Boston has agreed to pay $2.1 million in legal fees and other expenditures after the United States. The city was found against by the Supreme Court for refusing to allow a Christian flag to fly outside City Hall.
The settlement included an agreement to reimburse Harold Shurtleff and his non-profit Camp Constitution for legal fees paid throughout the case.
“We are pleased that after five years of litigation and a unanimous victory at the U.S. Supreme Court, we joined with Hal Shurtleff to finally let freedom fly in Boston, the Cradle of Liberty,” Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver, whose organization represented Shurtleff, said in a statement.
“The Christian flag case has established significant precedent, including the overturning of the 1971 ‘Lemon Test,’ which Justice [Antonin] Scalia once described as a ‘ghoul in a late-night horror movie.’ The case of Shurtleff v. City of Boston finally buried this ghoul that haunted the First Amendment for 51 years,” he added.
According to city regulations, the flagpole was available to all organizations. Between 2005 and 2017, the city permitted 284 flag raisings and denied none. However, Shurtleff’s organization was refused permission to fly the flag on Constitution Day and Citizenship Day in 2017 because it was a Christian flag.
The case was defeated in four lower court proceedings before being accepted by the Supreme Court. In May, the Supreme Court concluded 9-0 that the rejection violated the First Amendment’s Speech Clause.
On August 3, the Christian flag was ultimately flown momentarily on the Boston City Hall flagpole.
“I do want to give the glory to God because God’s hand was in this from the very beginning,” Shurtleff said at the flag-raising ceremony.
“We have a great Constitution and a wonderful First Amendment, but just like when it comes to muscle, if you don’t use it, then you get weak. When I got the rejection email from the city and it said ‘separation of church and state,’ I knew we had a case,” he added.
The city of Boston is apparently working on legislation that would give the local government more discretion over which flags are allowed at City Hall. According to the Boston Herald, the city plans to amend its flag rules in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision.
The idea would require any group that wants to fly a flag on City Hall Plaza to get “either a proclamation from the mayor or a resolution from the council.”