PER CURIAM.
Appellant displayed a United States flag, which he owned, out of the window of his apartment. Affixed to both surfaces of the flag was a large peace symbol fashioned of removable tape. Appellant was convicted under a Washington statute forbidding the exhibition of a United States flag to which is attached or superimposed figures, symbols, or other extraneous material. The Supreme Court of Washington affirmed appellant's
I
On May 10, 1970, appellant, a college student, hung his United States flag from the window of his apartment on private property in Seattle, Washington. The flag was upside down, and attached to the front and back was a peace symbol (i. e., a circle enclosing a trident) made of removable black tape. The window was above the ground floor. The flag measured approximately three by five feet and was plainly visible to passersby. The peace symbol occupied roughly half of the surface of the flag.
Three Seattle police officers observed the flag and entered the apartment house. They were met at the main door by appellant, who said: "I suppose you are here about the flag. I didn't know there was anything wrong with it. I will take it down." Appellant permitted the officers to enter his apartment, where they seized the flag and arrested him. Appellant cooperated with the officers. There was no disruption or altercation.
Appellant was not charged under Washington's flag-desecration statute. See Wash. Rev. Code § 9.86.030, as amended.
Appellant initially was tried to the bench in a local justice court, where he was found guilty and sentenced to 90 days' confinement, with 60 days suspended. Appellant exercised his right to be tried de novo in King County Superior Court, where he received a jury trial.
The State based its case on the flag itself and the testimony of the three arresting officers, who testified that they had observed the flag displayed from appellant's window and that on the flag was superimposed what they identified as a peace symbol. Appellant took
Appellant further testified that he chose to fashion the peace symbol from tape so that it could be removed without damaging the flag. The State made no effort to controvert any of appellant's testimony.
The trial court instructed the jury in essence that the mere act of displaying the flag with the peace symbol attached, if proved beyond a reasonable doubt, was sufficient to convict. There was no requirement of specific intent to do anything more than display the flag in that manner. The jury returned a verdict of guilty. The court sentenced appellant to 10 days in jail, suspended, and to a $75 fine. The Washington Court of Appeals reversed the conviction. 5 Wn.App. 752, 490 P.2d 1321 (1971). It held the improper-use statute overbroad and invalid on its face under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. With one justice dissenting and two concurring in the result, the Washington Supreme Court reversed and reinstated the conviction. 81 Wn.2d 788, 506 P.2d 293 (1973).
II
A number of factors are important in the instant case. First, this was a privately owned flag. In a technical property sense it was not the property of any government.
Fourth, the State concedes, as did the Washington Supreme Court, that appellant engaged in a form of communication.
The Court for decades has recognized the communicative connotations of the use of flags. E. g., Stromberg v. California, 283 U.S. 359 (1931). In many of their uses flags are a form of symbolism comprising a "primitive but effective way of communicating ideas . . . ," and "a short cut from mind to mind." Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 632 (1943). On this record there can be little doubt that appellant communicated through the use of symbols. The symbolism included not only the flag but also the superimposed peace symbol.
Moreover, the context in which a symbol is used for purposes of expression is important, for the context may give meaning to the symbol. See Tinker v. Des Moines School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969). In Tinker, the wearing of black armbands in a school environment conveyed an unmistakable message about a contemporaneous issue of intense public concern—the Vietnam hostilities. Id., at 505-514. In this case, appellant's activity was roughly simultaneous with and concededly triggered by the Cambodian incursion and the Kent State tragedy, also issues of great public moment. Cf. Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232 (1974). A flag bearing a peace symbol and displayed upside down by a student today might be interpreted as nothing more than bizarre behavior, but it would have been difficult for the great majority of citizens to miss the drift of appellant's point at the time that he made it.
