Boston was wrong to forbid a religious group from flying a Christian flag outside City Hall, per a new U.S. Supreme Court ruling issued earlier this week. Should the city have to allow a Satanic flag to fly there, too? That would certainly seem to be the implication of the ruling—and now The Satanic Temple is putting it to the test.
In a decision issued Monday, the Court held that since Boston permitted many different private groups to fly many different types of flags outside City Hall, it could not rightfully prohibit a group called Camp Constitution from displaying what it described as a Christian flag. "Boston did not make the raising and flying of private groups' flags a form of government speech," the Court noted in a unanimous opinion, which means that refusing to let Camp Constitution raise its flag was a form of impermissible viewpoint-based discrimination that violated the group's First Amendment rights.
