Government speech

The Supreme Court ruled on a case involving religious monuments in public parks yesterday. The religious group Summum brought a suit against the city of Pleasant Grove in Utah for refusing to put a monument they donated in a public park, which contained (among other things) a monument of the Ten Commandments. The donated monument contained the religious group's own "Seven Aphorisms." Summum claimed that the city's refusal to display the monument was a violation of free speech.

From the decision:

Held: The placement of a permanent monument in a public park is a form of government speech and is therefore not subject to scrutiny under the Free Speech Clause.

Because the basis for the suit was the Free Speech Clause, the question of the Establishment Clause could still be open. The important impact of the decision is that city governments will not be forced to make parks open to all monuments, or open to none. However, one part of the decision seems to indicate that government acceptance of a private monument does not necessarily constitute an endorsement:

[Summum's] legitimate concern that the government speech doctrine not be used as a subterfuge for favoring certain viewpoints does not mean that a government entity should be required to embrace publicly a privately donated monument's "message" in order to escape Free Speech Clause restrictions. A city engages in expressive conduct by accepting and displaying a privately donated monument, but it does not necessarily endorse the specific meaning that any particular donor sees in the monument. A government's message may be altered by the subsequent addition of other monuments in the same vicinity. It may also change over time.

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