Unanimous Supreme Court Flies Flag for Free Speech in Case Against City of Boston

In a rare unanimous ruling on Monday, the Supreme Court secured a major victory for free speech.

In the opinion in Shurtleff v. Boston, authored by retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, the court ruled that the city of Boston violated the Constitution when it prohibited a group from flying a Christian flag on a flagpole it had held open to other groups and their flags.

The court determined that simply by permitting private groups to fly their flags on the City Hall flagpole, the city was not endorsing any message behind those flags and that, therefore, the flag and what it represents did not constitute government speech.

As a result, its refusal to allow a religious group to raise its flag simply because of its religious viewpoint was a violation of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.

In a separate, concurring opinion—perhaps the shortest we’ll see all term—Justice Brett Kavanaugh took one paragraph to distill the case to its essence, writing:

Under the Constitution, a government may not treat religious persons, religious organizations, or religious speech as second-class.

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