Street v. New York

Street v. New York
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 21, 1968 Decided April 21, 1969
Full case name	Sidney Street v. State of New York
Citations	394 U.S. 576 (more) 89 S. Ct. 1354; 22 L. Ed. 2d 572; 1969 U.S. LEXIS 3189
Case history
Prior	Conviction in Criminal Court of New York, affirmed without opinion by Appellate Term, Second Department; affirmed again, 20 N.Y.2d 231, 229 N.E.2d 187 (1967); probable jurisdiction noted, 392 U.S. 923 (1968).
Subsequent	On remand at 24 N.Y.2d 1026, 250 N.E.2d 250 (1969).
Holding
To punish the defendant for his words criticizing the American flag would violate the First Amendment. Because the conviction was potentially based in part on the defendant's words, the conviction was reversed, and the case remanded to the state courts for further proceedings.
Court membership
Chief Justice Earl Warren Associate Justices Hugo Black · William O. Douglas John M. Harlan II · William J. Brennan Jr. Potter Stewart · Byron White Abe Fortas · Thurgood Marshall
Case opinions
Majority	Harlan, joined by Douglas, Brennan, Stewart, Marshall
Dissent	Warren
Dissent	Black
Dissent	White
Dissent	Fortas
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. I; U.S. Const. amend. XIV

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Street v. New York

Street v. New York, 394 U.S. 576 (1969), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the 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).