City of Hartford flies Christian flag at City Hall, despite warning from lawyer
The 7-2 vote ignored legal precedent as well as the city’s own ordinance. It's a gamble that may not pay off.
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On Thursday, the city of Hartford, Connecticut raised a Christian flag at City Hall, violating the Constitution and creating grounds for a potential lawsuit that they should, in theory, lose.
The decision was made early last week, when the City Council voted on a resolution to raise the flag to recognize “the contributions of the Christian community” in advance of Easter Sunday.
The two people who voted against the resolution, Joshua Michtom and John Gale, explained that their concerns weren’t anti-Christian in any way. Rather, they were worried about the message this was sending and the legal issues it raised.
Michtom, who’s Jewish, took a very tactful approach to the matter. He implied it was disrespectful for the Christian community to be honored by the City Council, a body that was “far less accomplished and respectable than [the Christian groups] themselves.” He then added that if a Christian flag were allowed to go up at City Hall, there was nothing stopping other groups from making the same request and suing the city if their request was rejected.
That might be okay in general, he said, but “when it's the Church of Satan… maybe we won't feel so good about it.”
Gale was much more forceful with his commentary. He explained how putting up a Christian flag violated the law, plain and simple, and he knew that because he helped write the ordinance that forbids it.
His team wanted to avoid the sort of legal liability that befell Boston a few years ago when it rejected a man’s request to put up a Christian flag. The city was sued over that and the case eventually made it to the Supreme Court. In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that because Boston allowed outside groups to use one of the flagpoles outside its city hall, they had created an open forum for speech and that meant they could not categorically exclude religious flags.
Gale wanted to avoid that situation in Hartford, so their ordinance says “The City’s flagpoles are not intended to serve as a forum for free expression by the public.” It also says any flags that do go up are “official, City-endorsed messages from the City Council.”
But as he desperately explained all this to his colleagues, it became clear they didn’t get it. They were moving full speed ahead with erecting the Christian flag despite Gale, a lawyer, telling them why it was a huge mistake.
When it came time for the vote, the pushback wasn’t enough. It was a 7-2 vote in favor of government-sponsored Christianity.
It’s actually the second year in a row they’ve done this. It was illegal then, too. In fact, they voted to fly the Christian flag at the very same meeting when they adopted the ordinance that said they couldn’t fly the Christian flag. (Lots of very dumb people on this council.)
But just because they dodged a lawsuit last year doesn’t mean they’ll continue to get away with it.
The only question is which group wants to sue over this. Should be a fairly straightforward victory for anyone who wants to do it. The fear, however, is that Christian Nationalist groups may want to appeal this case as far as they can go, hoping that their allies on the Supreme Court give them permission to do this sort of thing everywhere.
It was the second year in a row they raised this flag. For the supreme court this is enough to talk about a long standing tradition.
"But as he desperately explained all this to his colleagues, it became clear they didn’t get it."
That part needs some proof reading amd editing.
"But as he desperately explained all this to his colleagues, it became clear they didn’t give a fuck if tax payers money is wasted in lawsuits."