But when the case reached the nation’s highest court, all nine justices found Massachusetts wrong. Under the First Amendment, organizers of a private parade could not be compelled to admit a group whose message they chose not to promote. The foundation of the “principle of free speech is that whoever chooses to speak may also decide what not to say,” wrote Justice David Souter. Massachusetts, the court said, “is not free to interfere with speech for no reason other than to promote an approved message or discourage a disfavored message.”

Then there was McCullen v. Coakley in 2014, who challenged a Massachusetts law requiring abortion opponents to stay at least 35 feet from the entrance to any abortion clinic. The law has made it a crime, punishable by fines and imprisonment, to speak, pray or hold a sign in this “buffer zone”, even on a public sidewalk. Once again, Massachusetts courts, applauded by much of the state’s political and media establishment, have upheld the free speech violation. Once again, the United States Supreme Court unanimously rejected them. All nine justices agreed that the Massachusetts law contradicted the First Amendment. Even the court’s staunchest abortion-rights advocates have pointed out that citizens have the right to voice their opinions on public sidewalks.

Now, in another unanimous decision, the High Court has reprimanded Boston officials for infringing on the free speech rights of a group whose message they did not want to be associated with. Town hall.

For a dozen years, city officials had regularly allowed private organizations to hold hundreds of ceremonies in City Hall Square, always allowing them to raise any flag they chose on a flagpole that Boston had. explicitly referred to as a “public forum”. But when Harold Shurtleff, who leads a civic group called Camp Constitution, attempted to hold an hour-long ceremony to ‘commemorate the civic and social contributions of the Christian community’ while displaying a Christian flag, the city said no. . It was the only time the city had refused a request for a flag, and its reason was clear: City Hall denied Camp Constitution’s request, Judge Stephen Breyer wrote in his opinion, due “to the fact that it it was the Christian flag”. In doing so, Boston “discriminated based on a religious perspective and violated the free speech clause.”

Any of these cases could have reflected honest confusion among officials in Boston or Massachusetts about their constitutional obligation to protect free speech. Three such cases indicate a serious problem. All three times, state power, whether legislative or judicial, was deployed to suppress a conservative and/or religious viewpoint. Parade organizers did not want to celebrate LGBTQ pride. Pro-life protesters wanted to advocate alternatives to abortion. Camp Constitution wanted to honor the role of Christianity in Boston’s history. Each time, the muscles of the government have been tensed to prevent the point of view from being expressed. And members of Boston’s influential liberal elite, with rare exceptions, have said nothing or endorsed the violation of conservative First Amendment freedoms.

There have been other recent examples of Boston authorities attacking the right of an unpopular minority to speak freely.

Perhaps the most egregious of them happened in August 2017, when a small group of little-known libertarians and eccentrics got a permit to hold what they billed as a “rally for free speech” on Boston Common. The group posed no threat to anyone. But their rally came a week after a white supremacist ‘Unite the Right’ march in Charlottesville, Va., escalated into deadly violence, and it was rumored that something similar was planned for Boston. At a press conference with other elected officials, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh amplified the rumor and denounced the organizers of the tiny gathering. “Boston doesn’t want you here,” he said, promising to do everything he could to stop the event.

Eventually the rally took place but the handful of speakers from the Parkman Bandstand could not be heard. They were separated behind a 225ft buffer zone and uniformed officers made sure no one came close enough to listen to them. A directive from the Boston Police Department even banned reporters from approaching speakers.

As a result, members of the small gathering “basically talked to each other for about 50 minutes,” the Globe reported. The “city security measures denied them an audience as well as media coverage of what they had to say.” When the city’s police commissioner, Bill Evans, was later asked if it had been fair to treat them this way, he unabashedly declared that it was “a good thing”, adding: “Their message is not what we want to hear”.

The whole episode was shameful – another case in which the free speech rights of an underprivileged Boston minority were trampled upon by the local government.

For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, the phrase “banned in Boston” conjured up the right-wing Puritanism of the city’s political leaders. Today, Boston and Massachusetts are left-wing strongholds, but the drive to stifle unpopular expression persists. All that has changed is that those who are currently censored are probably politically or religiously conservative. This, plus the fact that Supreme Court justices, liberal and conservative alike, are much more vigilant about respecting freedom of expression.

How many more times does Boston have to be spanked by all nine members of the nation’s highest court before it learns to treat the First Amendment with respect?

Jeff Jacoby can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @jeff_jacoby. To subscribe to Arguable, its weekly newsletter, go to bitly.com/Arguable.