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Page Number: 25.0

6 

SHURTLEFF v. BOSTON 

ALITO, J., concurring in judgment 

omitted).  If that is the case, this factor supports the exclu-
sion of private parties from using the flagpoles even though 
the government allows private parties to use the flagpoles 
to  express  private  messages,  presumably  because  those
messages may be erroneously attributed to the government. 
But there is no obvious reason why a government should be
entitled to suppress private views that might be attributed
to it by engaging in viewpoint discrimination.  The govern-
ment can always disavow any messages that might be mis-
takenly attributed to it.

The factors relied upon by the Court are thus an uncer-
tain  guide  to  speaker  identity.  But  beyond  that,  treating
these factors as a freestanding test for the existence of gov-
ernment speech artificially separates the question whether
the government is speaking from whether the government 
is  facilitating  or  regulating  private  speech.    Under  the 
Court’s  factorized  approach,  government  speech  occurs
when the government exercises a “sufficient” degree of con-
trol over speech that occurs in a setting connected with gov-
ernment speech in the eyes of history and the contemporary 
public,  regardless  of  whether  the  government  is  actually 
merely  facilitating  private  speech.    This  approach  allows
governments to exploit public expectations to mask censor-
ship.

And  like  any  factorized  analysis,  this  approach  cannot 
provide  a  principled  way  of  deciding  cases.  The  Court’s 
analysis here proves the point.  The Court concludes that 
two of the three factors—history and public perception—fa-
vor the City.  But it nonetheless holds that the flag displays
did  not  constitute  government  speech.    Why  these  factors
drop out of the analysis—or even do not justify a contrary 
conclusion—is left unsaid.  This cannot be the right way to
determine  when  governmental  action  is  exempt  from  the
First Amendment.