A federal judge filed an order [text, PDF] on Monday for attorneys to submit arguments as to whether the court system has standing to decide if Mississippi should remove the Confederate battle emblem that as been on the state flag since 1894. US District Judge Carlton Reeves of the Southern District of Mississippi [official website] has given Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood and plaintiff Carlos Moore until next Monday to submit their briefs. Moore initial filed a federal lawsuit [complaint, PDF] earlier this month against the governor of Mississippi challenging the state flag, stating [JURIST report] that the imagery “is tantamount to hateful government speech that both has a discriminatory intent and disparate impact.” In his order, Reeves also instructed [AP report] Moore not to make “false or misleading public statements,” writing that such statements “impugn the independence and fairness of the judiciary.” Mississippi is the last state with a flag that includes the confederate battle emblem.

Debate has intensified in the past year over the acceptability of confederate symbols in everyday life. In August a judge in Texas denied a request for a temporary restraining order to halt the University of Texas at Austin from relocating a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis [JURIST report]. In July it came to light that Dylann Roof, who is charged with the murder of nine black church members in South Carolina [JURIST report], prominently posed [NYT report] with the confederate flag. Also in July South Carolina removed the Confederate flag from the state house [JURIST report]. Although the Charleston shooting led to renewed focus on the use of the Confederate flag, controversy over the flag has persisted for years. In June the US Supreme Court ruled that state governments can restrict [JURIST report] the kinds of messages printed on specialty license plates after the Sons of Confederate Veterans argued that the Texas government’s refusal to issue specialty license plates including an image of the confederate flag violated the First Amendment [Cornell LII backgrounder]. In June 2012 a federal judge in Virginia dismissed a lawsuit [JURIST report] which challenged the constitutionality of the city of Lexington’s ordinance banning the Confederate flag from being flown on city poles. In 2008 a federal court affirmed [JURIST report] a district court’s grant of summary judgment to a Tennessee public high school in a lawsuit brought by three students who claimed the school’s ban on wearing the Confederate flag was unconstitutional.