Daily Archives: March 22, 2015

Washington The United States Supreme Court on Monday is set to hear a dispute over whether Texas has the authority to bar the issuance of a specialty license plate featuring the Confederate battle flag.

The controversy arose in 2009 after the group Sons of Confederate Veterans asked the Texas Motor Vehicles Board to approve a specialty license plate that prominently displayed the Confederate flag.

In the century and a half since the Civil War, the Confederate battle flag has come to represent a symbol of Southern heritage for some. But for many others, including African-Americans, the flag is viewed as a symbol of fear, intimidation, and oppression.

Cognizant of this reaction, the Motor Vehicles Board voted to reject the license plate.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans filed a lawsuit, charging that the Texas board which has approved messages conveyed by 350 other specialty license plates had engaged in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendments free speech clause.

A federal judge ruled for the state and dismissed the lawsuit, but the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, ruling that the board engaged in unconstitutional censorship by rejecting the license plate based on the viewpoint it expressed.

In its brief to the US Supreme Court, Texas argues that it has done nothing to abridge the groups freedom of speech.

The respondents have every right to decorate their cars with bumper stickers or placards that display the Confederate battle flag. But they cannot commandeer the state into promoting the Confederate battle flag on a state-issued license plate, the Texas brief says.

The [Sons of Confederate Veterans] are not seeking to vindicate their freedom of speech; they are trying to coerce the State of Texas into propagating a message and image that it does not wish to convey, the brief adds.

The federal appeals court ruled that since Texas offers a wide range of specialty license plates with state-approved messages for sale to motorists who embrace those messages, it could not single out certain objectionable or offensive messages from inclusion in the specialty plate program.

Read the rest here:
Supreme Court to decide case over Confederate flag license plate

WASHINGTON 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.

Specialty plates are moneymakers for states, and Texas offers more than 350 varieties that took in $17.6 million last year, according to the state Department of Motor Vehicles. Nearly 877,000 vehicles among more than 19 million cars, pickup trucks and motorcycles registered in Texas carry a specialty plate, the department said.

They bear messages that include "Choose Life," "God Bless Texas" and "Fight Terrorism," as well as others in support of Dr. Pepper, burrito and burger chains, Boy Scouts, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, blood donations, professional sports teams and colleges.

A state motor vehicle board rejected the Sons of Confederate Veterans application because of concerns it would offend many Texans who believe the flag is a racially charged symbol of repression. On the same day, the board approved a plate honoring the nation's first black Army units, the Buffalo Soldiers, despite objections from Native Americans over the units' roles in fighting Indian tribes in the West in the late 1800s.

"There are a lot of competing racial and ethnic concerns, and Texas doesn't necessarily handle them any way but awkwardly sometimes," said Lynne Rambo, a professor at the Texas A&M University School of Law in Fort Worth.

See more here:
Confederate battle flag at center of Supreme Court free speech case