Supreme Court to Hear Appeal on Cross-Burning Law 
Tue May 28,10:36 AM ET  2002

By James Vicini 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) said on Tuesday it would review a ruling that struck down a Virginia law that banned cross burning because the state's top court said it violated constitutional free-speech guarantees. 

The justices agreed to hear Virginia's appeal defending the state law, adopted 50 years ago to combat bigotry and racism amid a spate of cross burnings by the Ku Klux Klan. 

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled in November that the law violated the First Amendment because it was too broad and it prohibited otherwise permitted speech based solely on its content. 

The ruling overturned the convictions of a Ku Klux Klan leader and two other men who were charged in two cross-burning incidents in 1998. 

The ruling cited a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1992 that declared unconstitutional a "hate crime" law adopted by St. Paul, Minnesota, that banned racially offensive displays of certain symbols, such as a burning cross or a Nazi swastika. 

In one of the 1998 incidents, Richard Elliott and Jonathan O'Mara were convicted of attempted cross burning after they put a cross in the yard of a black neighbor in Virginia Beach and tried to set it on fire. They were each sentenced to 90 days in jail. 

The other incident involved Barry Black, the organizer of a Ku Klux Klan rally in Carroll County. A cross was burned as part of the rally that took place on private property with the owner's permission. Black was fined $2,500. 

The Virginia law declared it illegal to burn a cross on private or public property with the intent of intimidating someone. 

Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore argued in the Supreme Court appeal that the law passed constitutional muster. He said it covered all kinds of intimidation and was not limited to any racial, religious or other content-focused category. 

"This case involves two important freedoms: freedom of speech and freedom from fear," he said. 

Since the 1992 Supreme Court ruling, cross-burning laws in South Carolina, Maryland and New Jersey have been struck down while laws in Florida, Washington and California have been upheld, Kilgore said, urging the Supreme Court to resolve the conflict. 

Arizona, California, Georgia, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, Oklahoma, Utah and Washington supported the appeal. "States have compelling interests in addressing the real problems arising from bias-motivated intimidation," they said. 

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case and then issue its decision during its upcoming term that begins in October.