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Vanity License Plates and Freedom of Speech

posted by CoolHand on Sunday April 05 2015, @04:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the lemme-say-whut-i-want dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Recently, oral arguments were heard regarding a case about license plates and the first amendment. The Texas division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans has challenged a rejection of their proposed plate that had images of the Confederate flag.

The Texas solicitor general argued that, "Messages on Texas license plates are government speech ... [because] Texas etches its name onto each license plate and Texas law gives the state sole control and final approval authority over everything that appears on a license plate.”

Please share your ideas/comments on this case or your views on vanity plates in general.

Story: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-supreme-court-confederate-license-plates-20150323-story.html
Case: http://www.oyez.org/cases/2010-2019/2014/2014_14_144
What a vanity plate is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanity_plate

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 05 2015, @06:49PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 05 2015, @06:49PM (#166741)

    Nobody is trying to use their religion as an excuse to discriminate against the KKK. They are trying to use it as an excuse to discriminate against homosexuals. You can't "choose" to be homosexual (or to be heterosexual, or to not be hetero/homosexual), so that necessarily falls into the classes that must be protected against discrimination; being in the KKK, however, is a willful choice. Holding your choices against you is not discrimination. Choice is what makes the difference here.

  • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Sunday April 05 2015, @07:30PM

    by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Sunday April 05 2015, @07:30PM (#166754)

    Even if you could choose to be a homosexual or heterosexual, it would still be utterly irrational to discriminate since it would be a completely harmless choice.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 05 2015, @08:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 05 2015, @08:28PM (#166770)

    > Nobody is trying to use their religion as an excuse to discriminate against the KKK.

    Hence the insertion of the totally bogus "and by extension political grounds." Without that specious extension his entire argument falls apart.

    BTW, religious justifications [aclu.org] were used to deny mixed race marriages back in the day.