damnation.creative

In Justice Brennan's Opinion of the court he states " Johnson was convicted of flag desecration for burning the flag, rather than for uttering insulting words. This fact somewhat complicates our consideration of his conviction under the First Amendment. We must first determine whether Johnson's burning of the flag constituted expressive conduct, permitting him to invoke the First Amendment in challenging his conviction." he also went on to say, "
If his conduct was expressive, we next decide whether the State's regulation is related to the suppression of free expression. See, e.g., United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 377 (1968); Spence, supra, at 414, n. 8. If the State's regulation is not related to expression, then the less stringent standard we announced in United States v. O'Brien for regulations of noncommunicative conduct controls. See O'Brien, supra, at 377. If it is, then we are outside of O'Brien's test, and we must ask whether this interest justifies Johnson's conviction under a more demanding standard. [n3] See Spence, supra, at 411. A [p404] third possibility is that the State's asserted interest is simply not implicated on these facts, and, in that event, the interest drops out of the picture. " (SOURCE) The court has not automatically concluded that any action taken with respect to our flag is expressive. Instead they have considered the context in which it occurred.