This proposed amendment would empower Congress to enact statutes criminalizing the burning or other "desecration" of the United States flag in a public protest. The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.
The full text of the amendment (passed several times by the U.S. Some Senate Republican aides indicated that almost a dozen of the Republican senators who voted for the amendment were privately opposed to it, and they believed that these senators would have voted to defeat the amendment if required. In 2006, during the 109th Congress, the Amendment failed by one vote in the Senate. During some sessions, the proposed amendment did not even come to a vote in the Senate before the expiration of the Congress' term. House of Representatives, but it consistently failed to achieve the same constitutionally required super-majority vote in the U.S. From 1995 to 2005, beginning with the 104th Congress, the proposed amendment was approved biennially by the two-thirds majority necessary in the U.S. Following the Johnson decision, successive sessions of Congress considered creating a flag desecration amendment. The decisions were controversial and have prompted Congress to consider the only remaining legal avenue to enact flag protection statutes-a constitutional amendment. Brennan wrote the majority opinion, joined by Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Antonin Scalia, and Anthony Kennedy (Kennedy also authored a separate concurrence in Johnson), and the dissenters in both cases were then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist (who authored a dissent in Johnson), and Justices John Paul Stevens (who authored dissents in both cases), Byron White and Sandra Day O'Connor.
Eichman declaring that flag burning was constitutionally protected free speech. In 1990, the Supreme Court reaffirmed Johnson by the same 5–4 majority in United States v. Congress responded to the Johnson decision afterwards by passing a Flag Protection Act. Johnson as unconstitutional restrictions of public expression. In 1989, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned all of these statutes by a 5–4 vote in the case Texas v. states also enacted similar flag protection laws. The first federal Flag Protection Act was passed by Congress in 1968 in response to protest burnings of the flag at demonstrations against the Vietnam War.
In June 2019, Senator Steve Daines ( R- MT) proposed reviving the previously unsuccessful amendment language, and received the support of the Trump administration.
The most recent legislative attempt to propose a flag desecration amendment failed in the United States Senate by one vote on June 27, 2006. While the proposed amendment is frequently referred to colloquially in terms of expression of political views through "flag burning", the language would permit the prohibition of all forms of flag desecration, which may take forms other than burning, such as using the flag for clothing or napkins. The concept of flag desecration continues to provoke a heated debate over protecting a national symbol, preserving free speech, and upholding the liberty said to be represented by that national symbol. Congress to prohibit by statute and provide punishment for the physical " desecration" of the flag of the United States. The Flag Desecration Amendment (often referred to as the Flag-Burning Amendment) is a proposed addition to the Constitution of the United States that would allow the U.S. Proposed constitutional amendment to the United States Constitution