I think it was well established in numerous debates on these boards that flag burning was a constitutional right. Certainly that was the Supreme Court’s opinion, and most posters here agreed with that.
Pity nobody told administrators at San Francisco State University, who are set to strip a student group of funding and recognition because they burned and stomped two flags at a rally.
The Supreme Court decision is what it is, and government bodies, including San Francisco State University, ought to abide by it. This liberty is content neutral, so it doesn’t matter at all that the group in trouble is the College Republicans and the flags in question were those of Hamas and Hezbollah.
Can you link to the court’s decision? That’s the only way I’ll know if burning “The Flag”, “The American Flag” or “The flag of any nation or church” is a protected right.
Oh, also that the college is bound to protect Constitutional rights at all times, or this Constitutional right at all. High schools, I know, have no legal duty to provide for students’ Freedom of Speech in school materials.
Only after those points are ascertained can we decide if the college is acting illegally.
Morally, I think they’re a bunch of doo-doo heads, if that helps.
The decision by the school is wrongheaded (or will be if it is the decision they come to, don’t want to jump the gun here), and probably in violation of the constitution. It’s a public school, so it can’t do this sort of thing. I am in favor of more expression rather than less, in particular in a university environment. It is a tragedy that much of the academic left has got itself wrapped up so much in the concept of providing a nice, friendly place where no one is rude to anyone else that they ignore first amendment rights. You want to go to a school that does not allow free expression - there are plenty of private schools that have speech codes. Mine didn’t, fortunately, but they are constitutionally problematic in the public sector.
As a nit pick, flag burning isn’t protected. What you cannot do under the constitution is separate out the burning of a flag from the burning of anything else. In the vast majority of situations, you can be prosecuted for burning a flag in public, as most places have general ordinances that ban bonfires in the middle of the street.
This decision struck down statutes protecting the American flag. As there are no statutes protecting the Hamas or Hezbollah flag, they weren’t affected, but it is pretty clear from the language of the decision that statutes that did protect them wouldn’t stand either.
The issue, as I understood it, was that “burning the flag” was protected “symbolic speech,” an action taken in order to make, and understood as making, a point equivalent to a verbal statement.
As such, a government body cannot declare it illegal, nor, if I’m correct in what I remember, may it penalize the taking of such action in substantively similar manner to having declared it illegal.
As to whether the College Republican Club of San Francisco State University is being so penalized by having funding and recognition removed for its symbolic speech, I can offer no clear response. But my gut reaction is that Mr Moto’s implied thesis is accurate, and that it is so penalizing that group – illegally.
I won’t claim to have any legal insight into this, but my opinion is that it’s a morally wrong restriction of free speech.
I’ll never really get why people get so worked up over pieces of cloth that the sanctity of those pieces of cloth trumps free speech. Yes, I know people are raised to feel strongly about flags, but I’ll never really get it on a gut level.
What SCOTUS ruled was that prohibitions on flag burning (any flag) violate the 1st amendment right to free speech.
Moto’s Op is misleading. The students in question are not being sanctioned for “flag desecration” per se but for actions which were perceived as hostile, disrespectful and intentionally offensive to Muslims (A bunch of Young Republicans held an anti-Muslim rally and stomped on flags with the Arabic name for 'God" wriiten on them). The fact that they were flags is immaterial. The resolution would have come down just the same if it was T-shirts or posters or sandwich boards.
That’s still free speech, of course, but since we’re talking about a college where students agree to a code of conduct, the school can still sanction them for violating it.
Moto apparently hopes he will be able to find some kind of hypocrisy in how liberals will respond to this, but the case is off point as it pertains to either flag burning or the 1st amendment.
In this case the flag contained the name of Allah in Arabic, so it wasn’t just insulting a national symbol but also insulting the deity. It’s how many Christians would feel if the US flag had the words “In God we trust” on it and that flag was insulted.
