Now, how can I get a VA Confederate tag in Florida?
I like what this man is doing for America and the Southern cause. I hear him on the local radio station with his legal minute update.
If it upsets you that much, Mr. Khalfani, please move back to your roots.
Logo and the LawIf the state doesn’t drop its opposition to a Confederate flag decal on license plates, state cars should bear a jackass on their license plates to indicate the silliness of the commonwealth.
The three-judge federal panel ruled this week that Virginia must allow a Confederate heritage group to display its flag logo on specialty license plates.
Members of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower judge’s ruling that rejected the state’s case that the license tags amounted to public speech and could be regulated.
"The purpose of the special plate program primarily is to produce revenue while allowing … for the private expression of various views," the judicial panel ruled.
The state never had a constitutional leg to stand on which means, in most federal appeals circuits, it would lose. The real reason the state objected is the Confederate flag logo is not politically correct. The Confederacy lost the war and now is losing the public relations battle. However, thank goodness, the Constitution remains.
The state only pursued the case because some legislators argued that the flag represents bigotry. This isn’t true, but the legislators just didn’t like the Confederate flag and didn’t want anyone to display it.
However, the Constitution overrules feelings and emotions. Nobody has to have a Confederate specialty plate. The descendants of Confederate veterans are certainly allowed under the law to honor their heritage and their forefathers.
That the state pursued this case is another demonstration of how often politics undercuts common sense and costs taxpayers’ money.
If anyone wants to know why the GOP is called "the stupid party" they only have to watch Virginia politics for a year or so.
May 03, 2002
State bows in battle on Confederate tags
Warner, Kilgore defer to U.S. courtBY JEFF E. SCHAPIRO
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Virginia is running up the white flag of surrender in the legal flap over license plates featuring the Confederate colors.
Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore and Gov. Mark R. Warner bowed to a federal court edict requiring the state to make available the disputed tags, which had been sought by the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
Having lost twice - at trial in 2001 and on appeal this week - the state likely would be thwarted in the U.S. Supreme Court, if the justices even took the case, Kilgore said.
"It is time to move on," Kilgore told reporters yesterday at the Capitol.
Warner, in a written statement released shortly after Kilgore disclosed that there would be no further appeals, said the court rulings in the case "must be respected as the law of the land."
However, the dispute over the license plates - and the Civil War symbol that they will feature - raged on, a reminder of the enduring clash of emotions engendered by Virginia's distinction as the principal seat of the Confederacy.
Confederate heritage advocates said they'd been unfairly attacked as racists, when their interests were only historical. Foes, among them black lawmakers who consider the Confederate flag a symbol of hate, predicted that the state could be required to issue plates featuring swastikas and burnt crosses.
"It is amazing that in so many ways that the [Civil War] is not over," said Charles F. Bryan Jr., director of the Virginia Historical Society. "In the hearts and minds of so many people, the emotion of that war, the pain and suffering, is far from over."
In Virginia, a minimum of 350 prepaid applications for a specialty tag must be submitted to the Department of Motor Vehicles before the plates can be produced. Manufacturing takes eight to nine weeks.
In one of the biggest programs of its kind in the nation, Virginia offers 180 specialty license plates. They're displayed by 20 percent of the 6.7 million passenger vehicles registered in the state, said DMV spokeswoman Pam Goheen. Last year, sales of the tags generated $4.8 million, she said.
Brag Bowling of Richmond, chairman of the Sons of Confederate Veterans Legislative Committee, said his organization would file at least 1,000 applications with DMV.
Welcoming the Kilgore and Warner announcements, Bowling said of the plates, "It might be offensive to some Virginians, but it's a symbol of history to thousands of Virginians."
Bowling, a real estate investor, said he will order three tags - one for his red pickup truck, the others for a convertible and a Jeep.
When first proposed in 1999 by Del. Joe T. May, R-Loudoun, on behalf of fellow members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the plate - largely designed by the 3,000-member group - included a logo inspired by the Confederate battle flag, or Southern Cross.
Under pressure from critics, most notably Del. Jerrauld C. Jones, D-Norfolk, former chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus, the General Assembly stripped the symbol from the plate.
That triggered a lawsuit by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who prevailed at trial in Roanoke's U.S. District Court, and this past Monday before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on the state's challenge to the lower court finding.
The trial and appellate courts decreed that in banning the Confederate symbol, while allowing license plates with the logos of other organizations and causes, the state was violating First Amendment, or free speech, rights.
Though publicly supportive of the decision not to challenge the appeals court decision, Jones yesterday predicted the assembly - because of the rulings - might be forced to sanction tags even more provocative than those won by the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
"That is what we have to look for and contemplate," he said.
Jones said a possible solution is to do away with the specialty plate program altogether. Sen. John C. Watkins, R-Chesterfield, this year pushed legislation curtailing the novelty tags.
Specialty license plates in Virginia tout universities and colleges - in-state and beyond - as well as animal rights, bowling, amateur radio, lighthouse preservation, fishing and aviation.
