Street v. New York

Case Date: 07/22/1969

In Street v. New York, 394 U.S. 576 (1969), the United States Supreme Court held that a New York state law making it a crime "publicly [to] mutilate, deface, defile, or defy, trample upon, or cast contempt upon either by words or act [any flag of the United States]"[1] was, in part, unconstitutional because it prohibited speech against the flag. The Court left for a later day the question of whether it is constitutional or unconstitutional to prohibit, without reference to the utterance of words, the burning of the flag (see Texas v. Johnson and United States v. Eichman).