JAMIE ROSS V. UNITED STATES Justice ___

Justice _____ delivered the opinion of the Court.

Jamie Ross was arrested and convicted in Federal District Court of violating sec. 3 of the National Registration and Identification Act (NRIA). During the course of a rally in East Lansing, Michigan, she criticized NRIA as violating personal rights of privacy and called upon others to follow her example by burning their NRI registration card. She then burned her card.

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeal upheld her conviction for destroying her card, but struck down as unconstitutional under the First Amendment's ban on laws abridging free speech the provision of sec. 3 which criminalized encouraging others to destroy their cards.

This Court must decide two issues. First, did the provision of sec. 3 of NRIA under which Ms. Ross was convicted for what she said at the rally violate the First Amendment? This Court holds that it did for the following reasons:

1. Expressions of personal opinion on public issues, such as those Ms. Ross expressed, lie at the heart of our republican system of government. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said in his classic dissent in Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616 (1919), "the best test of truth is the power of thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market" (p. 216 Materials).

2. Ever since Justice Harlan Stone's fourth footnote in the 1938 Carolene Products case, this Court has adjudged the constitutionality of laws restricting

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sons seeking to obtain federal or federally-funded benefits. In other words, sec. 3 is constitutionally overbroad. Secondly, the Court must decide whether Ms. Ross's 'symbolic conduct' in burning her NRI card amounted to symbolic expression protected by the First Amendment and, if so, whether sec. 3 violated her rights thereunder. The Court holds that the statute does violate her constitutional rights, even though this presents very close questions. Symbolic speech is the communication of messages "by means other than spoken words or print" (Epstein & Walker 243). A number of cases, such as Stromberg v. California (1931) (the raising of a red banner in protest), Thornhill v. Alabama (1940) (picketing) and Tinker v. Des Moines, 393 U.S. 503 (1969) (display of armbands in school to protest the Vietnam War) established the principle that "symbolic acts can qualify as speech" (Epstein & Walker 244). In a somewhat similar case, United States v. O'Brien (1968), the Court held that burning one's draft card, even though it was a symbolic act covered by the First Amendment, could nevertheless be the basis for criminal conviction. In that case, the federal government had a very strong and compelling interest in preserving its ability

Category: Government - J

JAMIE ROSS V. UNITED STATES Justice ____