Appeals Court: Boston Does Not Have to Allow a Christian Flag Outside City Hall (Friendly Atheist)

The First Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the city of Boston was within its rights to reject the flying of a Christian flag outside City Hall Plaza.

Some background: Harold Shurtleff is the director and co-founder of Camp Constitution, a non-profit group that promotes the idea that we live in a “Christian nation.” (He’s wrong.) In 2017, Shurtleff applied for a permit to raise a Christian flag on a pole outside City Hall Plaza to commemorate “Constitution Day and Citizenship Day”… but the city of Boston rejected the request.

Shurtleff contended this was religious discrimination even if the same rules prohibited atheist flags from going up. He said there were plenty of other flags with religious symbols that the city put up, including the national flag for Portugal — which includes a religious symbol — during the city’s Portuguese-American festival. The city even acknowledged that significance on its website at the time. Plus, the city flag for Boston includes a Latin phrase that translates to “God be with us as he was with our fathers.”

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