Christian flag returning to city hall after city backs down
After facing legal pressure, officials in Jersey City, New Jersey, have reversed course and agreed to allow a Christian flag to fly at city hall during a longstanding faith-based parade.
Jersey City informed Liberty Counsel last month that organizers of the Children of Faith Parade will be permitted to raise the Christian flag on Sept. 8 as part of the annual event.
The decision comes after city officials denied the group's permit request last year, ending a tradition that organizers say had continued uninterrupted since 1979.
Liberty Counsel, which intervened on behalf of the parade organizers, argued that the city's refusal violated the First Amendment and conflicted with a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling protecting religious expression in public forums.
Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver said in a statement released Tuesday that he commended “Jersey City officials for making the right decision to grant the Christian flag-raising permit for the Children of Faith Parade.”
“Jersey City had stated that raising the Christian flag in their public forum would violate the Establishment Clause, but it does not. The opposite is true. Denying raising the Christian flag in a public forum is the actual First Amendment violation,” Staver insisted.
“The clear message from the U.S. Supreme Court is that government cannot favor one viewpoint and censor another in a public forum. Municipalities like Jersey City can legally permit both secular and religious commemorative emblems when they open their flagpoles to public expression.”
City officials had rejected the permit from Children of Faith Parade in August 2025, claiming that past acceptance of flying the Christian flag was an “administrative error.”
In January, the Liberty Counsel intervened in the matter, with the law firm sending a letter to Jersey City Acting Corporation Counsel Brittany M. Murray about the situation.
The letter noted that the city had allowed Jersey City LGBTQ+ Pride Festival to fly a pride flag, and also let two Muslim groups fly a Pakistani flag, which includes religious imagery.
In May 2022, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in the case of Harold Shurtleff, et al. v. Boston, MA, et al. that city officials in Boston, Massachusetts, were wrong to prohibit a group from flying a Christian flag at city hall.
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer wrote the unanimous opinion, saying that “the First Amendment prevents [the government] from discriminating against speakers based on their viewpoint.”
“We conclude that, on balance, Boston did not make the raising and flying of private groups’ flags a form of government speech,” wrote Breyer. “That means, in turn, that Boston’s refusal to let Shurtleff and Camp Constitution raise their flag based on its religious viewpoint ‘abridg[ed]’ their ‘freedom of speech.’”
