Opinion ID: 1710025
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: mutilates

Text: ¶ 29. Some twenty years after Street, the Supreme Court again had occasion to assess the constitutional validity of a flag desecration statute. See Johnson, 491 U.S. 397. In Johnson, the Court was faced with the questions it had explicitly left unaddressed in Street: (1) whether the act of burning the flag is sufficiently imbued with elements of communication, Spence v. Washington, 418 U.S. 405, 409 (1974), so as to warrant First Amendment protection; and (2) to what extent that act could be regulated by the government. ¶ 30. The defendant, Johnson, participated in a political demonstration and march to protest, among other things, the policies of the Reagan administration. See Johnson, 491 U.S. at 399. When the protesters arrived at the Dallas City Hall, Johnson doused a United States flag with kerosene and set it on fire. See id. Johnson's acts led to his arrest and conviction for desecration of a venerated object pursuant to Texas law, which made it a misdemeanor to deface, damage, or otherwise physically mistreat a national flag in a way that the actor knows will seriously offend one or more persons likely to observe or discover his action. Id. at 400 n.1. ¶ 31. Under the circumstances presented in Johnson's case, the Court concluded that Johnson's burning of the flag constituted expressive communication which implicated the First Amendment. See id. at 406. After rejecting Texas' two asserted interests in regulating this expressionpreventing breaches of the peace and preserving the flag as a symbol of nationhood and national unitythe Court upheld the reversal of Johnson's conviction. See id. at 420. In doing so, the Court stated, [w]e do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so we dilute the freedom that this cherised emblem represents. Id. ¶ 32. This decision was reaffirmed a year later when the Court held that the Flag Protection Act of 1989, an act passed in the wake of the Johnson decision, was unconstitutionally applied to defendants charged with burning the flag. See United States v. Eichman, 496 U.S. 310 (1990). Similar to the statute at issue in Johnson, the Flag Protection Act provided for fines and imprisonment of anyone who knowingly mutilates, defaces, physically defiles, burns, maintains on the floor or ground, or tramples upon any flag of the United States. Id. at 314. ¶ 33. The Court stated: Although Congress cast the Flag Protection Act of 1989 in somewhat broader terms than the Texas statute at issue in Johnson, the Act still suffers from the same fundamental flaw: It suppresses expression out of concern for its likely communicative impact. . . . Government may create national symbols, promote them, and encourage their respectful treatment. But the Flag Protection Act of 1989 goes well beyond this by criminally proscribing expressive conduct because of its likely communicative impact. Id. at 317-18. ¶ 34. Wisconsin Stat. § 946.05(1), as it is written, suffers from the same flaws that were present in Johnson and Eichman. Its language barring persons from mutilating the flag would make criminally punishable flag burning, tearing or cutting during a political protest, rally, or any other medium in which that person wishes to convey a message by doing soexpression which is explicitly protected by the First Amendment. [11] We are confident in our prediction that fear of prosecution under this portion of the statute is likely to dissuade the citizens of this state from expressing themselves in a constitutionally protected manner. ¶ 35. The State argues that the real and substantial overbreadth of Wis. Stat. § 946.05(1) that is evidenced by the mutilates and casts contempt upon language may be cured by eliminating these two phrases altogether. According to the State, if the word defiles alone is left in place, the flag desecration statute may be preserved. We disagree, and proceed to explain why § 946.05(1) would remain unconstitutionally overbroad on its face if it simply prohibited defile [ment] of the United States flag.