It may be noted, further, that this was not an act of mindless nihilism. Rather, it was a pointed expression of anguish by appellant about the then-current domestic and foreign affairs of his government. An intent to
We are confronted then with a case of prosecution for the expression of an idea through activity. Moreover, the activity occurred on private property, rather than in an environment over which the State by necessity must have certain supervisory powers unrelated to expression. Cf. Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396 (1974); Healy v. James, 408 U.S. 169 (1972); Tinker v. Des Moines School District, supra. Accordingly, we must examine with particular care the interests advanced by appellee to support its prosecution.
We are met at the outset with something of an enigma in the manner in which the case was presented to us. The Washington Supreme Court rejected any reliance on a breach-of-the-peace rationale. 81 Wash. 2d, at 796 n. 1, 506 P. 2d, at 299 n. 1. It based its result primarily on the ground that "the nation and state both have a recognizable interest in preserving the flag as a symbol of the nation . . . ."
We are also unable to affirm the judgment below on the ground that the State may have desired to protect the sensibilities of passersby. "It is firmly settled that under our Constitution the public expression of ideas may not be prohibited merely because the ideas are themselves offensive to some of their hearers." Street v. New York, supra, at 592. Moreover, appellant did not impose his ideas upon a captive audience. Anyone who might have been offended could easily have avoided the display. See Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971). Nor may appellant be punished for failing to show proper respect for our national emblem. Street v. New York, supra, at 593; Board of Education v. Barnette, supra.
We are brought, then, to the state court's thesis that Washington has an interest in preserving the national flag as an unalloyed symbol of our country. The court did not define this interest; it simply asserted it. See 81 Wash. 2d, at 799, 506 P. 2d, at 300. MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST's dissenting opinion today, see post, at 420-422, adopts essentially the same approach. Presumably, this interest might be seen as an effort to prevent the appropriation of a revered national symbol by an individual, interest group, or enterprise where there was a risk that association of the symbol with a particular
But we need not decide in this case whether the interest
The judgment is reversed.
It is so ordered.
MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN concurs in the result.
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, concurring.
I would reverse the judgment for substantially the same reasons given by the Iowa Supreme Court in State v. Kool, 212 N.W.2d 518. In that case the defendant
The court held that defendant's conduct constituted "symbolic speech." The court, in reversing the conviction, said:
That view is precisely my own. Hence I concur in reversing this judgment of conviction.
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE BURGER, dissenting.
If the constitutional role of this Court were to strike down unwise laws or restrict unwise application of some laws, I could agree with the result reached by the Court. That is not our function, however, and it should be left to each State and ultimately the common sense of its people to decide how the flag, as a symbol of national unity, should be protected.
MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE and MR. JUSTICE WHITE join, dissenting.
The Court holds that a Washington statute prohibiting persons from attaching material to the American flag was unconstitutionally applied to appellant. Although I agree with the Court that appellant's activity was a form of communication, I do not agree that the First
"[T]he right of free speech is not absolute at all times and under all circumstances." Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 571 (1942). This Court has long recognized, for example, that some forms of expression are not entitled to any protection at all under the First Amendment, despite the fact that they could reasonably be thought protected under its literal language. See Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957). The Court has further recognized that even protected speech may be subject to reasonable limitation when important countervailing interests are involved. Citizens are not completely free to commit perjury, to libel other citizens, to infringe copyrights, to incite riots, or to interfere unduly with passage through a public thoroughfare. The right of free speech, though precious, remains subject to reasonable accommodation to other valued interests.
Since a State concededly may impose some limitations on speech directly, it would seem to follow a fortiori that a State may legislate to protect important state interests even though an incidental limitation on free speech results. Virtually any law enacted by a State, when viewed with sufficient ingenuity, could be thought to interfere with some citizen's preferred means of expression. But no one would argue, I presume, that a State could not prevent the painting of public buildings simply because a particular class of protesters believed their message would best be conveyed through that medium. Had appellant here chosen to tape his peace symbol to a federal courthouse, I have little doubt that he could be prosecuted under a statute properly drawn to protect public property.
