A unanimous Supreme Court dominated Monday that Boston violated the free speech rights of a conservative activist when it refused his request to fly a Christian flag on a flagpole outdoors City Hall.
Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the court docket that town discriminated in opposition to the activist, Harold Shurtleff, due to his “religious viewpoint,” although it had routinely permitted functions for using one of many three flagpoles outdoors City Hall that fly the U.S., Massachusetts and Boston flags.
Occasionally, town takes down its personal pennant and quickly hoists one other flag.
Shurtleff and his Camp Constitution wished to fly a white banner with a crimson cross on a blue background within the higher left nook, referred to as the Christian flag, to mark Constitution Day, Sept. 17, in 2017.
The metropolis had permitted 284 consecutive functions to fly flags, often these of different nations, earlier than it rejected Shurtleff’s as a result of it was a Christian flag. The metropolis mentioned he might fly a special banner, however Shurtleff refused, and decrease courts upheld town’s determination.
But the excessive court docket mentioned the decrease courts and town had been incorrect. The case hinged on whether or not the flag-flying is an act of the federal government, through which case Boston can do no matter it desires, or personal events like Shurtleff, Breyer wrote.
“Finally, we look at the extent to which Boston actively controlled these flag raisings and shaped the messages the flags sent. The answer, it seems, is not at all. And that is the most salient feature of this case,” Breyer wrote in an opinion that additionally riffed on the brutalist architectural fashion of Boston’s City Hall and the Siena, Italy-inspired 7-acre plaza on which it sits.
Breyer wrote that “the city’s lack of meaningful involvement in the selection of flags or the crafting of their messages leads us to classify the flag raisings as private, not government, speech—though nothing prevents Boston from changing its policies going forward.”
The metropolis has mentioned that within the occasion of a loss on the Supreme Court it most likely will change its coverage to take extra management of what flags can fly.
Shurtleff is a former organizer with the John Birch Society and has used his Camp Constitution web site to query the Jan. 6 rebel on the U.S. Capitol, the result of the 2020 election that put President Joe Biden in workplace, the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines and even who was behind the Sept. 11 assaults.
None of that was at problem on the excessive court docket.
The case is Shurtleff v. Boston, 20-1800.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”