Ken White, unlike most of the ratchet-jawing amateurs who seem to think that they know that players not standing for the anthem are breaking the law, actually knows a bit about the law. He is a lawyer specializing in First Amendment litigation.
This is his concise explanation for why Roy Moore is talking deliberately deceitful bullshit, extracted from this Twitter thread,
Here, very briefly, is why Roy Moore is wrong — almost certainly dishonestly wrong — in saying taking the knee is “against the law”
Moore said this as part of a deeply disingenuous paean to the rule of law
The law he’s talking about is 36 USC 3001, which sets forth anthem etiquette
Two points. First, the statute uses “should” throughout. Under common rules of statutory construction, that makes it permissive.
Mandatory statutes use words like “must.” No factors here suggest that “should” is to be read, unusually, as mandatory.
Second, it’s been black-letter constitutional law for 74 years that the state cannot compel patriotic displays.
In other words, even if the statute purported to be mandatory, it would be unconstitutional as applied to civilians.
(The conduct of uniformed military officers is a different question, naturally.)
Moore is many things, but ignorant isn’t one of them. He’s dishonest, and a traitor to the most central concepts of American liberty.
This concludes today’s installment of “Things I Once Assumed Were Obvious And Widely Agreed Upon.”
You cam argue that the players are disrepecting the Anthem or the flag (one is a tune, the other is a piece of cloth) but you cannot sustainably argue that they are breaking the law.
This, by the way, is why Roger Goodell, in his public statement about player conduct, said “players should stand for the anthem”. As a lawyer, he knows that forcing them to stand for anthem is flat-out illegal, as ruled multiple times by SCOTUS.