Friday, May 06, 2022
Boston’s Refusal to Allow Christian Flag to Fly Is Unconstitutional, Unanimous Supreme Court Finds
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously on May 2 that Boston’s decision to allow national flags and flags about historic events, causes, and organizations to fly outside its city hall while refusing to raise a Christian flag is an unconstitutional example of government censorship.
The court’s opinion (pdf) in the case, Shurtleff v. Boston, court file 20-1800, was written by outgoing Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, who is expected to retire and will be replaced by Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson when the court’s current term ends. Oral arguments in the case, an appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit, came on Jan. 18.
Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch each filed a separate opinion concurring in the judgment of the court.
Mat Staver, founder and chairman of public interest law firm Liberty Counsel, weighed in on the court’s latest opinion.
“This 9-0 decision from the Supreme Court strikes a victory for private speech in a public forum,” said Staver, who represented the petitioners in oral arguments.
“This case is so much more significant than a flag. Boston openly discriminated against viewpoints it disfavored when it opened the flagpoles to all applicants and then excluded Christian viewpoints. Government cannot censor religious viewpoints under the guise of government speech,” he said in a statement provided to The Epoch Times.
Petitioner Harold Shurtleff runs Camp Constitution, which offers classes and workshops on U.S. history and the Constitution. Camp Constitution, also a petitioner, was formed “to enhance understanding of the country’s Judeo-Christian heritage, the American heritage of courage and ingenuity, the genius of the United States Constitution, and free enterprise,” according to the petition filed with the court.
Three flagpoles adorn Boston City Hall’s entrance. Atop one flies the U.S. flag, and below it is a flag honoring missing soldiers and prisoners of war. The Massachusetts flag is on a second flagpole. A third flagpole usually flies Boston’s flag, but sometimes flags are hoisted to honor or commemorate causes, individuals, historic events, and foreign countries such as the People’s Republic of China or Turkey. Sometimes, the tertiary staff hosts flags about military battles, victims of crime, or the LGBT community.
But in 2017, Boston refused to let Camp Constitution display a flag bearing a Christian cross, claiming it would be a constitutionally impermissible endorsement of Christianity by the city. The petition states that Boston official Gregory Rooney told the group the city “maintains a policy and practice of respectfully refraining from flying non-secular flags.”
Rooney said the policy was created out of concern for “the so-called separation of church and state or the Constitution’s establishment clause.” He worried that the Camp Constitution flag “was promoting a specific religion” and “didn’t think that it was in the city’s best interest to necessarily have that flag flying above City Hall.”
In the high court’s opinion, Breyer wrote that when the government “encourages diverse expression—say, by creating a forum for debate—the First Amendment prevents it from discriminating against speakers based on their viewpoint.”
“But when the government speaks for itself, the First Amendment does not demand airtime for all views.”
“The line between a forum for private expression and the government’s own speech is important, but not always clear. This case concerns a flagpole outside Boston City Hall. For years, Boston has allowed private groups to request use of the flagpole to raise flags of their choosing. As part of this program, Boston approved hundreds of requests to raise dozens of different flags. The city did not deny a single request to raise a flag until, in 2017, Harold Shurtleff, the director of a group called Camp Constitution, asked to fly a Christian flag. Boston refused.”
Boston even conceded that it denied Shurtleff’s request “solely because the Christian flag he asked to raise promot[ed] a specific religion,” Breyer wrote.
“Under our precedents, and in view of our government-speech holding here, that refusal discriminated based on religious viewpoint and violated the Free Speech Clause.”
The Supreme Court concluded that “on balance, Boston did not make the raising and flying of private groups’ flags a form of government speech. That means, in turn, that Boston’s refusal to let Shurtleff and Camp Constitution raise their flag based on its religious viewpoint ‘abridg[ed]’ their ‘freedom of speech,’” Breyer wrote, quoting the First Amendment.
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Abortion rights: End of Roe v Wade to return authority to the people
The strangest take on the leaked initial draft majority opinion from the US Supreme Court, which paves the way for overturning the right to an abortion in the US, was that of Democrat senator Elizabeth Warren, who castigated the court as an extremist body poised to “impose its far-right, unpopular views on the entire country”.
She may be correct about the unpopularity of overturning the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade that created the right to have an abortion, striking out any laws to the contrary. That remains to be seen.
But the idea the court plans to impose its ideas on the entire country is nonsense. The opposite is nearer the truth.
As the leaked initial draft majority opinion delivered by Justice Samuel Alito makes clear, the Supreme Court has been imposing its personal policy preferences on the entire country for almost 50 years, having created a constitutional right to abortion that plainly doesn’t exist.
