In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that speciality license plates are government speech and may be restricted by the state.
The case dates back to 2009, when the Sons of Confederate Veterans applied for their own confederate flag license plate in Texas. The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles Board determined the plates “offensive” and too closely associated with hate speech.
The court justified their decision, in part, by Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, a case which ruled that a city erecting a privately-donated monument constituted government speech.
They likened the purchase of license plates from the state to this case, with Justice Stephen Breyer writing in the majority opinion, “Texas license plates are, essentially, government IDs. And issuers of ID ‘typically do not permit’ the placement on their IDs of ‘message[s] with which they do not wish to be associated.’”
In the dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito argued that no one, seeing the vast array of Texas speciality plates, could actually think they reflected the views of the government.
Texas currently has over 350 specialty license plates—including politically charged ones like “Don’t Tread on Me.”
“Whatever it means to motorists who display that symbol and to those who see it, the flag expresses a viewpoint,” he wrote. “The Board rejected the plate design because it concluded that many Texans would find the flag symbol offensive. That was pure viewpoint discrimination.”
Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Anthony Scalia and Justice Anthony Kennedy also dissented.
Their dissent called attention to other instances of speech which might be affected by this type of thinking, including the case of New York rejecting pro-life license plates because they were too “offensive.”
“There is a big difference between government speech (that is, speech by the government in furtherance of its programs) and governmental blessing(or condemnation) of private speech.”
