Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans

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Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans

Supreme Court of the United States. Argued March 23, 2015. Decided June 18, 2015.

Full name: John Walker, III, Chairman, Texas Department of Motor Vehicles Board, et al., Petitioners v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc., et al. Docket: 14-144. Citations: 576 U.S. 200 (2015); 135 S. Ct. 2239; 192 L. Ed. 2d 274.

What happened
- The Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans asked Texas to issue a specialty license plate showing the Confederate Battle Flag.
- Texas refused to issue the plate. The group said this violated the First Amendment.

The big idea of the ruling
- The Court said license plates are government speech. Because they are government speech, the state can decide what messages to display and can restrict content without violating the First Amendment.

The majority opinion
- Written by Justice Stephen Breyer and joined by Justices Thomas, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan.
- The Court relied on the idea from Pleasant Grove City v. Summum: when the government speaks, it controls the message.

The dissent
- Written by Justice Samuel Alito and joined by Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Scalia, and Justice Kennedy.
- The dissent argued that specialty license plates are a limited public forum for private expression, so denying a design is a form of viewpoint discrimination.

Context and impact
- The decision came soon after the Charleston church shooting and was discussed in relation to the broader debate over Confederate symbols.
- After Walker, some state leaders talked about discontinuing Confederate flag license plates, citing the ruling.
- The case acknowledged that the Confederate flag means different things to different people: for some, memory and heritage; for others, a symbol of oppression and hatred.