SCOTUS rules against Boston on the flying of a Christian Flag
Just today the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against the city of Boston in a case involving the city, denying a Christian Organization from raising an iconographic “Christian flag” upon one of the 3 existing flagpoles in front of their city hall. Apparently it has been the policy of the city that one of the flagpoles, which normally flies the city of Boston’s flag, is sometimes made available to public groups so they could fly flags that promote specific events or causes.
Prima facie this policy seems to look generally beneficial to the citizenry of the area. However, there were certainly clear issues that SCOTUS had to address in their ruling, but legally I do believe they made the correct decision to rule against the city of Boston. Wait, just hear me out before you all raise the atheist pitchforks and shout I have committed heresy against the first amendment, and the Establishment Clause that Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the exercise thereof.
In the totality of the circumstances of the case, which admittedly I have not personally read (Shurtleff v. City of Boston), from what I have gathered let me explain why I think SCOTUS was correct in their ruling , and why it isn’t really about separation of church and state, but their capricious and arbitrary application of public policy. I should note initially that “policy” is not “law”, but it has long since been understood that a governmental body can not enforce, or “respect” as in favor one religion over another.
Since the flagpole de quo had been, by policy, historically used by various groups to promote things such as gay pride, when a Christian group wanted to use the flagpole to promote an hour long event that would be comprised of Christian clergy discussing the history of Boston by displaying a flag that contained a “Latin Cross”, and were denied, this is not a violation of the Establishment Clause; as it was a public group, wanting to promote a public event. It was not a specific religion being promoted by the City Hall, a clearly governmental building, but it was to be a promotion of a public event held by a Christian organization within a public forum in front of the building. If the forum is in fact “public”, then under the very same Establishment clause that prevents the government from promoting a Christian religion, it cannot prohibit the exercise of free speech of Christians.
Any group that has a form of private speech, that is not endorsed by a governmental body, that has historically been allowed by statute or policy in a public forum should not be denied, interfered with, or attenuated by legal constraints such as the Establishment Clause. Free speech is free speech, even if the organization is of a religious origin. SCOTUS ruled that the city had created a public forum by allowing these private groups to use the flagpole to bring awareness to their events and causes, as such the city can not then discriminate on the usage of the flag based upon iconography of the flag, nor any religions antecedents, to be flown by a specific group.
Just today the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against the city of Boston in a case involving the city, denying a Christian Organization from raising an iconographic “Christian flag” upon one of the 3 existing flagpoles in front of their city hall. Apparently it has been the policy of the city that one of the flagpoles, which normally flies the city of Boston’s flag, is sometimes made available to public groups so they could fly flags that promote specific events or causes.
Prima facie this policy seems to look generally beneficial to the citizenry of the area. However, there were certainly clear issues that SCOTUS had to address in their ruling, and legally I do believe they made the correct decision to rule against the city of Boston. Just hear me out before you all raise the atheist pitchforks and shout I have committed heresy against the first amendment and the Establishment Clause that Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the exercise thereof.
In the totality of the circumstances of the case, from what I have gathered let me explain why I think SCOTUS was correct in their ruling and why it shows a deficiency of government to fully understand not just separation of church and state, but their capricious and arbitrary application of public policy in this specific instance. I should note initially that “policy” is not “law”, but it has long since been understood that a governmental body can not enforce, or “respect” as in favor one religion over another.
Since the flagpole de quo had been, by policy, historically used by various groups to promote things such as gay pride, when a Christian group wanted to use the flagpole to promote an hour long event that would be comprised of Christian clergy discussing the history of Boston that contained a “Latin Cross”, and were denied this is not a violation of the Establishment Clause to do so; as it was a public group wanting to promote a public event. It was not a specific religion being promoted by the City Hall, a clearly governmental building, but it was to be a promotion of a public event held by a Christian organization.
Any group that has a form of private speech, that is not endorsed by a governmental body, that has historically been allowed by statute or policy in a public forum should not be denied, interfered with, or attenuated by legal constraints such as the Establishment Clause. Free speech is free speech, even if the organization is of a religious origin. SCOTUS ruled that the city had created a public forum by allowing these private groups to use the flagpole to bring awareness to their events and causes, as such the city can not then discriminate on the usage of the flag based upon iconography of the flag, nor any religious antecedents to be flown by a specific group.
The city of Boston had no direct involvement of the Christian group, no explicit, or even implicit support of the group, but merely established, even if inadvertently, a public forum open to all public speech. Historically, it was also understood that flying the flag of a private group for public reasons that the city was not speaking as a governmental agency. It was noted by SCOTUS that historically flags that had been flown prior represented quite contrary “messages” to the community. This would imply that Boston, historically, did not discriminate between content so long as the flag, I would assume, did not violate any other ordinance or statute prohibiting such as a violation of decency or any vulgarity prohibitions.
The fault here in my opinion, lies on the city of Boston as to not have a well defined policy when it came to flying of flags in their de facto, or limited public forum. Boston argued that the city’s flagpole is “not a public forum”, but it was the city that allowed the flagpole to be used to promote events to the community thus creating a limited public forum. An a limited public forum is generally open to all. It seems to me that this is prime and fertile ground to have groups like The Satanic Temple take advantage of this ruling to raise a flag of the Sigil of Baphomet, or even a direct representation of Baphomet, under the same SCOTUS ruling. This of course is only if The Satanic Temple wishes to have a public event, either to celebrate some event, or promote some cause important to the Satanic Temple, in the public forum of Boston’s City Hall. Interestingly enough, The Satanic Temple already had tried to sue Boston to be allowed to given an opening prayer for a City Council meeting (here)…so this might be the ultimate FU to them if they were allowed to fly a Satanic flag in front of Boston’s City Hall. Just sayin’.
What I suspect will happen, is that Boston will quite soon make changes to their policy, but the specifics of those changes will remain to be seen. Until then, I wonder if groups like The Satanic Temple will actually take advantage of SCOTUS ruling to quite effectively demonstrate that having a secular society is fundamental to a cohesive one, and that if one religious event or demonstration is allowed, then all are…including Satanism.
Ave Satanas?
-Steve McRae
(Note: This is just my initial perfunctory opinion given what I know about the story thus far, and is quite open to revision).
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/02/us/supreme-court-boston-flag-free-speech.html
