Navigate Left. Navigate Right. Share on Facebook. Share on Twitter. Share on Pinterest. Share via Email. Search Submit Search. Activate Search. Scroll to Top. Close Modal Window. We love comments and feedback, but we ask that you please be respectful in your responses.
Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Verification Field. Affirming that state governments had the authority to ban desecration of the flag, the Court unanimously upheld the conviction of a company that had printed the American flag on a beer bottle. In , after hearing that civil rights leader James Meredith had been shot in Mississippi, Sidney Street took his own flag into the street in New York City and set it on fire.
As a matter of principle, he filed suit, and when Street v. New York reached the Supreme Court, the Court, in a vote, reversed the conviction, stating that Street could not be punished for speaking defiantly or with contemptuous words about the flag. The Court did not decide whether it would have been constitutional to convict Street for actually burning the flag, because it could not separate this issue from the words he uttered.
Five years later in Spence v. Washington , the Court reversed the conviction of a college student in a Washington state case who hung a flag upside down with a peace symbol, made of removable tape, attached. The student was prosecuted under an improper use statute.
The Court ruled that this symbolic speech was protected against government interference. During the demonstration, he doused an American flag with kerosene and set it on fire. Johnson was tried and convicted under a Texas law outlawing flag desecration.
In Texas v. President George H. In Congress adopted the Flag Protection Act. Once the law took effect, protesters burned American flags in Seattle and Washington, D. The protesters were arrested and convicted, and their appeals to the Supreme Court were expedited under terms of the new law.
In United States v. Eichman , the Court, once again by a vote, held that burning the flag was allowable expressive conduct. As in Texas v. Specifically, the Court said that a law regulating expressive conduct would be upheld only if it furthered an important governmental objective unrelated to the suppression of speech, was narrowly tailored to achieve the government's legitimate objective, and the law left open ample alternative means for expression.
In O'Brien's case, the Court found the law to be narrowly tailored to its important objective of "smooth and efficient functioning of the selective service system. Daniel Schact, who performed an anti-war skit at Houston's draft center while wearing a military uniform, had better luck in in reversing his conviction for wearing a military uniform in a production other than one that "does not tend to discredit that armed force.
A few years later, Harold Spence, a young Seattle resident, was prosecuted under a state flag "improper use" law for hanging a flag in his apartment window with a peace symbol attached to it.
The Court rejected the state's argument that promoting respect for the flag or preserving the flag as a symbol of the nation constituted important governmental interests unrelated to the suppression of speech, and reversed Spence's conviction. Finally, the Court addressed the highly emotional issue of flag burning.
0コメント