794
Opinion of Souter, J.
Board, then, could have granted the application subject to the condition that the Klan attach a disclaimer sufficiently large and clear to preclude any reasonable inference that the cross was there to "demonstrat[e] the government's allegiance to, or endorsement of, the Christian faith." Allegheny, 492 U. S., at 612.2 In the alternative, the Board could have instituted a policy of restricting all private, unattended displays to one area of the square, with a permanent sign marking the area as a forum for private speech carrying no endorsement from the State.
With such alternatives available, the Board cannot claim that its flat denial was a narrowly tailored response to the Klan's permit application and thus cannot rely on that denial as necessary to ensure that the State did not "appea[r] to take a position on questions of religious belief." Id., at 594. For these reasons, I concur in the judgment.
based on the assumption that a disclaimer would accompany the cross, since the cross the Klan put up on the basis of the District Court's command in fact carried a disclaimer, see App. 63 (photo); Appendix to opinion of Stevens, J., post, at 816. Since the litigation preceded the appearance of the cross and the sign, the adequacy of the sign actually produced was not considered. The adequacy of a disclaimer, in size as well as content, is, of course, a proper subject of judicial scrutiny when placed in issue. Whether the flimsy cardboard sign attached by the Klan to the base of the cross functioned as an adequate disclaimer in this case is a question not before us.
2 Of course, the presence of a disclaimer does not always remove the possibility that a private religious display "convey[s] or attempt[s] to convey a message that religion or a particular religious belief is favored or preferred," Allegheny, 492 U. S., at 593 (emphasis, internal quotation marks, and citation omitted), when other indicia of endorsement (e. g., objective indications that the government in fact invited the display or otherwise intended to further a religious purpose) outweigh the mitigating effect of the disclaimer, or when the disclaimer itself does not sufficiently disclaim government support. See, e. g., Stone v. Graham, 449 U. S. 39, 41 (1980); Allegheny, supra, at 600-601; cf. ante, at 769, n. 4. In this case, however, there is no reason to presume that an adequate disclaimer could not have been drafted. Cf. Parish, Private Religious Displays in Public Fora, 61 U. Chi. L. Rev. 253, 285-287 (1994).
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