The Bill of Rights protects the right to freedom of speech. Stated in the First
Amendement as follows, “Congress shall make no law …abridging the freedom of speech.”
However, the term speech can have different forms such as verbally spoken speech or symbolic.
And yet, there are limitations to what can be protected and what must be outlawed.
In the case of symbolic speech, certain demonstrations such as protesting, flag burning
and using certain symbols or symbolic objects to represent oneself can be controversial due to
the fact that Americans have many different viewpoints on certain issues. Thus, the government
is expected to step in and intervene when the public feels it is needed. Yet, according to
uslegal.com, in regards to restricting symbolic speech, “the government must be regulating
conduct, not expression.” So then, symbolic speech can be defined as one’s way of expression,
no matter how opposing or
R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul
After burning a cross on a black family’s lawn in the summer of 1990, R.A.V. was
charged under the St. Paul, Minnesota’s Bias Motivated Crime Ordinance which outlaws any
display of which someone can take as being used to "arouses anger, alarm or resentment in
others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender" (law.cornell.edu). After fighting this
case in the lower courts, the case was ultimately brought up to the United States Supreme Court
where in the end, it was decided that R.A.V. had the right to burn the cross on the family’s lawn
and that the Bias Motivated Crime Ordinance was unconstitutional “because it was narrowly
tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest in protecting the community against bias
motivated threats to public safety and order.” (law.cornell.edu)
Confederate Flag Waving
Defining symbolic speech can pertain to today’s society in the instance of Confederate
flag waving in southern states. Many people in the South feel it is offensive to wave the
Confederate flag because they feel it represents discrimination and segregation which is a
horrible and hurtful past to them.