Piece and Freedumb Lover Trump's Executive Order Prohibiting Flag Burning Is Unconstitutional

From [HERE] President Donald Trump issued an executive order prohibiting the burning of the American flag on Monday. There's a big problem with the order, though—one that Trump even acknowledged in his press conference touting the E.O. Flag burning is clearly protected by the First Amendment, and the Supreme Court has twice affirmed that this is so.

Moreover, any administration that purports to care about freedom of speech should easily reach the conclusion that criminalizing provocative yet nonviolent acts of political expression is a violation of this principle, even if the constitutional issue was not so cut and dry.

It's understandable why people don't like flag burning. The flag is a visual representation of the principles upon which America was founded, and when it's disrespected, many Americans take it as a sign that those values are being treated with contempt.

"Flag burning, all over the country they're burning flags," lamented Trump, as he signed the order.

Free speech, though, is among the most fundamental American values of all. The right of Americans to speak their minds is enshrined in the First Amendment; importantly, this right does not apply solely to benign, polite, socially acceptable speech. As one hundred years of Supreme Court jurisprudence has made clear, the First Amendment also protects hateful speech, wrongful speech, angry speech, criticism of the government, and so on. There are some exceptions to the First Amendment, but they are incredibly narrow—and importantly, they do not include flag-burning.

That's because the Supreme Court ruled on this very issue in the landmark 1989 case Texas v. Johnson, which overturned 48 state laws prohibiting desecration of the American flag. In response, Congress passed a federal law that prohibited flag burning, and the following year, the Supreme Court reached the exact same conclusion in United States v. Eichman. If the state-level bans are unconstitutional, and the ban implemented by Congress is unconstitutional, then you can pretty safely bet that the executive order version is even more obviously unconstitutional. [MORE]