Trump floats jail time or loss of citizenship
But multiple high-court rulings protect the form of protest
President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday he wants to impose punishment on people who burn American flags, possibly including imprisonment or loss of U.S citizenship.
Trump suggested the sanctions, which would run counter to a 1989 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in an early-morning tweet.
“Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag — if they do, there must be consequences — perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!” Trump said.
“The president-elect is a very strong supporter of the First Amendment. But I also think there’s a big difference between that and burning the American flag, which has absolutely no place in our society,” Trump spokesman Jason Miller said on CNN shortly afterward. “Flag burning should be illegal.”
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in the case Texas vs. Johnson that burning a flag is a form of political expression protected under the First Amendment and cannot be made illegal.
Desecration of the flag emerged as a political issue amid the convulsions of the 1960s after some Vietnam War opponents began burning flags as a form of protest. In the decades that followed, punishment of flag-burning became a cultural flashpoint in tensions over deference to patriotic norms versus protection of the right to dissenting expression.
Following the 1989 Supreme Court decision, Congress passed a new law banning flag-burning, which was overturned in a subsequent Supreme Court case. Efforts to amend the Constitution to prohibit flag-burning have fallen short of the twothirds majority needed in both chambers of Congress. Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky provided the crucial vote to stop a 2006 attempt in the Senate that failed to meet the threshold by a single vote.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California said Tuesday on MSNBC that “where I come from, you honor the flag,” while acknowledging the Supreme Court “has upheld” the protection of flag burning under the U.S. Constitution. “We’ll protect our First Amendment,” he said.
Republican Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin said on CNN that the constitutional right to free expression is ultimately more important than protecting the flag from desecration.
“I love my flag, and I love what it stands for. And I hate those who want to go out and burn it,” Duffy said, “but I think the court is probably right in that we want to protect those people who want to protest.”
Neither Trump nor Miller explained what prompted the presidentelect’s statement.