Facts
- Several white teenagers, including the juvenile known as R.A.V., allegedly assembled and burned a cross in the front yard of a Black family in St. Paul, Minnesota.
- St. Paul charged R.A.V. under a Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance making it disorderly conduct to place certain symbols or graffiti (including burning crosses and swastikas) when the actor knows it “arouses anger, alarm or resentment” based on race, color, creed, religion, or gender.
- A Minnesota juvenile court dismissed the charge, finding the ordinance overbroad and impermissibly content-based under the First Amendment.
- The Minnesota Supreme Court reinstated the ordinance by construing it to reach only “fighting words” under Chaplinsky and upheld it as narrowly tailored to a compelling public-safety interest.
- The U.S. Supreme Court granted review.
Issues
- Whether a law limited to “fighting words” may nevertheless violate the First Amendment if it selects prohibited speech by subject matter or viewpoint.
- Whether the ordinance could be sustained as a permissible regulation of unprotected speech or as narrowly tailored to prevent bias-motivated threats to public safety and order.
Decision
- The Supreme Court unanimously held the ordinance facially invalid and reversed.
- Accepting the state court’s narrowing construction, the Court held that even within “fighting words,” the government may not impose special prohibitions based on the subjects addressed (race, religion, gender, etc.).
- The ordinance was unconstitutional because it discriminated on content and effectively on viewpoint by permitting abusive expression on other topics while banning it on specified subjects.
- The city’s asserted interest in preventing bias-motivated harms could not justify a scheme that selectively suppresses disfavored ideas within a speech category.
Legal Principles
- Limited categories of unprotected speech (including fighting words) remain constrained by the First Amendment; they are regulable for their proscribable features, but not as a means to suppress disfavored messages.
- Government may not engage in content or viewpoint discrimination within an unprotected category by banning only fighting words that convey hostility on specified topics.
- Underinclusiveness in regulating unprotected speech can be permissible, but not when it reflects content-based selection that raises a realistic risk of regulating ideas.
- A government may not “license one side of a debate” by allowing insults aimed at some groups or topics while forbidding comparable insults aimed at others.
Conclusion
The Court invalidated St. Paul’s bias-motivated speech ordinance because it singled out fighting words on particular subjects and viewpoints for punishment, a form of content and viewpoint discrimination forbidden by the First Amendment even when the targeted expression falls within an otherwise unprotected category.