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Richard W. Garnett: We must guard our free speech fortress

By ADF Alliance Alert

Richard Garnett writes at USA Today: "Last month, in Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, the justices ruled unanimously (and correctly) that the free-speech clause allows a city to adopt and display one privately donated monument while refusing another. When the government speaks, in other words, it gets (for the most part) to pick its own message. Next year, in Salazar v. Buono, the court will likely consider whether the First Amendment requires the government to remove a war-memorial cross from a hill in the Mojave National Preserve. More particularly, one question in this case is whether the government's efforts to save the cross ? by transferring the land underneath it to private hands ? amount to an unconstitutional establishment of religion. If the justices do answer this question, they should say, 'No, it does not.' Although these two First Amendment cases involve different monuments in different places, they both illustrate something that the 'fortress' analogy misses ? namely, that the government is already, and unavoidably, inside the free-speech walls. And so, we need to worry not only about the government's efforts to get in, but also about what it 'says' once it does . . .

Full post as published by Constitutionally Correct on March 30, 2009 (boomark / email).