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It could-like San Jose, Calif.-explicitly say that flags are the city's speech and not intended to serve as a forum for free expression by the public. The city's lack of meaningful involvement, he said, led the court to conclude that these flag raisings were not government speech-where the government can control its message-but private speech, in fact religious speech, that cannot be regulated by the government.īut, in a nod to the city, Breyer noted that nothing prevents Boston from changing its policies to exclude private speech going forward. "The key," wrote Breyer, was to what extent Boston actually controlled the messages on the flags. As Yale law professor Akhil Amar put it in an NPR interview, Breyer "found the sweet spot." He was able to "take a complicated fact pattern and find the common denominator,"-namely that Boston had a "come one, come all" policy that didn't apply to this Christian group. The decision, written by Justice Stephen Breyer, managed to navigate a clash involving both religion and politics, without wreaking havoc. The city, fearing that a Christian flag would be viewed as an unconstitutional government endorsement of a particular religion, rejected the application, and Shurtleff challenged the rejection, losing in two lower courts but winning in the Supreme Court on Monday. In fact, the city had never rejected a flag-raising request until 2017 when Harold Shurtleff, the director of an organization called Camp Constitution, asked to hold a flag raising ceremony for a "Christian Flag." Still, a few of the flags were associated with other groups or causes-national Pride Week, emergency medical service workers, and a community bank. Between 20, Boston approved the raising of 50 such flags, most of them marking the national holidays of other countries. Usually - because Boston has, for years, allowed the hoisting of other flags on the third pole when groups get permission to hold ceremonies on the city plaza. One flies the American Flag, the second flies the state flag, and the third usually flies the city's flag. Just outside Boston's city hall, once named " the world's ugliest building," are three flagpoles. Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that the city of Boston must let a Christian group fly its flag over city hall, but the decision was sufficiently narrow that other cities, indeed Boston itself, could construct rules that would limit flag flying to government-approved messages.