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SHURTLEFF v. BOSTON 

ALITO, J., concurring in judgment 

government  speech.”    Summum,  555  U. S.,  at  467.    That 
doctrine  presents  no  serious  problems  when  the  govern-
ment speaks in its own voice—for example, when an official
gives a speech in a representative capacity or a governmen-
tal body issues a report.  But courts must be very careful
when a government claims that speech by one or more pri-
vate  speakers  is  actually  government  speech.    When  that 
occurs, it can be difficult to tell whether the government is
using the doctrine “as a subterfuge for favoring certain pri-
vate speakers over others based on viewpoint,” id., at 473, 
and  the  government-speech  doctrine  becomes  “susceptible 
to dangerous misuse,” Matal v. Tam, 582 U. S. ___, ___–___ 
(2017) (slip op., at 13–14). 

In Tam, for example, the United States defended a stat-
utory provision that permitted the Patent and Trademark 
Office to deny federal registration to “disparag[ing]” marks,
15 U. S. C. §1052(a), on the theory that “the registration of
a  trademark  converts  the  mark  into  government  speech.”
582 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 17).  We rejected that argument 
and held that because the Government’s role in registration
was limited to applying a standard of assessment to marks
generated by private parties, registered marks are not gov-
ernment speech.  Id., at ___–___ (slip op., at 12–14).  But 
the Government’s position had radical implications: If reg-
istration  transforms  trademarks  into  government  speech,
the same logic would presumably hold for other speech in-
cluded on systems of government registration.  Books on the 
copyright registry, for example, would count as the Govern-
ment’s  own  speech—presumably  subject  to  editorial  con-
trol.  And the Government would be free to exclude authors 
from copyright protection based on their views.  Id., at ___– 
___ (slip op., at 17–18). 

To  prevent  the  government-speech  doctrine  from  being 
used  as  a  cover  for  censorship,  courts  must  focus  on  the 
identity of the speaker.  The ultimate question is whether 
the government is actually expressing its own views or the