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Is the license plate on the back of your car a form of free speech, and if so…who controls it? The U-S Supreme Court is set to decide the question, and there are Florida ties to the case going back to a 2009 effort to create a Confederate license plate.

Florida has more than a hundred speciality plates. A Son’s of the Confederacy plate is not one of them. But it could have been. In 2009, organizers collected thousands of signatures and put up a sixty thousand dollar deposit, both requirements of the law. But lawmakers never gave the plate idea  a hearing. Bob Hurst was the organizations Lt. Commander at the time.

“I mean, you earn money off them. At the time we had probably 25 or 30 thousand people who indicated to us they would buy our plates before we even issued them” says Hurst.

It was African American lawmakers who killed the confederate plate. But now the plate  could be back. The U-S Supreme Court has agreed to hear Texas’s refusal to allow the plate, framing it as a free speech issue.

A Confederate flag flew over the state Capitol here in Tallahassee until 2001. A Confederate soldier still graces the state seal in the Capitol Rotunda.”

At Florida A&M University we got mixed reaction. Student Taylor Jones wasn’t happy. “I probably would feel very uncomfortable with that. I wouldn’t really agree with it. I mean, it’s up to the state. I hope that it doesn’t happen at all;”

But Actuarial Science student Stratton Thompson took it in stride “I guess it would be an example of freedom of speech.”

The Choose Life license plate is also on the high courts agenda…because Pro Choice forces were denied a Respect Choice plate.

The ACLU has been instrumental in suits in other states. Baylor Johnson of ACLU Florida issued a statement today, saying “States have a choice when it comes to license plates: either produce only plates that express no position, or allow all messages to be represented, so that those who disagree with or find offensive certain plates can demand their own.” The U-S Supreme Court will hear arguments in late March.