“The court usurped a power to address a profound social and moral question that the constitution unequivocally leaves for the people … an error that cannot be allowed to stand,” the draft opinion reads.
Far from imposing its views, the Alito draft opinion, assuming enough of the remaining eight judges ultimately agree with him, would excise the court from the equation entirely, leaving the laws about abortion up to individual states and their legislatures.
That’s how every other nation, including Australia, deals with abortion: legislation, which varies across Australia’s states and territories.
Mississippi’s law banning abortions beyond 15 weeks, the issue that has prompted the court’s latest review, would be considered progressive in much of Europe, where abortions typically aren’t available beyond three months without a good reason. Indeed, only a handful of nations permit “on demand” abortion beyond 20 weeks, including China, North Korea, Canada, Singapore, Vietnam and The Netherlands.
Reversing previous judgments happens a lot. Even the brightest among us make errors, and the Roe decision was a collective brain snap that even defenders of abortion rights, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one the most progressive Supreme Court justices, have found to be flawed.
“Without any grounding in the constitutional text, history, or precedent, (Roe) imposed on the entire country a detailed set of rules much like those that one might expect to find in a statute or regulation,” the Alito draft opinion says.
Roe v Wade was the ultimate in activist judicial decision-making. The judgment spent more time talking about infanticide in antiquity than the state of the law and custom across the US.
Roe was so “egregiously wrong from the start”, as Alito puts it, even on questions of basic fact, that the second time the Supreme Court looked at it, in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v Casey in 1992, the justices could find only one serious argument for keeping it: precedent. In other words, this might be a really bad judgment but people have become used to it.
The Supreme Court has overturned other terrible decisions, most famously the embarrassing 1896 Plessy v Ferguson decision that condoned racist “separate but equal” school policies, which clearly flouted the 14th amendment of 1868 and which was overturned in Brown v Board of Education of Topeka in 1954.
Warren’s naive characterisation of the court’s intention was deliberate. Alito’s arguments may be the “right” ones intellectually, but they are a political godsend for Democrats, who may yet end up doing much better in the November elections in the wake of this draft opinion than they otherwise would have.
In an era where rights are a lot more popular than responsibilities, the perception women are losing their right to abortion, even if it means little in practice, will undermine support for Republicans and energise left-wing activists. Democrat political strategists privately will be cheering the draft opinion and winking approvingly at Warren’s absurd characterisation of it.
The leaker in the Supreme Court will become a hero for kickstarting the Democrats’ campaign months ahead of schedule. If the Democrats manage to keep hold of the Senate in November, this will be the reason.
Let’s be clear; the viciousness of the debate over Alito’s learned prose doesn’t reflect the real impact the court’s ultimate judgment will have. Women with access to resources still will have abortions in the US, in extreme cases having to travel to a different state. Almost 93 per cent of the 630,000-odd abortions in 2019 occurred before 13 weeks, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, well within the laws even in supposedly hardline Mississippi.
And women without means will continue to have children they perhaps shouldn’t have had, owing to incentives in the welfare system and a host of complex other reasons.
What enrages the supposedly pro-choice activists is the world view the justices appear poised to embrace: democracy and states’ rights, as described in the US constitution, over authoritarian elitism. The idea ordinary people should have the power to decide the legal limits on abortion rights at the state level, via their elected representatives, infuriates authoritarian elitists who dominate the upper echelons of US society.
Sky News Australia host Piers Morgan says he believes women should be free to choose what they do with their… bodies just like men. His remarks come after a leaked draft opinion from the US Supreme Court revealed the landmark Roe v Wade abortion rights ruling may be More
Yes, the Supreme Court may have erred in 1973, making up a right that didn’t exist, but if the error suited the mores and preferences of the ruling elite, who cares?
The past two years have highlighted how champions of bodily autonomy, privacy and human rights the world over were only too happy to mandate vaccines, lock people up for months and track their movements.
People of good conscience can have different views on abortion; philosophers and doctors alike have long struggled to agree on when a foetus becomes a child. There’s no obvious answer.
But people who believe words should have meaning and that major issues of law should be resolved democratically should have no trouble with Roe v Wade being overturned.
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UK: Biology MUST come first in trans debate and is 'critically important' to Government policy on contoversial issue, Rishi Sunak says
The Chancellor has said that biology must be the primary policy driver when it comes to laws around gender-neutral toilets and transgender women competing in sport.
Mr Sunak – who has previously avoided directly commenting on the issue – told a Mumsnet user that women’s rights and trans rights should both be respected, but stressed: ‘I’m of the view that biology is important – it’s fundamental, it’s critical to how we approach those type of questions.’
