Flag burning shatters the morale of armed forces for whom the nation is not just a piece of land but a sacred place and flag, not a piece of cloth but a holy symbol representing their belief.īurning a flag is a mindset and not just a problem. Our soldiers have sacrificed their lives and are still fighting as we speak to protect the freedom and integrity which our flag represents. If we allow burning of our national symbols, it can pave a pathway of hatred and a blatant rejection of government institutions. Similarly, the American flag is a holy symbol representing what we as a country stand for. To quote such an example – burning of Quran is forbidden as it can lead to hurtful sentiments and disrupt national peace. However, certain acts are so condemnable in nature that there is no other way than to altogether ban the activity. “Even if flag burning weren’t protected, it would still be unconstitutional to deprive someone of their citizenship without some voluntary act on their part to renounce their allegiance to the United States or pledge fealty to a foreign sovereign.” Trump’s tweet also casually suggests that citizens should lose their citizenship as a ‘penalty’ for such acts,” Vladeck said. “In addition to ignoring the Supreme Court’s clear teaching that flag burning is constitutionally protected speech, Mr. Steve Vladeck, a renowned Professor at the University of Texas Law School, stated that Trump’s idea that citizens possibly be expatriated as a discipline is not a plausible solution. President Donald Trump’s proposal of a penalty which includes jail time or loss of citizenship for burning the flag received heavy criticism. “If it were up to me, I would put in jail every sandal-wearing, scruffy-bearded weirdo who burns the American flag,” Scalia said at a November 2015 event in Philadelphia. Justice Antonin Scalia, later, expressed his views in a public event. On June 21, 1989, United States Supreme Court voted 5-4 in favor of Johnson considering his actions as symbolic speech. Johnson was fined and sentenced to one year in prison. The first sparks flew when in 1984, Gregory Lee Johnson broke state law by burning a flag at the Republican Convention in Dallas.