Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans |
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| Argued March 23, 2015 Decided June 18, 2015 |
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| Full case name | John Walker, III, Chairman, Texas Department of Motor Vehicles Board, et al., Petitioners v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc., et al. |
| Docket nos. | 14-144 |
| Citations | 576 U.S. 200 (more)
135 S. Ct. 2239; 192 L. Ed. 2d 274
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| Prior history | Summary judgment granted, Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans v. Vandergriff, No. 1:11-cv-01049 (W.D. Tex. Apr. 12, 2013); reversed, 759 F.3d 388 (5th Cir. 2014); cert. granted, 135 S. Ct. 752 (2014). |
| Court membership | |
| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Breyer, joined by Thomas, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan |
| Dissent | Alito, joined by Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy |
| Laws applied | |
| U.S. Const. amend. I | |
Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, 576 U.S. 200 (2015), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that license plates are government speech and are consequently more easily regulated/subjected to content restrictions than private speech under the First Amendment.
The Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans sought to have a specialty license plate issued in the state of Texas with an image of the Confederate Battle Flag. The request was denied prompting the group to sue, claiming that denying a specialty plate was a First Amendment violation.
Opinion of the Court
The majority opinion, written by Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, relied heavily on the Court's 2009 decision in Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, which stated that a city in Utah was not obliged to place a monument from a minor religion in a public park, even though it had one devoted to the Ten Commandments. The court ruled that refusing the minor monument was a valid expression of government speech that did not infringe on the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech. Breyer wrote that the inclusion of a message on a state-issued license plate implies government endorsement of that message, and that car owners "could simply display the message in question in larger letters on a bumper sticker right next to the plate."
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the dissent, arguing that specialty license plates are more commonly regarded as a limited public forum for private expression, consisting of "little mobile billboards on which motorists can display their own messages". Therefore, rejecting the design basically amounts to viewpoint discrimination.
