The Supreme Court on June 12 decided it wouldn’t consider an appeal seeking reinstatement of North Carolina’s specialty license plates that display a version of the Confederate battle flag.
The case comes in an era in which Confederate symbols, which had previously been viewed as innocent commemorations of the past but are now seen by many as sympathetic to so-called white privilege and the system of slavery the Civil War overthrew, are being removed from the public square.
Mississippi removed an inset version of the Confederate flag from its state flag in 2020. Meanwhile, the names of Confederate generals are being stripped from U.S. military installations.
Months ago, President Joe Biden signed a bill directing that a marble bust of the late Chief Justice Roger Taney, who authored a pro-slavery Supreme Court opinion that helped to precipitate the Civil War, be removed from the U.S. Capitol building. A statue of Taney was removed from the Maryland General Assembly grounds in Annapolis in 2017 after then-Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, endorsed the move.
The anti-Confederate trend accelerated after an ill-fated, highly publicized rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, in which leftists clashed with neo-Nazis, along with others who attended to protest a proposal to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from a nearby park.
Biden cited the rally, in which one protester was killed, during his 2020 campaign.
In the rally’s aftermath, the Black Lives Matter movement grew steadily. It was then embraced by much of the public and corporate America following the death of George Floyd, a black man, in Minneapolis police custody in March 2020, which led to widespread public revulsion and a violent nationwide backlash against police.
By one count, nearly 100 Confederate monuments were taken down across the country in 2020 alone. NASCAR banned the Confederate flag at its racing events in 2020.
The Supreme Court denied the petition in North Carolina Division of Sons of Confederate Veterans Inc. v. North Carolina Department of Transportation (court file 22-932) in an unsigned order on June 12. No justices dissented. The court didn’t explain its decision.
The plates bearing the insignia of the North Carolina chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), which contains the Confederate flag, had been issued under a state law that allows the issuance of specialty plates to a qualifying civic group that can muster at least 300 applications for the plates. Under North Carolina law, license plates are property of the state.
First Amendment
The case goes back to January 2021 when the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) announced it would stop issuing or renewing the plates, which the group said in its petition was the first time any “civic organization has received such a letter in the history of the NC specialty plate program.”SCV sued in state court, but the case was transferred to a U.S. district court. The group claimed its rights under the First Amendment were violated by the DMV, but the district court dismissed the claim. In December 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit upheld the dismissal but didn’t provide reasons for its decision.
North Carolina urged the Supreme Court not to take up SCV’s appeal.
The SCV’s First Amendment argument doesn’t warrant the court’s attention because the court already dealt with the question in Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans Inc. in 2015, the state said in a brief.
In that ruling, the court “held that ‘specialty license plate designs constitute government speech,’ and that States are ‘consequently entitle[d] to refuse to issue plates featuring’ designs that they find offensive.”
Attorneys for the group provided a statement by R. Kevin Stone, commander of the North Carolina Division of SCV, to The Epoch Times.
“We feel that we have a strong case,” Stone said.
“We are disappointed the Supreme Court did not grant a review and close the book on this issue, as we have a strong case related to a recent Federal precedent (Boston flag pole case). If government-owned flag poles can be private speech, so can license plates.”
Stone was referring to the Supreme Court’s May 2022 ruling in Shurtleff v. Boston, in which the court held unanimously that Boston’s decision to allow national flags and flags about historic events, causes, and organizations to fly outside its city hall while refusing to raise a Christian flag was an unconstitutional example of government censorship.
“Most importantly, our case differs from the Texas case involving license plates because we have a different law in North Carolina. Our plates were issued by court order and upheld by the NC Court of Appeals in 1999. The NC DMV cannot overturn a court order,” Stone said.
“In 1865, Southern armies surrendered, and after that, there was a long period of reconciliation. Today, the Left wants to relitigate that war. Their message is much bigger than any ‘2 x 2’ symbol on a license plate.”
“Not only does the Left want to eliminate any memory of our Confederate ancestors from the public square, but they will also one day go after Abe Lincoln and George Washington. Today, the Left is removing Confederates; tomorrow, it will be George Washington; the next day, all of Western civilization,” Stone said.
North Carolina Solicitor General Ryan Park didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
