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Mississippi · Snapshot Mississippi Code Release 78 (2020-07), retrieved 2026-09-17

Miss. Code Ann. § 97-7-39: Flags; desecration of national or state flag prohibited.

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Where this section sits in the code
  1. Title 97. Crimes
  2. Chapter 7. Crimes Against Sovereignty or Administration of Government

Any person who, in any manner, for exhibition or display, shall place or cause to be placed any word, figure, mark, picture, design, drawing, or any advertisement of any nature, upon any flag, standard, color or ensign of the United States or state flag of the State of Mississippi, or ensign or Confederate flag, or shall expose or cause to be exposed to public view any such flag, standard, color or ensign, upon which shall be attached, appended, affixed or annexed any word, figure, mark, picture, design or drawing, or any advertisement of any nature, or who shall expose to public view, manufacture, sell, expose for sale, give away or have in possession for sale or to give away, or for use for any purpose, any article or substance, being an article of merchandise, or a receptacle of merchandise, or article or things for carrying or transporting merchandise upon which, shall have been printed, painted, attached or otherwise placed, a representation of any such flag, standard, color or ensign, to advertise, call attention to, decorate, mark or distinguish the article or substance, on which so placed, or who shall publicly mutilate, deface, defile or defy, trample upon or cast contempt, either by word or act, upon any such flag, standard, color or ensign, with the intent to desecrate or dishonor such, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be punished by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars ($1,000.00), or by imprisonment for not more than thirty (30) days, or both, in the discretion of the court; shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be punished by a fine not exceeding one hundred dollars ($100.00) or by imprisonment for not more than thirty (30) days, or both, in the discretion of the court; and shall also forfeit a penalty in the discretion of the court, of not more than fifty dollars ($50.00) for each such offense, to be recovered with costs in a civil action or suit, in any court having jurisdiction, and such action or suit may be brought by and in the name of any citizen of this state. Such penalty when collected, less the reasonable cost and expense of action or suit, shall be paid into the treasury of this state. Two (2) or more penalties may be sued for and recovered in the same action or suit. The words “flag,” “standard,” “color,” or “ensign,” as used in this section, shall include any flag, standard, color, ensign or any picture or representation of either thereof, made of any substance, or represented on any substance, and of any size, evidently purporting to be, either of said flag, standard, color or ensign of the United States of America or a picture or a representation of either thereof, upon which shall be shown the colors, the stars, and the stripes, in any number of either thereof, or by which the person seeing the same, without deliberation, may believe the same to represent the flag, colors, standard or ensign of the United States of America or of the State of Mississippi or Confederate flag.

Collected 2026-10-27T05:55:07Z. Source file · JSON

Compilation CC BY 4.0, Open US Law (Vaquill AI). GroundRules uses only the releases published under CC BY 4.0: from v2026.09 the compilation is licensed CC BY-NC 4.0, and GroundRules does not use those releases. Each affected row names its release in its vintage label. GroundRules parsed and filtered the compilation to retain enacted text. Source · License

Mississippi electronic product files were republished by Public.Resource.Org under a public-domain dedication. GroundRules uses enacted text from Release 78 only as a labeled supplement to the newer Open US Law rows. Source

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