Confederate group fights for state specialty plates

By Greg Latshaw, USA TODAY

As the nation observes the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, a Confederate heritage group is fighting for the right to place the Confederate flag on license plates in three new states — Florida, Kentucky and Texas.

Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), based in Columbia, Tenn., already offers the Confederate-inspired tags in nine southern states: Alabama, Georgia, Maryland, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, says Ben Sewell, the group's executive director. "The plates promote a positive image of the Confederate States of America. The Confederate soldier, he takes a beating nowadays. We're trying to divest ourselves of the negative associations," says Jay Barringer, the commander of the SCV Maryland Division.

Critics, including the NAACP, contend that the Confederate emblem is a hurtful symbol and doesn't belong on state-issued license plates."On the one hand, I appreciate freedom of speech, but when we talk about government functions, we have the authority not to promote things considered offensive to the public," says Hilary Shelton, the NAACP senior vice president for advocacy and policy, and director of the Washington bureau. SCV members have gone to court, winning each time a state has tried to deny, recall or censor imagery on their Confederate plates, Sewell says. Revenues from plate sales have been used to restore historic artifacts, members from state SCV divisions say.

Federal courts have differed on how far the First Amendment goes in protecting an individual's vanity plates and a group's specialty plates, says David Hudson Jr., an attorney and First Amendment scholar with the First Amendment Center in Nashville. Hudson says courts have heard cases on everything from vanity plates that abbreviate swear words or spell out "Aryan-1" to several cases in which anti-abortion and abortion rights groups have clashed over "Choose Life" specialty license plates. A crucial question with specialty plates is whether the plate is a form of private speech or government speech. The distinction determines if traditional First Amendment principles apply, he says.

"To me, this issue is not going away. It's a perennial First Amendment issue," Hudson says, adding that he could see the Supreme Court eventually weighing in on the subject.

On March 30, a federal judge ruled that Florida's specialty license plates program — under which the state Legislature approves the plates — is unconstitutional because it gives "unfettered discretion to engage in viewpoint discrimination." The state SCV sued the state after the Legislature didn't approve their Confederate Heritage plate, says John Adams, of the SCV Florida Division. David Westberry, spokesman for the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, says the ruling didn't order the state to issue the plates and that it's up to the Legislature to decide whether it will rework the statute. Adams says the SCV will use the ruling to insist that a lawmaker sponsor a bill backing their plate and, if that fails, may take the issue back to court