Docket nos. 14–144 Citations 576 U.S. ___ () | Date 2015 | |
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Full case name John Walker, III, Chairman, Texas Department of Motor Vehicles Board, et al., Petitioners v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc., et al. Majority Breyer, joined by Thomas, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan Dissent Alito, joined by Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy | ||
Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, 576 U.S. ___ (2015), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that license plates are government speech and are consequently more easily regulated/subjected to content restrictions than private speech under the First Amendment.
Contents
The Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans sought to have a specialty license plate issued in the state of Texas. The request was denied prompting the group to sue, claiming that denying a specialty plate was a First Amendment violation.
Opinion of the Court
The majority opinion, written by Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, relied heavily on the Court’s 2009 decision in Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, which stated that a city in Utah was not obliged to place a monument from a minor religion in a public park, even though it had one devoted to the Ten Commandments. The court ruled that refusing the minor monument was a valid expression of government speech which did not infringe on the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the dissent, arguing that specialty license plates are more commonly regarded as a limited public forum for private expression, consisting of "little mobile billboards on which motorists can display their own messages". Therefore, rejecting the design basically amounts to viewpoint discrimination.
Charleston shooting
In part because of the proximity in time of the Supreme Court's decision (June 18, 2015) with the Charleston church shooting (the evening of June 17, 2015), the decision was discussed in the media in relation to a controversy which arose in response to the shooting. The massacre was directed at nine African-American churchgoers at one of the oldest black churches in the United States. One of the victims, the Reverend Clementa C. Pinckney, was a member of the South Carolina Senate. The suspected shooter, Dylann Roof, was found to have been depicted in images with Confederate flags, including one with a Confederate flag on a license plate. At the time of the shooting, the Confederate battle flag flew over the South Carolina State House.
As an example of Walker's relevance to the controversy, on June 23, 2015, following the massacre at Charleston, three state governors—Terry McAuliffe of Virginia (a Democrat), Pat McCrory of North Carolina (a Republican), and Larry Hogan of Maryland (a Republican) announced plans to seek discontinuation of their state's Confederate-flag specialty license plates. The governors cited the Supreme Court's decision in Walker in support of their position.
Prophetically but coincidentally relevant to the controversy, Associate Justice Alito, writing for the dissent, discussed the meaning of the Confederate flag to different social groups:
The Confederate battle flag is a controversial symbol. To the Texas Sons of Confederate Veterans, it is said to evoke the memory of their ancestors and other soldiers who fought for the South in the Civil War. To others, it symbolizes slavery, segregation, and hatred.