‘Significant, New Ground’
#Other states have dealt with lawsuits regarding their state flags, and it’s a tough legal road. Moore researched the failed 1990s-era lawsuit in a Georgia county court to change that state flag, in order to avoid the same legal mistakes.”The plaintiff, an African American in that case, did not point out specific instances where the state flag was the cause of racial violence or disparate treatment of African Americans,” Moore said.
#Moore said he mentions the mass killing of nine African Americans in South Carolina as well as instances specifically in Mississippi in his lawsuit, including a man who had photographed himself wrapped in the state flag before bombing a Walmart store in Tupelo that stopped selling Confederate merchandise last November. Moore points out that even neighbor states like Alabama have taken the Confederate flag down from their Capitol following the South Carolina mass shooting last year.
Matt Steffey, a constitutional law professor at Mississippi College, said the lawsuit would need to break significant new ground for it to work because constitutional free speech (for individuals) does not apply to government speech—which includes the state flag. Steffey said Moore would have to prove that the flag has caused people to commit hate crimes in Mississippi on account of their race as well as show that it’s likely to happen again.
#“You have to show that Mississippi flies the flag because it wants to promote racial violence, not because of the fact,” Steffey told the Jackson Free Press..
#The lawsuit could have a better avenue of success, Steffey said, if Moore can prove that the government’s original purpose for choosing the state flag was racist or discriminatory back in 1894 because then the burden of proof would shift to the government—not Moore. Either way, Steffey said the lawsuit would be an “uphill battle,” but noted that big cases that lead to change are never easy. “If this were easy to accomplish, it would have been done already,” Steffey said.