New Hampshire Residents Win Appeal Over ‘Citizen Flagpole’ Rules

Nashua, N.H.'s program allowing residents to fly flags outside city hall isn’t government speech, and so its rejection of certain types of flags is unconstitutional, the First Circuit held Monday.

“Nashua’s policy and practice neither deputized private persons as its agents nor adopted a privately created medium that had been alienated to it for expressing a government message,” Judge Sandra L. Lynch wrote for the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

The city already conceded that if its program wasn’t found to be government speech, it engaged in viewpoint-based discrimination when it denied Stephen and Bethany Scaer’s requests ...