The crest consists of a gold latin cross with white wings outlined in blue protruding on either side.

She brought the idea to the attention of mayor Alexander Penn Wooldridge, who organized a committee of 38 people to explore the idea,[4] and soon created a flag design competition, declaring:[5] By authority of the Mayor of the City of Austin, a committee, appointed by him, hereby institutes a competition for the purpose of securing a design for the flag for the City of Austin.

The following suggestions, which in a measure embody the most typical characteristics of the city, have been made and may be used at the discretion of the designer[:] The natural beauty of Austin, the City of the Violet Crown, the lake and dam, the Capital of the State, the dome of the capitol, the seal of the city, an educational center, its industries, the sentiment of the past history, the derivation of the name-from Stephen F. Austin, an expression of the ideals of Stephen F. Austin in symbolic form, the use of the coat of arms of Stephen F. Austin.The contest offered $50 to the first place design and $25 to the runner-up.

Out of these 130, the 10-person committee selected the design of Ray Frederick Coyle, an artist[6] from San Francisco, as the first-place winner.

The committee also added the wording "CITY OF AUSTIN" in block letters below the shield and the color blue to the lineage of the wings.

At some point, the original flag was placed in a desk drawer in the city clerk's office and was eventually discovered by an employee in 1975.

It is a rectangular variant of a square auxiliary naval flag, consisting of a blue bar with a white star in the middle.

As the conference took place in the capitol building, it conveys the importance of Austin as the state's capital city.

Murray claimed that the flag violated the First Amendment, specifically the separation of church and state, due to the depiction of the cross on the shield.

Prior to this lawsuit, Zion, Illinois was brought to court by the same group for the same reason and was forced to change its seal, as it was found that it had religious intent.

[11] A federal judge decided that as the cross was used in Austin's coat of arms it did not endorse or advance Christianity, but instead showcased historical validity, meaning it followed the first amendment.

One redesign was posted by Michael Kriegshauser to the design website Medium in 2015, which featured a diagonal strip that separated the flag into two colors, with blue on the left and red on the right, with a white five-pointed star in the canton.

[14] KXAN-TV published a YouTube video featuring the design, along with another proposal from University of Texas student Alec Rios, who took the blue triangle and stripes from the seal and flipped it horizontally, covering the whole height and width of the flag.