The Supreme Court on Monday decided it would not consider an appeal seeking reinstatement of North Carolina’s specialty license plates displaying a version of the Confederate battle flag.
The case comes in an era in which Confederate symbols, which had previously been viewed as innocent commemorations of the past but are now seen by many as sympathetic to so-called white privilege and the system of slavery the Civil War overthrew, are being removed from the public square.
Mississippi removed an inset version of the Confederate flag from its state flag in 2020. The names of Confederate generals are being removed from the names of U.S. military installations. Months ago, President Joe Biden signed a bill directing that a marble bust of the late Chief Justice Roger Taney, who authored a pro-slavery Supreme Court opinion that helped to precipitate the Civil War, be removed from the U.S. Capitol building. A statue of Taney was removed from the Maryland General Assembly grounds in Annapolis in 2017 after then-Gov. Larry Hogan (R) endorsed the move….