The Chancellor’s latest line appears to be more definitive than when he was questioned last month.
Refusing to give his own definition of a woman, he deferred to Boris Johnson’s words in the Commons despite being questioned numerous times by TalkTV, saying: ‘I can’t put it as well as he did.’
Yesterday Mr Sunak also confirmed he ‘absolutely’ shared Mr Johnson’s view on the matter.
He said: ‘You need to have compassion for those thinking about their identity and thinking about what that means for them, their families as they’re potentially going through a change and we need to be compassionate and understanding about that.
‘And we also have to have respect, in particular for views of women who are anxious that some of the things they have fought really hard for and rights that are important to them will be eroded.
‘We need to have respect for that point of view.’
Mr Sunak said that in practical terms, policy should be reflected in ‘biology’ when the government approach areas such as toilets or sport.
He added: ‘That should be how policy is reflected in that.
‘Biology is critically important as we think about some of those very practical questions.’ The Chancellor’s line appears to be more definitive than when he was questioned on the matter last month.
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What Really Scares the Left About Musk Buying Twitter
Democrats are terrified. Imagine your political future being dependent on your ability to prevent your opponent from expressing themselves. That seems to be what Democrats are counting on, since every indication is their policies and the resulting inflation and supply chain shortages are wearing thin with the American public. The alternative would be to defend their failures and even they, with all the help of the left-wing media complex, can’t polish that steaming pile. That’s what scares them so much about what Elon Musk is proposing.
Musk isn’t a conservative, and it’s pretty clear he’s not even talking exclusively about the United States (yes, free speech is an issue around the world), but the left now hates him just the same. John Dean, Watergate felon turned liberal darling after he turned on Richard Nixon, tweeted, “Not sure I am interested in Twitter if Elon Musk owns it.” Why? He didn’t say because liberals never say. They don’t have to, they aren’t asked.
Angry dwarf and former Clinton administration Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, tweeted, “Elon Musk's real goal has nothing to do with the freedom of others. His goal is the freedom to wield enormous power without having to be accountable to laws and regulations, shareholders, or market competition—which is why he's dead set on owning Twitter.” Bobby has embraced full communism since leaving his Cabinet post and, of course, becoming a tenured professor at UC Berkeley, so it’s not surprising he would project his goals on someone expressly advocating the opposite of them. It’s what Nazis do.
These people are freaking out, showing the world what they really are. How can anyone be so afraid of other people speaking freely? Here’s something very telling: the totalitarian regimes around the world that work tirelessly to silence dissent in their countries aren’t as upset about the Twitter adopting a free speech mission statement as Democrats in the United States are, and that includes China.
Musk controls hundreds of satellites orbiting the globe that provide internet everywhere, allowing, for example, the people of Ukraine to continue to communicate and get video out of the atrocities Russia is committing AFTER the physical infrastructure of the internet had been wiped out. Imagine that everywhere.
That is what everyone should be celebrating, but progressives have no love for free speech. Even the ACLU, a group that made s name fighting for that right against government intrusion, decided to publicly abandon that fight for speech they don’t approve of, has no interest in the concept anymore. The left is now on the side of China, Russia, and every other despotic regime seeking to limit communication of its citizenry, only they’re doing it in the name of “compassion” for “marginalized communities” and various people sensibilities, not the naked power-grab those foreign governments don’t try to pretend aren’t their motivations.
The end result is the same – monopolistic control over what can and can’t be said – and it always benefits those in power, exclusively.
Meanwhile, Democrats are busy accusing everyone interested in unfettered communication between human beings of being Hitler. I wasn’t alive during Hitler’s time, but I have not read a single history book where he is called a champion of free speech. If such a thing exists, perhaps Democrats could point it out? They do, however, share a lot of the same “progressive” policy goals, as you would expect with a group calling itself the “National Socialist German Workers Party.”
All the “wrong,” which is to say all the right people are upset at Elon Musk buying Twitter, with many threatening to quit. As a proponent of the free market, I welcome their departure. As a believer in turnabout being the fairest of plays, I would invite those upset to the point that they simply can’t bring themselves to tweet ever again to build their own Twitter if they can’t handle the direction of the existing one.
The lengths to which someone will go to silence their political opponents, not defeat them in a debate, tells you everything you need to know about modern Democrats. Conservatives would give the left megaphones, because we believe the more normal people hear them the more repulsed they become. They want to silence us because they’re afraid the more people hear us, the more will join our ranks. It’s a choice between a microphone and a gag. If nothing else, this move by Elon Musk made that difference crystal clear.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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