Recently a person has been jailed for 16 years for burning a flag which represents a group of people meeting certain conditions in United States. This was deemed as discrimination and a hate crime if I understood correctly. But we also see a lot of times people burning american flags and holding foreign countries flags in United States (which supposedly represents americans) and we hear this is protected free speech. So I wondered why one is protected and the othe isnt, and I've heard about protected classes. According to this,
Protected classes under Anti-discrimination laws
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is one anti-discrimination law that protects certain groups of people. Under this act, and other federal anti-discrimination laws (like the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act), a person may not be discriminated against based on certain characteristics:
- Age;
- Race;
- National Origin;
- Religious Beliefs;
- Gender ;
- Disability;
- Pregnancy;
- Veteran Status
There one of the items says "national origin". If an american is attacked or discriminated by his status as american, is he protected by anti discrimination laws because "national origin" is a protected class? Or if not why not?