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Whoever knowingly mutilates, defaces, physically defiles, burns, maintains on the floor or ground, or tramples upon any flag of the United States shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.
On June 21, 1989, a deeply divided United States Supreme Court upheld the rights of protesters to burn the American flag in a landmark First Amendment decision. In the controversial Texas v. Johnson case, the Court voted 5-4 in favor of Gregory Lee Johnson, the protester who had burned the flag.
The Flag Desecration Amendment (often referred to as the Flag-Burning Amendment) is a proposed addition to the Constitution of the United States that would allow the U.S. Congress to prohibit by statute and provide punishment for the physical "desecration" of the flag of the United States.
The Court has recognized that the First Amendment protects certain forms of symbolic speech. Flag burning is such a form of symbolic speech. When a flag is privately owned, the owner should be able to burn it if the owner chooses, especially if this action is meant in the form of protest.
In the case, activist Gregory Lee Johnson was convicted for burning an American flag during a protest outside the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas, and was fined $2,000 and sentenced to one year in jail in accordance with Texas law.
In United States v. Eichman, which was decided exactly 25 years ago, on June 11, 1990, the Supreme Court once again ruled that burning the flag was an example of constitutionally protected free...
Desecration of the flag of the United States; penalties. (a) (1) Whoever knowingly mutilates, defaces, physically defiles, burns, maintains on the floor or ground, or tramples upon any flag of the United States shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.
