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Boston to pay $2.1 million in settlement of City Hall Plaza Christian-flag case
By adamg on Wed, 11/09/2022 - 10:07am
The city of Boston yesterday formally agreed to pay $2.125 million to the lawyers for Hal Shurtleff, the former West Roxbury man who won the right to fly his "Christian" flag over City Hall Plaza for a couple of hours in August.
The city now has 30 days to pay Liberty Counsel of Orlando, FL and Ryan McLane of Feeding Hills.
Hal Shurtleff, who now lives in New Hampshire, went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled the city's vague rules for deciding what can fly on one of the plaza's three flagpoles violated Shurtleff's First Amendment rights.
The city had argued the pole was a vehicle for the city to exercise its own First Amendment rights, but the court said that by leaving the decision on what to fly on the pole to some City Hall functionary, the pole wasn't really "government speech" and so Shurtleff should not have been denied his right to get his flag on.
The City Council and Mayor Wu have since promulgated new regulations for the flagpole that require any non-government flag to first be approved by the City Council, which would satisfy the court's ruling.
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| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 Complete settlement agreement | 139.71 KB |
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Comments
Not worse than throwing money
Not worse than throwing money away on the B Together campaign.
Edit: or giving millions to weed companies in the middle of numerous public health crises
A completely foreseeable
waste of money because of political stubbornness. Reminiscent of the Hurley case.
Should just fly the Boston city flag all the time now.
City Hall is so smahht
We won't let this guy fly his magic flag but they let another guy say his magic words at the beginning of a hearing. Go figure.
Someone didn't like his flag and was pulling a little power trip.
Flag Case
This could have easily been settled, then changes could've been enacted to limit the whole 'fly my flag' thing in the future.
Instead, Mayor Walsh and his administration chose to fight a losing battle. That money is taxpayer money, it's not Monopoly money. It's too bad, that money could've been used in a much way than billable hours.
Flag Case
This could have easily been settled, then changes could've been enacted to limit the whole 'fly my flag' thing in the future.
Instead, Mayor Walsh and his administration chose to fight a losing battle. That money is taxpayer money, it's not Monopoly money. It's too bad, that money could've been used in a much way than billable hours.
Church of the SubGenius
I'm surprised Bobists didn't get in on this. I guess being a parody religion wouldn't have helped and they don't have a flag so...
"Stay Slack"