The US supreme court has ruled against a Confederate veterans group seeking the right to put the controversial flag on Texas speciality license plates.

The case, Walker v Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), centered on first amendment issues of free speech and to what extent a speciality license plate represents the views of the state that issued it or the drivers who put it on their car.

The court ruled 5-4 that rejecting the Texas confederate flag plate did not contravene free speech (pdf).



It held that “Texas’s specialty license plate designs constitute government speech, and thus Texas was entitled to refuse to issue plates featuring SCV’s proposed design”.

It added: “The fact that private parties take part in the design and propagation of a message does not extinguish the governmental nature of the message or transform the government’s role into that of a mere forum-provider.

“Additionally, the fact that Texas vehicle owners pay annual fees in order to display specialty license plates does not imply that the plate designs are merely a forum for private speech.”



In a rare move, conservative justice Clarence Thomas joined his liberal colleagues in finding for Texas.

The SCV, who have about 30,000 members nationwide, are male descendants of Confederate soldiers. Their chief of heritage operations, Ben Jones, is a former Georgia congressman who was Cooter Davenport in the Dukes of Hazzard.

Since 2009 the Sons’ Texas branch has sought the creation of a bespoke Texas plate with their logo, a Confederate flag. Some other southern states offer plates with the insignia.

The Texas department of motor vehicles, which allows more than 400 plate styles, had refused amid criticism of the proposal from politicians and groups including the NAACP, who said that the flag is a symbol of hate and oppression towards African Americans.

Texas’s attorneys argued that license plates are not like bumper stickers; they are issued by the state rather than private individuals, which means they are “government speech”, and it is entitled to reject designs it deems inappropriate – a view backed on Thursday by the supreme court.



The SCV had contended that the plates are private speech, that the constitutional right to free speech includes the right to propagate messages that some may find offensive and that a government cannot censor individuals.



“We are certainly disappointed in the supreme court’s decision to not allow us to honour our heroes,” said Marshall Davis, spokesman for the Texas division of the Sons. “We feel the specialty plate is certainly reflective of the driver not the state ... the Sons of Confederate Veterans do not want to [stop] anyone honouring their heroes and would have appreciated the same tolerance extended to us.”



In a dissenting opinion, justice Samuel Alito said that once speciality license plates in Texas began to carry a wide variety of messages supporting private entities in the past 20 years – it is even possible to buy one depicting a can of Dr Pepper – “Texas crossed the line. The contrast between the history of public monuments, which have been used to convey government messages for centuries, and the Texas license plate program could not be starker.”

He added: “Texas has space available on millions of little mobile billboards. And Texas, in effect, sells that space to those who wish to use it to express a personal message – provided only that the message does not express a viewpoint that the State finds unacceptable. That is not government speech; it is the regulation of private speech.”

Alito argued that Texas was indulging in “viewpoint discrimination” because it allows other potentially divisive plates, such as Buffalo Soldiers and “Choose Life” anti-abortion designs, and a Boy Scouts plate despite that organisation’s ban on gay leaders.

Also at issue was whether Texas had indulged in “viewpoint discrimination” by rejecting the Sons’ claim that the plate is about celebrating heritage, when the state should have been “viewpoint neutral”.



Had the justices accepted that line of thinking, their decision could have opened the door for hate groups to demand license plates with a variety of offensive slogans or symbols, such as swastikas and swear words.







