ABSTRACT
FLAG BURNING AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT The United States tolerates acts of symbolic protest-even inflammatory ones. Under the First Amendment, protestors who seek to burn a flag, a politician in effigy, or a holy book can do so unless the act poses an imminent threat to other people or property. In 2010, a Florida pastor threatened to burn the Muslim holy book, the Qur’an, in retaliation for a Muslim cleric’s plans to build an Islamic center near Ground Zero where the twin towers were destroyed during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Following extensive news media coverage, Pastor Terry Jones retreated from his symbolic act of conflagration, but others have followed through with symbolic inflammatory acts, causing distress and outrage, even resulting in court decisions in their favor that turned on the narrowest of margins in the United States.
