Good coverage in the in the Westchester-Rockland- Putnam daily paper.
Yonkers couple push for pro-adoption license plates
Charles Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va., and a moderate voice on religious liberty issues, said that once states create a public forum on license plates, they cannot pick and choose the messages they like.
"In the case of New York and New Jersey, when the state allows a variety of viewpoints, it should not be able to discriminate against a viewpoint that it doesn't like or finds offensive unless it has a very good reason for doing so, like obscenity," he said. "To me, it's clearly wrong for these states to reject the request for these plates. It's an easy case under the First Amendment."
Haynes said that federal courts have issued conflicting decisions on whether the plates represent public or government speech. The Supreme Court has not yet chosen to look at one of the cases.
"There are real implications here," Haynes said. "It's one thing if government says: 'These are our plates and we'll control what they say.' But it's disturbing if they say: 'Some messages we'll approve and some we'll reject.' "
The Rexes' foundation, meanwhile, has awarded $48,690 in grants since 2001, mostly to centers that care for pregnant women who plan to put their babies up for adoption. They get $4,000 a year in fees from the Connecticut plates. Their foundation's 3,500 members make donations. And Charles Rex holds concerts to raise money.
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