free speech.

Texas just do away with vanity plates

Big RR wrote:since when have license plates become bumper stickers? I would suggest that rather than fight the lawsuit, Texas just do away with vanity plates altogether and issue the same plate for all. It makes a lot more sense than trying to defend content restrictions on the exercise of free speech.

rubato wrote:Moral people would be ashamed that their Ancestors were confederate veterans.

Or at least they would not boast of it.

Yes,
Rubato

[A] free-speech-for-license-plate advocate, R. James George, Jr., of Austin argued in favor of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and for a right for them to display a license plate with a Confederate flag as part of the design.

It was no surprise at all that George would open with an argument about license plates as a “public forum.” The state, he said at the outset, has “issued an open invitation” for motorists to submit plate designs.

His first adversary would be Justice Antonin Scalia, who sought to resurrect Texas’s argument that what was on the license plates was, indeed, what Texas government wanted said in those displays “If it is Texas’s speech,” Scalia commented, “all things can be said.”

George, of course, did not agree, insisting that the government had invited the public to join in a forum of public expression, with plates saying what the public wanted. And George did not shy away from arguing, in response to Justices’ questions, that Texas could not refuse a plate bearing a swastika, or one that said “Jihad,” or “Make Pot Legal,” or “Bong Hits for Jesus.”

That put off some of the Justices, or at least disturbed their sensibilities a bit, but it did have the positive value of being a way to stress that the First Amendment did have a role to play in protecting a public right of free expression on their cars and trucks.

Beat "live free or die" by miles.

"That's just bollocks,"

MajGenl.Meade wrote:In essence, are we now to believe that the states are obligated to put on license plates anything at all that any member of public wants to have put on there?

That's just bollocks