## Facts

- David A. Rosenfeld, a public schoolteacher, spoke at a community meeting in a public school auditorium about racial tensions in local schools.
- The meeting was open to the public and attended by adults and teenagers, including women and children.
- In criticizing racism, Rosenfeld became emotional and repeatedly used a highly vulgar epithet while speaking to the audience.
- New Jersey charged Rosenfeld under N.J. Rev. Stat. 2A:170-29(1), which made it a disorderly-person offense to utter “loud and offensive or profane or indecent language” in a public place or a place to which the public is invited.
- Rosenfeld was convicted and fined.

## Issues

1. Whether the First and Fourteenth Amendments permit a conviction for public use of profanity under a statute criminalizing “offensive or profane or indecent language,” where the speech was not obscene, threatening, or directed as face-to-face provocation.
2. Whether the statute was unconstitutionally overbroad because it reached speech protected by the First Amendment beyond the narrow “fighting words” category.

## Decision

- The U.S. Supreme Court, in a per curiam summary disposition, vacated the judgment of conviction.
- The Court remanded the case to New Jersey for reconsideration in light of Cohen v. California and Gooding v. Wilson.
- On remand, the New Jersey courts set aside the conviction and concluded the relevant portion of the statute was unconstitutional to the extent it punished indecent language based on offending listeners’ sensibilities rather than restricting only unprotected speech.

## Legal Principles

- Profanity and vulgarity are not categorically excluded from First Amendment protection; the government may not criminalize coarse expression solely because it is offensive.
- Statutes punishing “offensive,” “profane,” or “indecent” language in public are constitutionally suspect if they are not confined to narrowly defined unprotected categories such as “fighting words.”
- Under Gooding, laws regulating abusive language must be narrowly limited to expression likely to provoke an immediate violent reaction; broader formulations risk invalidation for overbreadth.
- Cohen requires more than public exposure to an expletive to justify criminal punishment; absent obscenity, true threats, incitement, or fighting words, such expression is generally protected.

## Conclusion

The Supreme Court vacated Rosenfeld’s profanity-based conviction and directed reconsideration under Cohen and Gooding, signaling that public-order statutes cannot punish vulgar but nonthreatening speech merely because listeners are offended, unless the law is narrowly confined to unprotected speech such as fighting words.


Rosenfeld v. New Jersey, 408 U.S. 901 (1972)