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Vanity License Plates and Freedom of Speech

posted by CoolHand on Sunday April 05 2015, @04:14PM   
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

• Re:Common sense says Re:Common sense says (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2015, @02:56PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2015, @02:56PM (#166994)

  They can disagree all they want, but the definition of the word says otherwise:

  race
  noun
  each of the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics.

  If they say that race is a social construct, then they're using a different definition for "race" than the one that exists.

  Parent

• Re:Common sense says Re:Common sense says (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2015, @04:33PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2015, @04:33PM (#167030)

  > They can disagree all they want, but the definition of the word says otherwise:

  Typical dictionary pedant doesn't actually check the dictionary:

  race: [oxforddictionaries.com]
  1.2 A group of people sharing the same culture, history, language, etc.
  example: "They sought to weld the country's diverse ethnicities into a Brazilian race defined in historical and cultural terms."

  Parent

  • Re:Common sense says (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2015, @09:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2015, @09:36PM (#167188)

    And that definition a subset of the definition I used:

    1. Each of the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics

    This is the generally-accepted definition of the word and what most people think of when they hear it - specifically referring to distinct physical characteristics. There's also 1.1 and 1.3 that further clarify it, still agreeing with the premise of definition 1.

    Like I said, the definition of the word, what most people think of when they hear it, says otherwise.

    Parent