Are public facilities required to adhere to the Flag Code as defined in Title 4, Chapter 1 of the United States Code? I'm curious as to whether public facilities in the United States (i.e. federal, state, county, and/or municipal grounds) are required, by law, to adhere to the Flag Code as defined in Title 4, Chapter 1 of the United States Code. It is my understanding that the Supreme Court has upheld the unconstitutionality of enforcing the Flag Code on private citizens or organizations as it conflicts with their First Amendment rights (United States v. Eichman), but are public facilities such as a public schools or police stations required to adhere to the flag code? Are those acting in an official capacity in those facilities legally required to adhere to the Flag Code as they are operating a public facility? For example, Section 6, Clause g states, "The flag should be displayed during school days in or near every schoolhouse." If a school were to fail to display the flag, would that be considered a crime? Who would be responsible if it were a crime?
Federal facilities are required to adhere to the flag code. Non-federal governmental entities are not, and the explanation is more complicated. In theory, the federal government should have very little power over the decision-making of state governments -- this is a principle of federalism and is expressly stated in the 10th Amendment. In practice, however, the federal government has a lot of power over state governments. Congress can condition the allotment of federal monies to states, i.e. block grants, as long as such a condition meets the five point test spelled out in South Dakota v. Dole. The most stringent of these points is that the condition "must not be coercive" so as to apply "irresistible pressure", creating a false choice where accepting money is the only realistic option (thus complying with the conditions). I couldn't find a clause within USC Title 4, Chapter 1 for withholding funds from states in the event of noncompliance, similar to one that exists for the national drinking age. Therefore states (state, county, municipal all treated as an extension of state power under the US Constitution) are not required to to adhere to the flag code. Theoretically, Congress could pass a new law that would condition the receipt of some federal funds on the states' compliance with the flag code. But the new low could face additional hurdles, since the condition must be "directly related to one of the main purposes for which... [the funds] are expended" (quoting from Dole). This restriction is the reason why states were given the right to opt out of the Obamacare medicare expansion without losing their pre-existing Medicaid funding (567 U. S. ____ (2012) at 51), and is also the reason why the recent "Sanctuary Cities Ban" is having legal trouble. It would be unlikely that any law like this would hold up. It's also worth noting that most states have their own flag law, which makes this whole discussion of the federal law's effect on state facilities. As you noted, since US v. Eichman, all criminal penalties for violating any flag code have been unenforceable against individuals. My best guess is that the proper method of enforcement in federal buildings is simply administrative action, since violating the code can provide cause for firing federal employees under Chapter 75 of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978.
I have bad news. California's vandalism law prohibits maliciously: defacing property with graffiti defacing property with inscribed material damaging property destroying property Chalking the sidewalk probably doesn't sound very malicious, but maliciousness includes “an intent to do a wrongful act, established either by proof or presumption of law.” So the questions is whether you intended to do a wrongful act -- meaning that you intended to do the act, which happens to be wrongful, not that you intended to act wrongfully. So unless you drew on the sidewalk accidentally, the malicious-intent requirement isn't going to help you. So then you have to ask if your conduct is described by the statute. In Mackinney v. Nielsen, the Ninth Circuit said that sidewalk chalking did not violate the law, but California has since amended the law to add the "deface with graffiti" language. I haven't seen any chalk cases since then, but another case, In re Nicholas Y., from the Second District, dealt with someone who used a marker on a window. He argued that it could be easily erased, but the court said it was still vandalism because: it "mars the surface with graffiti which must be removed in order to restore the original condition" the definition of "deface" "does not incorporate an element of permanence" "marring of the surface is no less a defacement because it is more easily removed." Given that language, I'd argue that the vandalism statute includes sidewalk chalking. But one important element here is that most sidewalks are owned or controlled by the government, so any effort to restrict "expressive conduct such as writing with chalk" (Guilliford v. Pierce County) expressive activity" there must comply with the First Amendment. The government has varying degrees of latitude on the restrictions it can impose, depending on the character of the space involved. So in a courtroom, whose function is incompatible with free-wheeling public debate, a judge can set quite a few rules about how people may speak. But sidewalks are considered a "public forum," where the government's ability to regulate speech is a lot more limited. So how does the First Amendment apply? There's a D.C. Circuit case (Mahoney v. Doe) dealing with abortion protesters who wanted to use chalk on the streets and sidewalks outside the White House. Police told them they would be arrested for violating D.C.'s defacement statute, so they brought a First Amendment challenge. The court upheld the law, saying that it satisfied all three prongs of the public-forum test: The law must be