Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-1800_7lho.pdf
Page Number: 24.0

Cite as:  596 U. S. ____ (2022) 

5 

ALITO, J., concurring in judgment 

would not be true if “a town created a monument on which 
all  of  its  residents  (or  all  those  meeting  some  other  crite-
rion) could place the name of a person to be honored or some
other private message”). 

This case exemplifies the point.  Governments have long
used flags to express government messages, so this factor 
provides prima facie support for Boston’s position under the 
Court’s mode of analysis.  Ante, at 7–9.  But on these facts, 
the  history  of  flags  clearly  cannot  have  any  bearing  on 
whether the flag displays express the City’s own message. 
The City put the flagpoles to an unorthodox use—allowing 
private  parties  to  use  the  poles  to  express  messages  that
were not formulated by City officials.  Treating this factor
as significant in that circumstance loads the dice in favor of
the government’s position for no obvious reason. 

Now consider the third factor: “the public’s likely percep-
tion  as  to  who  (the  government  or  a  private  person)  is
speaking.”  Ante, at 6.  Our earlier government-speech prec-
edents  recognized  that  “the  correct  focus”  of  the  govern-
ment-speech inquiry “is not on whether the . . . reasonable 
viewer would identify the speech as the government’s,” Jo-
hanns v. Livestock Marketing Assn., 544 U. S. 550, 564, n. 7 
(2005), and with good reason.  Unless the public is assumed
to  be  omniscient,  public  perception  cannot  be  relevant  to 
whether the government is speaking, as opposed merely ap-
pearing to speak.  Focusing on public perception encourages
courts  to  categorize  private  expression  as  government
speech  in  circumstances  in  which  the  public  is  liable  to 
misattribute that speech to the government.  This case once 
again  provides  an  apt  illustration.    As  the  Court  rightly
notes, “[a] passerby on Cambridge Street” confronted with 
a flag flanked by government flags standing just outside the 
entrance of Boston’s seat of government would likely con-
clude that all of those flags “conve[y] some message on the 
government’s behalf.”  Ante, at 9 (internal quotation marks