In a 5-4 decision in June, Supreme Court justices said states that sell special license plates promoting everything from “Choose Life” to “Conserve Water” can prohibit images such as the Confederate flag without violating the First Amendment.
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U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis issued an order that allows Attorney General Brian Frosh (D) to lift the injunction.
This is not the first time the plates have come up for recall. “It has no place in any contemporary government use”. The order is set to go into effect November 17.
Frosh requested the recall in Maryland with the backing of Gov. Larry Hogan, he said.
Georgia’s newly redesigned plates feature a smaller image of the Confederate flag, and the flag is no longer used as a background image on the plates.
The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles mailed new plates without the emblem in early September to 1,600 members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans who pay an annual $10 premium for the specialty plates but so far has received only 163 back.
The recall comes after the June massacre of nine black churchgoers in South Carolina which prosecutors say was carried out by a white man who posed with the Confederate flag in online photos.
The attack prompted nationwide calls for leaders to condemn the Confederate flag as a symbol of racial hatred.
Its racist associations were refreshed during the civil rights movement, when anti-integration state flew the Confederate flag in defiance.
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“We were just as mortified as anyone over the events in South Carolina but that doesn’t have anything to do with the Confederate flag”, Ray McBerry, spokesman for the state’s Sons of Confederate Veterans group, added.
