Cite as: 515 U. S. 753 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
tection does not extend to the length of permitting that expression to be made on Capitol Square.
It is undeniable, of course, that speech which is constitutionally protected against state suppression is not thereby accorded a guaranteed forum on all property owned by the State. Postal Service v. Council of Greenburgh Civic Assns., 453 U. S. 114, 129 (1981); Perry Ed. Assn. v. Perry Local Educators' Assn., 460 U. S. 37, 44 (1983). The right to use government property for one's private expression depends upon whether the property has by law or tradition been given the status of a public forum, or rather has been reserved for specific official uses. Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Defense & Ed. Fund, Inc., 473 U. S. 788, 802-803 (1985). If the former, a State's right to limit protected expressive activity is sharply circumscribed: It may impose reasonable, content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions (a ban on all unattended displays, which did not exist here, might be one such), but it may regulate expressive content only if such a restriction is necessary, and narrowly drawn, to serve a compelling state interest. Perry Ed. Assn., supra, at 45. These strict standards apply here, since the District Court and the Court of Appeals found that Capitol Square was a traditional public forum. 844 F. Supp., at 1184; 30 F. 3d, at 678.
Petitioners do not claim that their denial of respondents' application was based upon a content-neutral time, place, or manner restriction. To the contrary, they concede—indeed it is the essence of their case—that the Board rejected the display precisely because its content was religious. Petitioners advance a single justification for closing Capitol Square to respondents' cross: the State's interest in avoiding official endorsement of Christianity, as required by the Establishment Clause.
III
There is no doubt that compliance with the Establishment Clause is a state interest sufficiently compelling to justify
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