Today in Supreme Court History: June 21, 1989

6/21/1989: Texas v. Johnson is decided.

Comments

[JoeFromtheBronx]

It is striking on some level that this case (involving a content-based flag-burning law) was 5-4. Scalia and Kennedy joined the majority. Stevens wrote a dissent. The law prohibited ...

`desecrate' means deface, damage, or otherwise physically mistreat in a way that the actor knows will seriously offend one or more persons likely to observe or discover his action.

He was charged with offending people regarding the way he protested. Talk about "please don't throw me in the briar patch!" territory. Gregory Johnson burned a flag as an act of protest outside the Republican National Convention in 1984.

As Dave Barry noted in his autobiography, no one was paying much attention to such protests. Burning a flag was a sort of trolling.

A lot of drama arose from this, including talk of a constitutional amendment & another lawsuit when a federal flag desecration law was passed. It had the same result.

The division in the Court was foreshadowed with Street v. N.Y., which arose when a flag was burnt in protest of the shooting of James Meredith. The Court split 5-4 there, too, with the opinion resting on the words the protester said.

[A Japanese Student]

And the best parody from The Simpsons.