{"id":100451,"date":"2020-06-03T09:09:45","date_gmt":"2020-06-03T13:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=100451"},"modified":"2020-06-03T09:09:45","modified_gmt":"2020-06-03T13:09:45","slug":"flag-burning-and-stolen-valor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=100451","title":{"rendered":"Flag Burning and Stolen Valor"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The StamfordAdvocate writes<\/a> that President Trump is wrong when he claims that the Supreme Court would allow for a flag-burning statue.<\/p>\n

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Trump says the Supreme Court would allow a ‘very powerful flag-burning statute.’ He’s wrong.<\/a><\/h3>\n

President Donald Trump returned to a long-dormant political debate in Monday’s call with governors. He assured the governors that “I’m not a believer in flag burning,” and suggested that the states should pass a “very powerful flag-burning statute” with “strong punishment.” The president promised that the administration would “back you 100 percent,” and mused that “we have a different court” that “will accept that.”<\/p>\n

Here’s what’s going on.<\/p>\n

– Flag burning is an old controversy<\/p>\n

Once again, Trump was reaching back to old culture war issues to see whether they still had political life. The background is that states once had statutes prohibiting the desecration or burning of the American flag. As the U.S. Supreme Court expanded First Amendment jurisprudence over the course of the 20th century to protect a wider range of expressions of political dissent, it became doubtful that these prohibitions were constitutional.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then…<\/p>\n

Trump has suggested that the court is “different” today and would be more willing to uphold a flag-burning law. He is almost certainly wrong. Back then, four justices wanted to uphold such laws, including the left-leaning Stevens, centrist Democratic-appointed Justice Byron White, and Republican-appointed Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.<\/p>\n

None of the current justices were on the bench in 1990, but it seems very doubtful that there are even four votes to be found on the current court to uphold a revived flag-burning statute. When the Roberts court heard a case involving the notorious Westboro Baptist Church’s picketing of the funerals of fallen soldiers, only Justice Samuel Alito thought such demonstrations were beyond the constitutional pale. Chief Justice John Roberts favorably cited the Texas flag-burning case in writing the court’s opinion protecting the picketers.<\/p>\n

The Roberts court has ruled similarly on other cases, including the Stolen Valor Act (which sought to prohibit people falsely claiming to have won military honors); a federal statute banning videos depicting animal cruelty; and state restrictions on the sale of violent video games. When the Roberts court struck down a provision of the federal Lanham Act that excluded trademarks that disparaged people, beliefs or national symbols, no one dissented. Notably, conservative justices have often favorably quoted the flag-burning cases in their opinions.<\/p>\n

A justice or two on the current court might think that the national interest in preserving the U.S. flag from desecration outweighs the general principle that dissidents’ expression of their beliefs should be protected no matter how unpopular their message. But outlawing flag burning would take more than one or two justices. Trump’s confidence that the justices would be in his corner may well be misplaced.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maybe they will eventually decide that looting is free speech and a form of protest?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The StamfordAdvocate writes that President Trump is wrong when he claims that the Supreme Court would … Flag Burning and Stolen Valor<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":663,"featured_media":100452,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,183],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-stolen-valor-act"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/663"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100453,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100451\/revisions\/100453"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/100452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}