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Virginia can now refuse to issue Confederate Flag license plates, if it so wishes, a federal judge ruled today.
The court ruling comes on the heels of a Supreme Court ruling last month, wherein the high court ruled that Texas could reject a license plate design featuring the Confederate flag because it represents a form of government speech. After that ruling and the Charleston mass shooting that led to the removal of the Confederate flag at the South Carolina statehouse grounds, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe asked Attorney General Mark Herring to “take steps to reverse [a] prior Court ruling” that allowed the flag emblem on license plates.
In 1999, when Virginia passed legislation to add specialty license plates for the Sons of Confederate Veterans—the same group at the center of the Texas Supreme Court ruling—they tried to get the Confederate flag emblem barred from the design. But the group sued on free speech grounds and won the case before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2002.
Though the judge’s ruling applies to the issuing future Sons of Confederate Veterans license plates, he did not yet rule whether the state can revoke nearly 1,700 already issued license plates that bear the Confederate flag. He’ll issue a written order to address that later, the Post reports.