The Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a man under a New Hampshire statute that prohibited using offensive language in public. The Court ruled that certain categories of speech like fighting words that incite violence are not protected by the First Amendment. It determined that the statute was narrowly tailored to restrict speech like face-to-face insults that would provoke a breach of peace. While freedom of speech is important, it is not absolute and governments can regulate classes of speech like fighting words that threaten public order and safety.
The Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a man under a New Hampshire statute that prohibited using offensive language in public. The Court ruled that certain categories of speech like fighting words that incite violence are not protected by the First Amendment. It determined that the statute was narrowly tailored to restrict speech like face-to-face insults that would provoke a breach of peace. While freedom of speech is important, it is not absolute and governments can regulate classes of speech like fighting words that threaten public order and safety.
Original Title
3. Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942)
The Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a man under a New Hampshire statute that prohibited using offensive language in public. The Court ruled that certain categories of speech like fighting words that incite violence are not protected by the First Amendment. It determined that the statute was narrowly tailored to restrict speech like face-to-face insults that would provoke a breach of peace. While freedom of speech is important, it is not absolute and governments can regulate classes of speech like fighting words that threaten public order and safety.
The Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a man under a New Hampshire statute that prohibited using offensive language in public. The Court ruled that certain categories of speech like fighting words that incite violence are not protected by the First Amendment. It determined that the statute was narrowly tailored to restrict speech like face-to-face insults that would provoke a breach of peace. While freedom of speech is important, it is not absolute and governments can regulate classes of speech like fighting words that threaten public order and safety.
Allowing the broadest scope to the language and purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment, it is well understood that the right of free speech is not absolute at all times and under all circumstances. There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or fighting words -- those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. Such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality. Resort to epithets or personal abuse is not in any proper sense communication of information or opinion safeguarded by the Constitution, and its punishment as a criminal act would raise no question under that instrument.
FACTS:
Appellant was convicted by the lower court under a New Hampshire statute for using offensive language towards another person in public. Appellant contended that the statute was invalid under the Constitution because it placed an unreasonable restraint on freedom of speech and because it was vague and indefinite. Appellant sought review from a judgment of the Supreme Court of New Hampshire affirming appellant's conviction under a state law, which prohibited the use of offensive or annoying words when addressing another individual in a public place. The court affirmed appellant's conviction.
ISSUE:
Does the contested statute place an unreasonable restraint on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of worship, and because it was vague and indefinite? ANSWER:
No.
CONCLUSION:
The court noted that there were certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which had never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem, such as "fighting" words. The challenged statute, on its face and as applied, did not contravene the Fourteenth Amendment, as it did no more than prohibit the face-to-face words plainly likely to cause a breach of the peace by the addressee. The lower court declared that the statute's purpose was to preserve public peace, and in appellant's case, the forbidden words were those that had a direct tendency to cause acts of violence. Furthermore, the word "offensive" was not defined in terms of what a particular addressee thought, it was defined as what reasonable men of common intelligence understood as words likely to cause an average addressee to fight. The court held that the statute was narrowly drawn and limited to define and punish specific conduct lying within the domain of the state power.
