Supreme Court to decide case over Confederate flag license plate

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.

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Supreme Court to decide case over Confederate flag license plate