Supreme Court to Determine Legality of Confederate Flag on License Plates
WASHINGTON, March 22 (UPI) — In the case, Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc., the nine justices will need to determine “whether the messages and images that appear on state-issued specialty license plates qualify as government speech immune from any requirement of viewpoint neutrality,” according to SCOTUSblog.
The justices will also look to see if Texas committed “viewpoint discrimination” when it rejected the license plate design when the state has not previously issued license plates portraying the confederacy or its flag in a “negative or critical light.”
There are more than 350 permitted messages in the state’s license plate program. The case will determine whether the license plate’s message is being communicated by the government or by the driver.
The ruling would set a precedent that other states could use in determining their own rulings on similar issues.
The proposed plate, which was denied unanimously by the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles Board in 2011, displays the word “Texas” at the top with a emblazoned Confederate flag at the center-left of the license plate dated 1896 and the phrase “Sons of Confederate Veterans” at the bottom.
The Confederate flag is often viewed as a symbolic part of the white-dominated, slave-owning racist culture of the American South during the Civil War.
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