June 10, 2002

Supreme Court will hear cross-burning case
___By Robert Marus
___ABP Washington Bureau
___WASHINGTON (ABP)--The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that symbolic burning of the American flag is free speech protected by the Constitution. But what about burning a cross?
___The high court is about to take on that question. Justices agreed May 28 to review a ruling by Virginia's top court finding unconstitutional the state's 50-year-old ban on cross burning intended to frighten or intimidate.
___The Virginia court cited a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down a law in Minnesota that banned cross burning carried out "on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender."
___State Supreme Courts in Maryland, New Jersey and South Carolina also have struck down laws banning cross burning, saying they limit speech on the basis of its content, which violates the free-speech clause in the First Amendment.
___But other laws banning speech that intimidates, terrorizes or causes other harm have been upheld. Virginia's lawyers argue that since the state's ban doesn't make specific reference to religion or race, the 1992 ruling doesn't apply.
___Three men were convicted in two separate 1998 incidents under the Virginia law. In one, Pennsylvania Ku Klux Klansman Barry Elton Black presided over burning a 30-foot cross in a field--visible to neighbors and a state highway--in Carroll County, Va. In the other case, Richard Elliott and Jonathan O'Mara burned a cross on a part of Elliott's Virginia Beach property located 20 feet from the home of an African-American neighbor.
___The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia supported the men who were convicted under the cross-burning law. An ACLU representative told the Washington Post he considered burning a cross "an act with a message, and because it has a message it is protected under the First Amendment."
___A decision in the case, Virginia vs. Black, isn't expected before next year.
___Courts in Florida, Washington and California have upheld anti-cross-burning laws. Virginia's attorney general and attorneys general from several other states--including Georgia, Missouri, and Oklahoma--asked the Supreme Court to rectify the discrepancy between the various states.
___In the event the Supreme Court rules against Virginia, the state's legislature already has passed and signed into law a back-up provision that bans burning any object with the intent to intimidate or threaten. The ACLU has said it probably wouldn't oppose that law.

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