Street v. New York

1969-04-21

Headline: Limits state power to punish flag insults: Court reverses a conviction where a man's spoken contempt for the United States flag may have been criminalized, protecting speech while not ruling on burning itself.

Holding: The Court reversed because New York convicted a man under a statute that could punish his contemptuous words about the United States flag, and those words are protected speech, so the conviction could not stand.

Real World Impact:

Stops convictions grounded on contemptuous flag speech alone.
Requires courts to separate protected words from punishable acts.
Leaves open whether flag burning itself may be criminalized

Topics: flag burning, freedom of speech, First Amendment, protest laws

Summary

Background

A Black man heard a radio report that civil rights activist James Meredith had been shot. Angry, he took a folded U.S. flag, walked to a street corner, set it on fire, and spoke to onlookers and a police officer that "we don't need no damn flag" and "If they let that happen to Meredith we don't need an American flag." He was charged under a New York law that made it a misdemeanor to publicly deface or cast contempt upon the U.S. flag "by words or act." A judge convicted him in a bench trial, gave a suspended sentence, and New York's highest court affirmed before the case reached the Supreme Court.

Reasoning

The Supreme Court focused narrowly on whether the conviction might have been based on the man's words rather than his act. Relying on earlier cases about general verdicts, the Court concluded the record did not make clear which ground the judge relied on. The Court then held that criminalizing the speaker's contemptuous words in these circumstances would violate the First Amendment. The justices found the words were not direct calls to lawless action, not classic "fighting words," and could not be punished merely because they offended or showed disrespect. Because the conviction might have rested on those protected words, the Court reversed.

Real world impact

The ruling prevents states from upholding convictions that rest on publicly spoken contempt for the flag when those words alone do not provoke illegal acts. The decision is narrow: it does not decide whether burning the flag itself can be punished. Lower courts must now ensure convictions are not based on protected speech.

Dissents or concurrances

Several dissenting justices said the record showed the man was convicted for burning the flag and urged the Court to decide that burning as protest can be punished; they warned the majority left the larger issue unresolved.