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4 

SHURTLEFF v. BOSTON 

ALITO, J., concurring in judgment 

ante, at 6, of covered performances.  One of the leading crit-
ics of the Act—the playwright George Bernard Shaw—was
denied permission to perform several plays, including Mrs. 
Warren’s Profession, The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet, and 
Press Cuttings.1  But had the Lord Chamberlain approved 
these  plays,  would  anyone  seriously  maintain  that  those 
plays  were  thereby  transmuted  into  the  government’s 
speech?

As this illustration shows, neither “control” nor “final ap-
proval  authority”  can  in  itself  distinguish  government
speech  from  censorship  of  private  speech,  and  analyzing 
that  factor  in  isolation  from  speaker  identity  flattens  the
distinction  between  government  speech  and  speech  toler-
ated by the censor.  And it is not as though “actively” exer-
cising control over the “nature and content” of private ex-
pression  makes  a  difference,  as  the  Court  suggests,  ibid. 
Censorship is not made constitutional by aggressive and di-
rect application. 

Next, turn to the history of the means of expression.  Ibid. 
Historical practice can establish that a means of expression
“typically represent[s] government speech.”  Summum, 555 
U. S., at 470 (emphasis added); Tam, 582 U. S., at ___ (slip 
op., at 17).  But in determining whether speech is the gov-
ernment’s,  the  real  question  is  not  whether  a  form  of  ex-
pression is usually linked with the government but whether 
the  speech  at  issue  expresses  the  government’s  own  mes-
sage.  Governments can put public resources to novel uses. 
And  when  governments  allow  private  parties  to  use  a  re-
source  normally  devoted  to  government  speech  to  express 
their own messages, the government cannot rely on histor-
ical expectations to pass off private speech as its own.  Cf. 
Summum, 555 U. S., at 480 (explaining that even though 
monuments in parks are normally government speech, that 

—————— 

1 See  generally  L.  Hugo,  Edwardian  Shaw:  The  Writer  and  His  Age 

197–230 (1999).