No more cross burning

last updated 8 January 2015

Washington, D.C.

The Supreme Court ruled this week that states can punish Ku Klux Klansmen for setting crosses on fire. Cross burning, the court ruled in a 6-3 vote, is not a form of speech protected by the First Amendment. When the case was argued in December, Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s only black judge, heatedly said that cross burning was a tool of intimidation that the Ku Klux Klan and other white-supremacy groups had used on African-Americans in a century-long “reign of terror.” Thomas said the First Amendment guarantee of free speech did not apply to anyone who tried to “terrorize and intimidate to make their point.” The court’s ruling upholds a Virginia law banning cross burning, which a lower court had ruled was a violation of free-speech guarantees.