content neutral, meaning that it prohibits conduct without reference to what is being said. The Court said the defacement statute was content neutral because people could be prosecuted regardless of what they wrote or drew. The law must be narrowly tailored, meaning that it serves a significant governmental interest and does not restrict more speech than is necessary to achieve that goal. The Court said the defacement statute was narrowly tailored because it served the government's interest in maintaining the aesthetic appeal of the area in front of the White House and didn't restrict any speech that does not deface public property. The law must leave open ample alternatives for communication, meaning that even if you can't express yourself in the way restricted, you still have meaningful opportunities to express yourself. The Court said the defacement statute law allowed adequate alternatives for communication because the group could still congregate, march, speak, hold signs, and hand out leaflets. There's an interesting wrinkle there in terms of whether the interest in aesthetics is heightened because we're talking about the White House, but generally speaking, aesthetic concerns can still justify speech restrictions. So the bad news is that unchaining your inner six-year-old may subject you to criminal liability. That leaves the question of whether you want to unleash your inner teenager and do it anyway. This could help put you in a frame of mind for making the decision.
maryland I think not In Maryland (a typical state on such issues) the relevant law is Section 9-101 - Perjury, which reads in pertinent part: a) Prohibited.- A person may not willfully and falsely make an oath or affirmation as to a material fact: (1) if the false swearing is perjury at common law; (2) in an affidavit required by any state, federal, or local law; (3) in an affidavit made to induce a court or officer to pass an account or claim; (4) in an affidavit required by any state, federal, or local government or governmental official with legal authority to require the issuance of an affidavit; or (5) in an affidavit or affirmation made under the Maryland Rules. A statement of intended future conduct is probably not a &quot;fact&quot; as required by this section. Classic perjury, that is making a false statement during testimony in an actual court session is covered by subsection (a)(1), which makes it relevant what was considered perjury at common law. In Volume 2 of A Treatise on the Criminal Law of the United States By Francis Wharton (Kay and brother, 1874) section 2226 says: At Common law perjury cannot be committed in an official oath, as far as such oath touches future conduct. On page 321 of The Law and Higher Education: a Casebook by John Seiler Brubacher (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1971) appears the phrase: ... a promise of future conduct, the breach of which would not support a conviction for perjury This was in reference to the 1931 US law mandating a loyalty oath, and why such a law violates due process. Also relevant is the article &quot;When Is a False Statement Perjury?&quot; by the MoloLamken law firm. This discusses the federal perjury lws: 18 U.S.C. §1621 and 18 U.S.C. §1623. There is no mention of false sttements about future conduct.
The main impediment is identifying exactly what "a law" is. When people talk (casually) about "the law", that can refer to statutes enacted by Congress, regulations set forth by administrative agencies to articulate specifics of those statutes, and Supreme Court rulings as to what "the law" is or says. The canonical example of "a law" is a statute passed by Congress. Under that understanding, you could point to the US Code and ask the question "how many", though you may have to also subtract things ruled unconstitutional by SCOTUS (they aren't removed from The Code, unless actually repealed by Congress). In the US code, there isn't an enumerable element "a law". Title 17 pertains to copyright; Title 18 pertains to crime. There isn't just one law about crime and one law about copyright. There are 12 chapters in Title 17; Chapter 1 has a couple dozen sections. Sections can get fairly minutely subdivided: there is no clear point at which you can say "this is one law, this is another". However, it is legally irrelevant how many there are – unless Congress passes a law that counts likes ("must repeal two laws for every new one passed"). The immediate product of congressional enactments is the US Code; the immediate product of administrative rule-making is the Code of Federal Regulations. Supreme Court decisions are also published in United States Reports, though I don't if there is an exhaustive online compendium of all rulings. Also note that things passed by Congress are "Laws" (some public, some private). Things in the US Code originate in such acts of Congree, but not every act of Congress affects the US Code, for example PL 118-81. When new subject matter is first introduced it is usually entirely contained in the corresponding law passed, but subsequently it can be amended, and an amendment to copyright law could be snuck into a bill generally about terrorism. I think that the stuff in the US Code corresponds to what most people think "a law" is, but it's better to look at the US Code as a single thing – "the law" – rather than try to count individual laws. If you are armed with access to all of these resources, you would also need to know where to find relevant law. Once you find all of the applicable text, you simply apply general legal principles to reach a conclusion, then hire a lawyer to determine where you went wrong, then hire another lawyer to determine where he went wrong. At least in difficult cases. Fortunately, although enacted bills often glue stuff together in crazy ways, when it is assembled into the US Code, it is organized more sensibly. Still, not all crimes are defined in title 18 (there 1re 52 other titles to search to find crimes).
