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Gregory Lee Johnson's Impact On The US

1550 Words7 Pages

Gregory lee Johnson, was convicted of burning the American flag which violates the Texas Penal Code. Burning the American flag is unconstitutional to some and to others it is protected by the first amendment. This is a huge controversial argument between many american citizens. Some say that it doesn't have a big impact on the US, but really it has a bigger impact than I ever imagined. The Texas vs Johnson case had a big impact on the United States because it shows us how the 1st amendment guarantees us many different rites that we didn’t know about. The constitutional issue in this case was the 1st amendment. Gregory Lee Johnson was tried for burning an American flag but the Supreme court decided he wasn’t guilty. They said that it was …show more content…

He was stunned that he was arrested because all along he thought what he was doing was protected by the 1st amendment, the freedom of speech, assembly, press and petition. When his court date arrived, he was tried and convicted of Violation of the Texas Penal code which is a set of prohibitions or laws set to keep people safe. He was also sentenced with 1 year in prison and a $2,000 fine. After this ruling he decided to appeal the court's decision and went to the Texas Court of Appeals. The Texas Court of Appeals overturned Gregory Lee Johnson conviction saying that the Texas law wasn’t written narrowly enough and also saying that what Johnson did didn’t harm anyone and also it didn’t disturb the peace. After he was appealed, Texas decided to appeal the case again, this time to the Supreme Court.

June 21, 1989, The Supreme Court came to a decision. It was a close decision with a 5-4 win in Johnson's favor. The high court agreed that no matter how offensive to some, symbolic speech is protected by the First Amendment. There had been many other cases before this one that had been about desecrating or burning the american flag. It started all the way back in 1907, and since then states had been making laws to limit what you can do to the american flag until 1989 when the …show more content…

Many people were still disputing the fact that someone can burn a protected object and can burn the American flag. This decision was very controversial and was a bad decision in my opinion. There were many more flag burnings after they passed this act making it hard to rule all of them and I think that something like the american flag shouldn’t be able to be set on fire and desecrated. I think if something like the confederate flag is being banned in some places, the american flag shouldn’t be able to be desecrated. If the Supreme Court would have just voted against Gregory Lee Johnson, this whole situation with burning the American flag wouldn’t be

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