Supreme Court says Boston violated First Amendment rights of group seeking to raise a Christian flag outside City Hall

By Ariane de Vogue and Tierney Sneed, CNN

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday that Boston violated the First Amendment rights of a group seeking to briefly raise a Christian flag atop a city flagpole outside of City Hall as a part of a city program celebrating Boston’s greater community.

The court said that the flag display amounted to a public forum, and because many other groups were allowed to raise their flags in celebration of the Boston community, the city could not discriminate on the basis of the religious group’s view point without violating the Constitution.

“We conclude that, on balance, Boston did not make the raising and flying of private groups’ flags a form of government speech,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote. “That means, in turn, that Boston’s refusal to let Shurtleff and Camp Constitution raise their flag based on its religious viewpoint (abridged) their ‘freedom of speech.'”

This story is breaking and will be updated.

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