Source: https://www.pulj.org/the-roundtable/the-supreme-courts-vague-definition-of-government-speech
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 18:05:20+00:00

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Under the Supreme Court’s rulings, the government cannot restrict private speech in favor of one opinion or viewpoint over others—that is, it must exercise viewpoint neutrality.  But it would be odd to expect the government to act in the same way toward its own speech. If a particular administration had to devote equal energy to arguing both for and against legislation, it would likely accomplish few policy goals. Thus, if individual speech constitutes that of the government, the Court maintains the government’s right to regulate; but if individual speech is ruled private, the government cannot enact inequitable regulation.
In Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, the Court allowed the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles to refuse to issue a specialty license plate for the Sons of Confederate Veterans that featured a Confederate flag.  The majority’s rationale was that license plates are government speech, arguing that states have used such plates to promote its agendas (such as encouraging tourism) and that the placement of the state’s name on the license plates and their mandatory status makes them “essentially, government IDs.” Thus, it does not have to exercise viewpoint neutrality and may ban specialty plates.
Similarly, the Court found in Pleasant Grove City v. Summum that the government may refuse to install a monument in a public park because “[w]hen a government entity arranges for the construction of a monument, it does so because it wishes to convey some thought or instill some feeling in those who see the structure.”  Thus, those statutes fall under the purview of the government’s speech, and their display is left to government discretion.
The discrepancy between these cases and Matal v. Tam highlights the lack of a consistent standard of government speech—public parks and specialty license plates are speech by the government, yet government-issued trademarks are expressions by individuals. The Court is firm on what the government can and cannot do in either scenario, but it seems to follow a rather case-by-case approach in distinguishing between the two.
Taking the Court’s logic to an extreme, it is possible to imagine many negative outcomes: “Does this mean that the government can put any message it wants on license plates and require that people have that on their cars? ... Could a city library choose to have only books by Republican authors by saying that it is the government speaking? Could a city allow a pro-war demonstration in a city park while denying access to an antiwar demonstration simply by adopting the former as its government speech?”  Although these situations seem unlikely, recent Supreme Court rulings are ambiguous, leaving open the possibility of them becoming a reality.
The Court should address this dilemma the next time it takes on a government speech case, so that the question of private versus government speech may be resolved and future conflicts may be evaluated under one consistent principle.
 Lamb’s Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School Dist., 508 U. S. 384, 394 (1993).
 Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, 576 U.S. ___ (2015).
 Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, 555 U.S. 460 (2009).

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