Legal Features

Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum

The Rutherford Institute has filed an amicus brief in support of Summum, a religious organization which contends its free speech rights were violated when their proposed monument was excluded from a city park display.

The brief is available here.

The brief asks the high court to carefully scrutinize the lower court's application of the "government speech" doctrine to shield the city from claims that it violated the First Amendment by engaging in viewpoint discrimination. "If the City is left free to use a private surrogate to advance a particularly favored message," the brief argues, "the shield of democratic accountability that otherwise underpins the government speech doctrine actually serves as a means of unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination."