It's very complicated. People have been brainwashed to believe that a Supreme Court decision which comes out the way liberals wanted it "settles" the issue for all time. It doesn't. While respect for constitutional decisions is a bedrock principle, it isn't absolute. Plenty of decisions have been overturned over the years. Given the increasing and obvious politicization of the federal courts, respect for precedent must be tempered with common sense.
The Supreme Court has screwed up few areas of the law as badly as the First Amendment. Beginning approximately with the radical Warren Court in the 1950's, we saw generations of settled law overturned on flimsy grounds based on political expediency. The civil rights movement of the 1960's and the anti-Vietnam war movement of the '70's led to a raft of dubious decisions based more on sympathy for the causes and virtue signaling than Constitutional analysis.
The flag burning cases are symbolically important. What expressive right is being exercised by burning a flag, other than treasonous contempt for the country and its history? The act is little more than an infantile tantrum, which obviously seems to appeal to progressives but carries little in the way of the sort of actual political debate the First Amendment exists to safeguard. Banning flag burning in no way infringes on protestors' right to voice their objections to government policy, etc. It merely regulates the means of expression, just as banning sound trucks at 3Am in a residential neighborhood does.
