President-elect Donald Trump believes burning the American flag should be a crime, a move that suggests he supports efforts to override a series of Supreme Court decisions with an amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
‘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 Tuesday morning on Twitter.
Hillary Clinton once co-sponsored a bill in the U.S. Senate that would have done much the same thing, making it a crime to burn the U.S. flag in order to ‘incite or produce imminent violence or a breach of the peace.’
The law, which languished in Congress, would have provided for a 1-year jail term and a $100,000 fine as penalties.
America’s highest court ruled in 1969 that denigrating the U.S. flag with words is protected by the First Amendment, and in 1989 – by a slim 5-4 majority – that desecrating it is also a form of free speech.
But the Clinton-sponsored bill argued that ‘destruction of the flag of the United States can be intended to incite a violent response rather than make a political statement and such conduct is outside the protections afforded by the first amendment.’