So, I can understand the feelings, but it remains protected political speech. And I wonder how many Hamas or Hezbollah burnings of US or Israeli flags there have been. Sauce for the goose – sauce for the gander.
Yes, but if the hostile, disrespectful and intentionally offensive action was burning the flag of an Islamic country, then by the exact same logic it would be hostile, disrespectful and intentionally offensive to burn an American flag.
Surely the entire point of burning an American flag is that it is hostile, disrespectful and intentionally offensive, otherwise there wouldn’t be any point in it, or any reason to attempt to pass laws banning flag burning.
Or is it only the American flag that can be burned, all other flags should be considered sacred?
This has nothing to do with flag desecration. It’s about whether these students violated the code of conduct they signed off on when they enrolled at the school. Schools can and do require students to adhere to codes of conduct which include agreements that they will not engage in various forms of harrassing, offensive or inciteful speech against other students. “Flag desecration” is a red herring in this case. That’s not waht they got dinged for.
If a school asks it students to refrain from burning American flags in its conduct code, and the students sign off on it, there’s nothing wrong with the school bringing down sanctions if they do it anyway.
I don’t think this is a great analogy, though, because burning the American flag does not specific religious or ethnic group to offend.
Schools sanction speech all the time. So, although I disagree with it, I don’t think what they are doing is illegal. San Francisco University isn’t the Government. Now, if they receive government funding, the rules may be different, and if they are fine, but I suspect they aren’t. In this case, I think the school could make a good case based on the safety of their actions (what if the fire had gotten out of control) and also, on some sort of “inciting to riot” type thing. Which isn’t to say I necessarily agree with that argument, but I think you could make it and not run afoul of the law.
I think what they are doing is absolutely constitutionally protected free speech, I’m just not 100% certain that’s what applies here. In a school there are safety matters too.
My reading of the article was that it was an anti-terrorism rally, that they identified Hamas and Hezbolah with terrorism, and that they burned homemade flags of those organiosations not realising that they had the name of Allah on them. So, perhaps they were against Muslim terrorism, but I would not equate that with being anti-Muslim.
I guess part of the problem is nations and national political organisations having religious symbols on their flags. It means that they are indeed linking church and state, so that if you attack the state you are going to be attacking the church as well.
These guys aren’t facing any criminal charges, by the way, so the 1st Amendment thing is kind of a non-starter. The state isn’t charging these guys with any crimes.
I don’t think this is the case, Dio. A public school cannot impose a code of conduct that violates the First Amendment in exchange for public money ro a benefit provided by such. It falls foul of the unconstitutional condition doctrine. It’s like saying that a person would have to sign a code of conduct not to attend church to receive unemployment benefits.
There isn’t an exemption in the First Amendment protections of speech that leaves speech that offends specific ethnic or religious groups unprotected.
In the interests of full disclosure, I find all speech codes to be at least presumptively violative of the First Amendment. The courts don’t always agree with me on this, clearly… But to ban speech because it is offensive on political grounds goes to the very heart of the First Amendment.
That might get into the broader question of whether those codes themselves are unconstitutional, as was mentioned.
There might be another question if the punishment to the College Republicans is disproportionate to punishments meted out to other students or groups. After all, this is the campus where a pro-Israel rally in 2002 was attacked and threatened by students who sympathies were with the Palestinians.
The incident was very ugly, but my research doesn’t turn up any disciplinary action against any group or student, only touchy-feely outreach and educational efforts.
OK, this is flat out incorrect. The First Amendment does not only protect against criminal penalties. You cannot tax someone for publishing a religious tract, for example, because it violates the First Amendment. You also cannot impose conditions violative of the First Amendment, even if they are in the form of a benefit - you cannot pay people to surrender these rights, if you are the government, and state universities are the government in cases such as these. You cannot, for example, offer $1,000 to anyone who agrees to sign a piece of paper saying that Jesus is Lord. You also cannot make attending a state university conditional on holding certain views, nor can you only fund student organizations with certain political beliefs.