Mayor Tom Menino, who caused a civil-liberties uproar last month when he proposed banning the sale of T-shirts emblazoned with STOP SNITCHIN’, appears to have learned a lesson in free speech. If only the same could be said of Chief Justice Robert A. Mulligan, of the Commonwealth’s Trial Court.
On January 10, Mulligan stepped in where the mayor had wisely begged off: he promulgated a rule banning the infamous T-shirts from the state’s courtrooms. Such a rule is likely unconstitutional. Instead of limiting the sartorial prohibition to any garment bearing a message that could reasonably be interpreted as a threat or that likely would disrupt court proceedings — which the Constitution’s First Amendment would clearly allow — the chief justice banned shirts delivering a perfectly lawful political message critical of the much-abused informant system.
Within a few days of Chief Justice Mulligan’s announcement, Boston’s mayor indicated that he got the message urged by Freedom Watch (“Shirting the Issue,” This Just In, December 9): to fight the “negative” T-shirt with a more positive counter-message. Apparently, Menino thought better of sending in the brownshirts to seize the “Stop Snitchin’” and other anti-informant shirts being sold (and widely bought) in Boston — a clearly unconstitutional suppression of speech that would have exposed the city to lawsuits galore. Instead, he simply jaw-boned shirt merchants for their voluntary cooperation. As a result, the Boston Globe was able to report on Sunday, the mayor basked in triumph as T-shirt designer and merchant Antonio Ennis, of Dorchester, began selling a new “Start Peace” substitute. The lesson — that the response to “bad speech” is “good speech” rather than excessively broad state-imposed censorship — seems to have gotten through to His Honor the Mayor but, curiously, not to His Honor the Chief Justice.
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This Just In
, Politics, Local Politics, Tom Menino