Can you be trespassing on public property for no reason at all? Yes. When the government owns property, it can direct you to leave for any reason (even a legally invalid reason), and you are trespassing if you don't leave. When you are present on land you don't own with permission, but without a lease, you have a &quot;license&quot; to be there which is a contract-like right and is not a property right. A license doesn't give you the right to stay on the property over the objections of the owner or an agent of the owner. You might be able to receive money damages for an improper termination of your license to be present at the property (e.g. if you are told for no reason to leave a movie after paying for a ticket), but you don't have the right to simply stay there. If you stay there over the objections of the owner or the owner's agent, you are trespassing. The law applicable to government property owners and private property owners is basically the same in this regard. Realistically, on government property, furthermore, the standard by which the government employee may legally terminate your license to be there and exclude you from the property is low. Basically, it must merely not violate any constitutional right you may have, and you do not have a constitutional right to be present on government owned property, except in a quite narrow subset of cases (e.g. the &quot;town square&quot;). More exactly, you do not have a right to be on government property per se, but you can't be excluded from it for a constitutionally impermissible reason. The government gets to decide what parts of property it owns are available to the general public and for what content-neutral purposes. Thus, the right to be present on government owned &quot;public&quot; property (which doesn't include private areas of government owned property) can be subjected to reasonable and content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions. For example, a town could legally decide that the town square is closed from midnight to eight a.m. every day. The quoted material from the case Chicago v. Morales, 527 U.S. 41, 53-54 (1999) cited in the answer by bdb484 is narrower than a plain reading out of context would suggest. In that quotation, the term &quot;public place&quot; is being used in a sense much more restrictive than in the broader sense of property that is merely government owned. It is referring to places where the government has expressly or implicitly allowed members of the general public to be present on land that it owns (as opposed, for example, to a government office area of a building, or a maintenance facility in a government owned park, or a conservation area in a government owned park). This narrow sense of the word resolves what would otherwise seem to be a contradiction in the law. But, the government has the authority to make something that once was a public place into a non-public place going forward. For example, historically, the Civic Center park in front of the capitol in Denver, Colorado has been a public place. But, the government can and did close it off to the public for many months for maintenance and out of public health concerns when heavy use of it by homeless people and drug dealers caused the premises to be seriously damaged and created a public health risk from it being used to dispose of dirty, used, injection-drug syringes, and for people to defecate. A Hypothetical Suppose that Chris is the sole librarian in one of the towns of College Corner, which is on the Ohio-Indiana border, which are in different time zones. In that capacity, Chris has the authority to set library policies including the hours of the library and the rules for its use without the approval of anyone else. Chris has a hot date at 5:30 p.m. But, at lunch time, Chris learned that the hot date was at 5:30 p.m. in Ohio and not an hour later at 5:30 p.m. in Indiana, but the library's official closing time is 5 p.m. in Indiana, because Ohio was observing daylight savings time, but Indian was not, at the time when this happened. Chris, as the sole government official in charge of the library, decides to close the library before its posted closing time at 4:00 p.m. Indiana time (5 p.m. Ohio time) in order to be able to make it to the hot date. Chris quietly asks everyone left in the library to leave at 4 p.m. Indiana time, and everyone but you does. But you, who are homeless, really want to stay the extra hour before getting out in the cold and finding a bridge to sleep under, so you refuse to leave saying that the library is still open until 5 p.m. Indiana time, as stated in its posted hours. Chris orders you to leave and warns you that he is calling the police to remove you if you don't do so voluntarily. The police arrive and restate the complaint of Chris. The police arrest you for trespassing and you are charged with this crime in the appropriate court by the appropriate prosecuting attorney. You had done nothing wrong whatsoever prior to being asked to leave and refusing to do so. But, Chris has not violated your constitutional rights by ordering you removed for some unconstitutional reason. Chris then goes on the hot date; it is love at first sight, and Chris gets