## Facts

- Walter Chaplinsky, a Jehovah’s Witness, distributed literature on a public sidewalk in Rochester, New Hampshire, and denounced organized religion.
- After complaints and a growing crowd, police escorted Chaplinsky toward the station.
- During the encounter, Chaplinsky addressed the town marshal with epithets including “damned racketeer” and “damned Fascist,” directed face-to-face in a public place.
- Chaplinsky was charged under a New Hampshire law barring “offensive, derisive or annoying” words or names in public, with intent to “deride, offend or annoy,” as construed by the state high court to cover only words tending to provoke violence and cause a breach of the peace.

## Issues

1. Whether the statute, as construed and applied, violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments by unreasonably restraining freedom of speech, press, or worship.
2. Whether the statute, as construed, was unconstitutionally vague under due process.
3. Whether excluding evidence of provocation and evidence concerning the truth or falsity of the utterances raised a federal constitutional problem.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the conviction.
- Accepting the state court’s narrowing construction, the Court held the statute regulated only words directly tending to provoke violence and cause a breach of the peace.
- The Court classified Chaplinsky’s epithets as “fighting words” likely to provoke an average person to retaliation, and therefore subject to punishment consistent with the First Amendment.
- The Court held the statute, as construed, was sufficiently definite to satisfy due process.
- The Court found no constitutional error in excluding evidence of provocation or the truth or falsity of the charged utterances.

## Legal Principles

- The First Amendment does not protect certain narrowly limited categories of speech, including “insulting or ‘fighting’ words” that by their utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.
- A statute directed at preventing immediate violence may constitutionally punish face-to-face personal epithets likely to provoke retaliation, without suppressing protected expression of ideas.
- When a state’s highest court supplies a narrowing construction that confines a statute to clearly defined, breach-of-peace-provoking speech, the statute may satisfy due process definiteness requirements.
- In a prosecution limited to the likely immediate effect of personally abusive words, excluding evidence of provocation and excluding evidence about the statements’ truth or falsity does not, by itself, present a federal constitutional violation.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld Chaplinsky’s conviction because the state law, narrowly construed to reach only speech likely to provoke immediate violence, permissibly punished “fighting words” and was not unconstitutionally vague under the Fourteenth Amendment.


Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942)