Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc. v. Vandergriff

This is a jurisprudentially difficult case that can be conscientiously decided in a number of different ways. The majority has chosen a respectable approach: Applying a “reasonable observer test,” it reverses a summary judgment for the state after holding that Texas’s specialty license plates are not “government speech.” Though I agree with much of the cogent and well-written majority opinion, I do not discern a “reasonable observer test” in the applicable caselaw and am also unable to distinguish Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum, 555 U.S. 460, 129 S.Ct. 1125, 172 L.Ed.2d 853 (2009).…