married the next week. As an apology for putting you out for the sole convenience of Chris, Chris invites you to the wedding. Do you have a valid defense to the criminal trespassing charge on the grounds that the librarian's actions were unconstitutional? No. You might have a &quot;good faith claim of right&quot; defense, however, to the criminal charges. Do you have a valid claim for money damages for a violation of your constitutional rights? No. Indeed, ordering you removed for &quot;no reason&quot; that has anything to do with your conduct, as in this case, is probably more likely to be legal and constitutional, than having you removed for &quot;some reason&quot; other than just &quot;because I the librarian say so&quot; that doesn't involve wrongdoing on your part. A Variation In The Hypothetical If instead, your were being ordered to leave the library because you were wearing an National Rifle Association cap (and the library didn't prohibit wearing caps), this affirmative reason, which is contrary to the First Amendment freedom of expression, would be a violation of your constitutional rights, which would definitely be a basis for a civil lawsuit against the librarian and police involved in you being arrested. I don't know the details of constitutional defenses in criminal law well enough to know if the violation of your constitutional rights would be a valid defense to the criminal trespassing charge (or a failure to obey a police officer's order to leave charge) resulting from you failing to leave in that circumstance, and I can see legitimate arguments both ways. This is also a situation where the non-constitutional claim of right defense to a trespassing charge would be a strong one.
Constitution of the USA, Article IV, Section 1: Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof. and the Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8, clause 3): [The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes; SCOTUS has found the former to mean that states that do not allow same-sex marriages in their laws must recognize same-sex marriages registered by other states - Obergefell v. Hodges. Maybe one could argue that driver licenses are not equivalent among states, but I would expect judges (SCOTUS) to require a very well reasoned explanation. For example, maybe Alaska could refuse to recognize licenses from Florida because Florida drivers do not know how to cope with snowed roads. But even in that case Alaska probably would need to produce data showing that these measures aim to serve the public interest (avoid accidents) and that there are no other ways of getting the same result. OTOH the Commerce Clause has been successfully used to avoid states mandating racial segregation of travellers, so it is quite reasonable to see it being used to prevent a state from trying to limit the mobility of citizens from other states (again, in the supposition that the state restricting it cannot show a compelling reason to do so). AFAIK, only the Federal Government could invoke the Commerce Clause; I would expect a lot more people (in your example, the PA government or maybe even any PA driver) would have standing.
Let's look at the Ur-example of a free-speech law, and the most wide-ranging, the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. It says (my emphasis): Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. This limitation applies only to the government. Indeed, it has been argued that this limitation only applies to the legislative branch of government and not to the executive (except when exercising legislatively delegated power) or judicial branches. Certainly, the courts have held that it is within their power to issue "gag" restraining orders. Notwithstanding, it imposes no restrictions on how non-government actors can limit your free speech. The owner of a shopping centre can require you not to evangelise, the owner of a stadium can require you not to use offensive language and the owner of a social media platform can restrict your speech in any way they wish. You have a right to talk - they have a right not to give you a platform.
The state has wide discretion on what to require that a school teach to children, particularly in the K-12 grade range. There is little case law where a parent or private school has challenged such requirements. However, for a state to forbid that certain things be taught would probably run into a first amendment problem, because the school has free speech rights. In addition, if the school is a religious one, forbidding teaching its dogmas and views might also impact the free exercise clause. Note that a state need not permit homeschooling at all, and some states do not. When a state requires that a school teach something that it disagrees with, it can often follow a line such as &quot;Many people think X {Standard state supported concept} but we believe Y instead. Then it has taught X, but not endorsed it. Some religious schools have handles the teaching of evolution in this sort of way. If a state mandated teaching matters of opinion as fact, such as &quot;CARTER WAS THE MOST HANDSOME president EVER&quot; there might well be a challenge, and I am not at all sure how it would be resolved.