Seth Udinski, FISM News
In a momentous win for religious freedom in America, the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Camp Constitution, a Christian group that had been denied access by Boston city officials to fly the Christian flag on the grounds of Boston’s city hall.
FISM News previously reported that Camp Constitution had taken their case to the high court after they were barred from flying their flag on city hall grounds, even though the designated flagpole was commonly accepted as a visual “public forum” zone. The court made their decision unanimously in a 9-0 ruling.
Liberal justice Stephen Breyer, set to retire from the court later this year, said after the ruling,
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. The city’s lack of meaningful involvement in the selection of flags or the crafting of their messages leads us to classify the flag raisings as private, not government, speech — though nothing prevents Boston from changing its policies going forward.
Conservative justice Brett Kavanaugh expounded on Breyer’s main sentiment, saying, “Under the Constitution, a government may not treat religious persons, religious organizations, or religious speech as second-class.
Proponents of free speech are overjoyed at this ruling, especially considering the city of Boston seemingly targeted the Christian group based on their religion. According to NBC News, there were almost 300 requests from various groups for representation on the public forum grounds in Boston in the last 12 years. The city never denied a single one until Camp Constitution’s request.
The court’s ruling noted that the city of Boston denied the request due to the fact that Camp Constitution was a religious organization:
Here, Boston concedes that it denied Shurtleff ’s request solely because the Christian flag he asked to raise ‘promot[ed] a specific religion.’ 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
Liberty Counsel represented Camp Constitution in the case. “This 9-0 decision from the Supreme Court strikes a victory for private speech in a public forum,” Liberty Counsel’s Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said following the ruling, adding, “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.”