201.290 states that a person commits an offense when they do any of the following acts to a U.S. This statute makes it a crime to mark up a flag, but it doesn’t explicitly state that setting fire to one is unlawful although this conduct could be implied. However, Nevada has a law on the books that prohibits a person from defacing a U.S. Constitution, flag burning is not illegal. Although its decision was split, the Supreme Court ruled in that case that flag burning was a form of symbolic speech. He did so to protest then-President Ronald Reagan’s policies. The defendant in Johnson burned a flag outside of the Republican National Convention. The offense was a felony that resulted in a fine and 1 year of prison. The defendant was accused of violating a Texas law that prohibited flag burning. The Supreme Court decided that flag burning was constitutional in the landmark 1989 case Texas v. However, the First Amendment does protect symbolic speech – nonverbal forms of communication that are expressed through actions. For instance, making statements that could cause others to suffer harm or distributing materials a reasonable person would consider obscene isn’t legal. Of course, those protections aren’t absolute, which means there are some exceptions to the law. Constitution affords us the right to freely express ourselves.
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