The U.S. Supreme Court will be ruling on whether political buttons, badges and apparel should be protected free speech within polling places. The nation’s highest court agreed this week to hear a conservative group’s challenge to a Minnesota law that bans voters from wearing politically charged T-shirts and other items as they head to the voting booth.

The Minnesota Voters Alliance appealed a lower court’s decision to uphold the state law, which state officials have also interpreted as barring campaign literature and material from groups with political views from polling stations. Violators of the law have been asked to cover up or remove apparel and accessories with political messages and slogans, though officials are not supposed to use the law to bar anyone from voting.

Andrew Cilek, executive director of the Minnesota Voters Alliance, was temporarily prevented from voting for wearing a “Don’t Tread on Me” T-shirt and a button with the message, “Please I.D. Me.” In 2010, the alliance – along with several other organizations – sued, claiming that state officials had turned polling places into “speech-free zones” and were in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Rulings in 2013 and 2017 by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis upheld the apparel restrictions, saying they helped to maintain “peace, order and decorum” at the ballots. 

“The Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case is a good sign for First Amendment rights,” wrote Wen Fa in an email to Reuters. Fa is a lawyer with the Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative legal group representing the plaintiffs.

Lawyers representing Minnesota urged the Supreme Court to leave the lower court’s opinion in place, noting that “the interior of a polling place is a non-public forum in which speech restrictions are constitutional as long as they are reasonable and viewpoint-neutral.”

Other states with regulations similar to Minnesota’s include Texas, New Jersey and Delaware.

Product Hub
Find the latest in quality products, must-know trends and fresh ideas for upcoming end-buyer campaigns.