According to the SCV's Bowling, Confederate tags are available in at least eight Southern states. Federal courts in Maryland and North Carolina ruled that the Sons of Confederate Veterans are entitled to the plates.
Contact Jeff E. Schapiro at (804) 649-6814 or jschapiro@timesdispatch.com
FR Thread from 1.18.2001: Judge rules Va. must allow confederate license plates
Kidd rejected criticism of the plates, saying they are about "family and heritage" and should not be offensive to anyone. He said the group rejects the racist beliefs of organizations that in the past used the Confederate battle flag as a rallying symbol against blacks."When people see us riding down the road with these license plates, know that the man riding behind the wheel is honoring his family," Kidd said. "No derogatory statement toward anyone. We promote everyone honoring their ancestors and their descendants."
John Whitehead's opinion in Fredericksburg's Free Lance-Star
You don't have to salute the Confederate flag to favor its display
May 10, 2002 12:57 am
CHARLOTTESVILLE--In a 1937 Supreme Court case, Justice Benjamin Cardozo opined, "Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom."
Such should be the logic, some believe, in the debate that continues to rage over the display of the Confederate flag. Battered by politically correct sentiments and racial sensitivities, the Confederate flag has not seen so much action since the battles of Gettysburg and Antietam.
Whether emblazoned on T-shirts, imprinted on license plates, carried in parades, or unfurled from state flagpoles, this symbol of the Old South has become the newest battleground over the First Amendment's right to free speech.
On the front lines of this raging battle are the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Composed of men whose ancestors fought on the side of the South during the Civil War, this group has been denied permission to display its logo--which contains the Confederate battle flag--on everything from specialty license plates to flag markers on graves to civic-organization boards at the entrance to the town limits.
Yet disputes over the Confederate flag have passed beyond the Mason-Dixon Line to become part of a larger debate over what constitutes free expression and what could be considered "fighting words."
Pointing to highly publicized incidents of hate crimes and racist violence, many authorities have opted for acts of censorship to avoid conflict. For example, when confronted with high-school students wearing Confederate flag T-shirts to school, school officials in North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia tried to silence such free expression through suspensions. In one Virginia case, two students who wore Confederate flag
T-shirts in recognition of Confederate History Month were suspended for "disrupting the smooth opening of a school day."Officials at a Kansas middle school suspended one student after he sketched a Confederate flag--familiar to him from the "Dukes of Hazzard" television show--on a sheet of paper at the request of a friend. According to the school's zero tolerance policy, the Confederate flag is a prohibited symbol of "racial harassment and intimidation." The student sued and lost in court, and the Supreme Court refused to hear his case.
Even Confederate graveyards have come under attack. In Maryland, the Department of Veterans Affairs removed the Confederate flag from Point Lookout Cemetery, which is located on the site of the former Point Lookout prison camp operated by the United States during the Civil War. Point Lookout is the mass burial ground for approximately 3,300 Confederate soldiers who died while imprisoned there. A federal court of appeals rejected an appeal, saying the graveyard's purpose was to honor the dead "as Americans," not as Confederates.
And in an attempt to avert racist or sexist sentiments, one Topeka, Kan., city administrator even went so far as to create a policy prohibiting any "sexually or racially insensitive" emblems or symbols on an employee's privately owned vehicle while parked on government property. The policy was apparently targeted to ban the Confederate battle flag displayed on vehicles.
Fortunately for the sake of the First Amendment, after years in which politically correct chatter has sabotaged free speech, the courts are finally beginning to weigh in on the issue. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals recently gave a resounding affirmation for free expression when it ruled in favor of the Virginia SCV's right to display the Confederate flag on organizational specialty license plates.
It began in 1999 when the Virginia legislature approved a specialty license plate for the SCV but censored the use of the Confederate Battle Flag, which has been part of the organization's logo since it was founded more than 100 years ago. Although the legislature has permitted dozens of organizations to use their logos on specialty plates (including trade unions, the National Rifle Association, etc.), the SCV is the only group ever denied the right to display its logo on a Virginia license plate.
In response, the SCV filed a civil rights lawsuit alleging that the state of Virginia had denied them rights protected by the U.S. Constitution.
Ruling in favor of the SCV, the Court of Appeals concluded that "the logo restriction is an instance of viewpoint discriminationand a violation of the First Amendment's strictures."
For those who view the victory for the display of the Confederate flag as a defeat for racial tolerance, it is important to remember that censorship can be a terrible two-edged sword--what is popular today can become unpopular and banned tomorrow. That's why the First Amendment, in the words of James Madison, was written. It is there to protect "the minority against the majority."
Thus, although we may not agree with a particular form of speech, it is vital that we protect the right of all citizens to speak. As the renowned French philosopher François Voltaire so aptly put it, "I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it."
JOHN W. WHITEHEAD is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute.
Copyright 2001 The Free Lance-Star Publishing Company.