AUSTIN — Texas’ ban on flag desecration is unconstitutional, a state court ruled Wednesday, invalidating a seldom-enforced ban that lawmakers enacted in 1989 after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down nearly identical legislation on First Amendment grounds.
This time, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals tossed the law, calling the 26-year-old misdemeanor “invalid on its face” in a challenge brought by a black man who says he angrily threw a storefront U.S. flag into the street after a run-in with a racist clerk.
