Ruth Bader Ginsburg Still Wants to Talk About Bongs
On Monday, the Supreme Court debated license plates. Does a license plate represent the speech of a state, or the person who owns the car it’s attached to? If a state bans a license-plate design with a confederate flag on it, is it violating the First Amendment? Nine states currently issue specialty license plates with confederate flags on them, but Texas decided to reject a proposal submitted by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which is why the Supreme Court was discussing the matter of car swag this morning.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked the lawyer representing the Sons of Confederate Veterans if a win would mean that Texas would also have to approve designs with swastikas or the phrase "Bong Hits for Jesus.” (This is not the first time the Supreme Court has discussed bong hits for Jesus.) Chief Justice John Roberts said that maybe states should avoid offering vanity license plates if they don’t want to risk running afoul of the Constitution.
"If you don't want to have the al Qaeda license plate, don't get into the business of allowing people to buy ... the space to put on whatever they want to say,” Roberts said, according to Reuters. He then mentioned that Texans have the option of buying a license plate featuring the restaurant chain Mighty Fine Burgers. "They are only doing this to get the money.”
Texas makes a killing on license plates. In 2014, the state made $17.6 million off of specialty designs. Over the course of the program’s history, nearly 450 designed have been approved. Lower courts sided with Sons of Confederate Veterans, saying that license plates do not represent the views of the state. The American Civil Rights Union filed an amicus brief supporting the Sons of Confederate Veterans. "However reasonable this distaste for a symbol of racism,” the brief argues, “the Constitution does not permit the State to discriminate against messages in a forum it has created for private speech.”
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http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/03/supreme-court-discusses-vanity-license-plates.html
