The United States Supreme Court reportedly accepted to hear a case involving the banning of flying a Christian flag in Boston's City Hall.
The SCOTUSblog announced on Thursday that the high court's justices have just added five cases to their docket after having a "long conference" last Monday. It explained that such conferences, which serves an end to their recess, takes long due to the thousands of cases filed in the Supreme Court.
Accordingly, the justices will then begin hearing the cases thereafter since the Supreme Court have already released orders for the said cases, which included a Boston case filed by a Christian organization over a flag display dispute, named "Shurtleff v. City of Boston," with case number 20-1800. The Shurtleff v. City of Boston is one of the four cases the Supreme Court granted petitions for writs of certiorari to.
"Shurtleff v. Boston involves a First Amendment case about the city of Boston's refusal to allow a Christian organization to briefly fly a flag on a city hall flag pole, despite allowing other private civic groups to fly their flags," the SCOTUSBlog tweeted on Thursday.
We reported in June that the non-profit group Camp Constitution challenged the city of Boston's "obvious and unconstitutional discrimination" against Christians when it prohibited them in 2017 to fly their flag in line with Constitution Day and Citizenship Day.
Liberty Counsel filed the lawsuit against the city in behalf of Camp Constitution for not granting the permission to fly a Christian flag while other groups having religious symbols on them were permitted to. This, Liberty Counsel said in the petition, is a violation of Camp Constitution's First Amendment free speech right and Establishment Clause, as well as, the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause.
The Christian Post reported that Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver appreciated the high court's acceptance of the case and look forward to the hearing on it. Staver also hoped that the case would set the "precedent" on the "issue of government versus private speech" since the lower courts have ruled against it.
"We look forward to the U.S. Supreme Court hearing Boston's unconstitutional discrimination against Camp Constitution's Christian viewpoint. The city cannot deny the Christian flag because it is 'Christian' and allow every other flag to fly on its flagpoles," Staver said in a statement.
"Censoring religious viewpoints in a public forum where secular viewpoints are permitted is unconstitutional and this case will set national precedent," he highlighted.
In the statement dated September 30, the Liberty Counsel reiterated the merits of the case wherein the city of Boston had never censored any of its "prior 284 applications" to temporarily raise a flag on their flag poles until Camp Constitution's. The city referred to the flag as a "Christian flag" just because there is a red cross on the upper corner and tagged it as such in the application that ended in its censorship.
"Never has Boston censored any flag until the Camp Constitution's flag, which is white with a blue square in the upper corner and a red cross. The flag contains no writing. Under oath, the city official testified the flag would have been approved if the application did not refer to it as a 'Christian flag'," the statement stressed.
"The word 'Christian' on the application alone triggered the censorship. The official said he had never heard of a "Christian flag" until Camp Constitution's application. Therefore, his testimony revealed that if Camp Constitution had not referred to the flag on the application with the word "Christian," it would not have been censored," it explained.
Staver pointed out that the city contested the censorship based on government speech since the flag poles represent a public forum. But Staver rebutted it as "unconstitutional" since they allow private flags to be displayed there. He underscored that there is a "crucial difference" to a government office endorsing a religion and to private speech.
