Johnson Vs Texas

During the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas, respondent Gregory Lee Johnson, a member of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade (youth wing of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA), participated in a political demonstration to protest the policies of the Reagan administration and some Dallas-based corporations. After a march through the city streets, Johnson burned an American flag while protesters chanted. No one was physically injured or threatened with injury, although several witnesses were seriously offended by the flag burning.

Gregory Johnson outside the 1984 Republican National ConventionJohnson was convicted of desecrating a venerated object in violation of a Texas statute and was sentenced in the Dallas County Criminal Court to one year in prison and a fine of $2,000. The intermediate Texas appellate court affirmed the conviction, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (the final court of appeals for criminal cases in Texas) reversed the conviction. The court held that the First Amendment prevented the state from punishing Johnson for burning the flag in those circumstances. The court first found that Johnson's burning of the flag was expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment. The court concluded that Texas could not criminally sanction flag desecration in order to preserve the flag as a symbol of national unity. It also held that the statute did not meet the state's goal of preventing breaches of the peace, since it was not drawn narrowly enough to encompass only those flag burnings that would likely result in a serious disturbance, and since the flag burning in this case did not threaten such a reaction. Further, it stressed that another Texas statute prohibited breaches of the peace and could be used to prevent disturbances without punishing this flag desecration.

Because the Court of Criminal Appeals reversed Johnson's conviction on the grounds that the flag burning statute was unconstitutional as applied to him, the state court did not address Johnson's argument that the statute was, on its face, unconstitutionally vague and overbroad. As a result, the Supreme court granted certiorari.