The statute under which appellant was convicted is no stranger to this Court, a virtually identical statute having been before the Court in Halter v. Nebraska, 205 U.S. 34 (1907). In that case the Court held that the State of Nebraska could enforce its statute to prevent use of a flag representation on beer bottles, stating flatly that "a State will be wanting in care for the well-being of its people if
The Court today finds Halter irrelevant to the present case, pointing out that it was decided almost 20 years before the First Amendment was applied to the States and further noting that it involved "commercial behavior," a form of expression the Court presumably will consider another day.
Turning to the question of the State's interest in the flag, it seems to me that the Court's treatment lacks all substance. The suggestion that the State's interest somehow diminishes when the flag is decorated with removable tape trivializes something which is not trivial. The State of Washington is hardly seeking to protect the flag's resale value, and yet the Court's emphasis on the lack of actual damage to the flag suggests that this is a significant aspect of the State's interest. Surely the Court does not mean to imply that appellant could be prosecuted if he subsequently tore the flag in the process of trying to take the tape off. Unlike flag-desecration statutes, which the Court correctly notes are not at issue in this case, the Washington statute challenged here seeks to prevent personal use of the flag, not simply particular forms of abuse. The State of Washington has chosen to set the flag apart for a special purpose, and has directed that it not be turned into a common background for an
The true nature of the State's interest in this case is not only one of preserving "the physical integrity of the flag,"
There was no question in Halter of physical impairment of a flag since no actual flag was even involved. And it certainly would have made no difference to the Court's discussion of the State's interest if the plaintiff in error in that case had chosen to advertise his product by decorating the flag with beer bottles fashioned from some removable substance.
The fact that the State has a valid interest in preserving the character of the flag does not mean, of course, that it can employ all conceivable means to enforce it. It certainly could not require all citizens to own the flag or compel citizens to salute one. Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943). It presumably cannot punish criticism of the flag, or the principles for which it stands, any more than it could punish criticism of this country's policies or ideas. But the statute in this case demands no such allegiance. Its operation does not depend upon whether the flag is used for communicative or noncommunicative purposes; upon whether a particular message is deemed commercial or political; upon whether the use of the flag is respectful or contemptuous; or upon whether any particular segment
FootNotes
"No person shall knowingly cast contempt upon any flag, standard, color, ensign or shield . . . by publicly mutilating, defacing, defiling, burning, or trampling upon said flag, standard, color, ensign or shield."
"The words flag, standard, color, ensign or shield, as used in this chapter, shall include any flag, standard, color, ensign or shield, or copy, picture or representation thereof, made of any substance or represented or produced thereon, and of any size, evidently purporting to be such flag, standard, color, ensign or shield of the United States or of this state, or a copy, picture or representation thereof."
Statutes of such sweep suggest problems of selective enforcement. We are, however, unable to agree with appellant's void-for-vagueness argument. The statute's application is quite mechanical, particularly when implemented with jury instructions like the ones given in this case. The law in Washington, simply put, is that nothing may be affixed to or superimposed on a United States flag or a representation thereof. Thus, if selective enforcement has occurred, it has been a result of prosecutorial discretion, not the language of the statute. Accordingly, this case is unlike Smith v. Goguen, 415 U.S. 566 (1974), where the words of the statute at issue ("publicly. . . treats contemptuously") were themselves sufficiently indefinite to prompt subjective treatment by prosecutorial authorities.
"I do not view the content of the message as relevant either to petitioner's right to express it or to the commuters' right to be free from it. Commercial advertisements may be as offensive and intrusive to captive audiences as any political message." MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, with whom MR. JUSTICE STEWART, MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL, and MR. JUSTICE POWELL joined, dissenting, stated: "There is some doubt concerning whether the `commercial speech' distinction announced in Valentine v. Chrestensen, 316 U.S. 52 (1942), retains continuing validity," referring to MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS' concurring opinion in Cammarano v. United States, 358 U.S. 498, 514 (1959). The dissent further stated: "Once a public forum for communication has been established, both free speech and equal protection principles prohibit discrimination based solely upon subject matter or content." (Emphasis in original.)
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