By Mark Sherman | Related Press
WASHINGTON — A unanimous Supreme Courtroom 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 exterior Metropolis Corridor.
Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the court docket that town discriminated towards the activist, Harold Shurtleff, due to his “non secular viewpoint,” regardless that it had routinely permitted purposes for using one of many three flagpoles exterior Metropolis Corridor that fly the U.S., Massachusetts and Boston flags.
Sometimes, town takes down its personal pennant and quickly hoists one other flag.
Shurtleff and his Camp Structure needed to fly a white banner with a pink cross on a blue background within the higher left nook, referred to as the Christian flag, to mark Structure Day, Sept. 17, in 2017.
Town had permitted 284 consecutive purposes to fly flags, normally these of different nations, earlier than it rejected Shurtleff’s as a result of it was a Christian flag. Town stated he may fly a distinct banner, however Shurtleff refused, and decrease courts upheld town’s resolution.
However the excessive court docket stated the decrease courts and town had been improper. The case hinged on whether or not the flag-flying is an act of the federal government, by which case Boston can do no matter it desires, or non-public events like Shurtleff, Breyer wrote.
“Lastly, we have a look at the extent to which Boston actively managed these flag raisings and formed the messages the flags despatched. The reply, it appears, is by no means. And that's the most salient function of this case,” Breyer wrote in an opinion that additionally riffed on the brutalist architectural type of Boston’s Metropolis Corridor and the Siena, Italy-inspired 7-acre plaza on which it sits.
Breyer wrote that “town’s lack of significant involvement within the number of flags or the crafting of their messages leads us to categorise the flag raisings as non-public, not authorities, speech—although nothing prevents Boston from altering its insurance policies going ahead.”
Town has stated that within the occasion of a loss on the Supreme Courtroom it in all probability 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 Structure web site to query the Jan. 6 rebellion on the U.S. Capitol, the end 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 situation on the excessive court docket.
The case is Shurtleff v. Boston, 20-1800.