Senate OKs Legislation to Protect Flag

The Senate Friday approved a measure that Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said would “go a long way” toward meeting Supreme Court objections to laws that make it a crime to desecrate the American flag.

Biden, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, offered an amendment to the existing federal statute that makes it a crime to deface the flag. The bill, passed on a voice vote while the Senate was considering child care legislation, was sent to the House, which could take it up as early as next week.

Biden said that the court overturned a Texas law because, under language of the statute, a person who burned the flag could be prosecuted because he knew his action would cause “serious offense to others.” The court held that such prosecution violated the defendant’s freedom of speech.

The senator noted that “the Texas law was not aimed at protecting the integrity of the flag in all circumstances. Rather, it was aimed at protecting against only those kinds of acts against the flag that would cause ‘serious offense to others.’ ”

To be constitutional, he said, a flag burning statute “has to be more neutral . . . it cannot be tied to the ‘likely communicative impact’ of the flag burning on other people.”

Biden’s amendment to the federal flag-burning statute removes language suggesting that such an act would “cast contempt” on the flag. His amendment simply makes it a crime to knowingly and publicly mutilate, deface, burn, display on the floor or ground or trample on the flag.