NCJ Number
153909
Journal
Connecticut Law Review Volume: 25 Issue: 2 Dated: (Winter 1993) Pages: 299-319
Date Published
1993
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This paper considers two court decisions -- R.A.V. v. City of St Paul (U.S. Supreme Court, 1992) and State v. Mitchell (Wisconsin Supreme Court, 1992) -- and their implications for legislation that aims to sanction bias-related speech and violent behavior.
Abstract
A narrowly divided U.S. Supreme Court has apparently ruled this term in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul that States and localities may not punish hate speech directed at racial or religious minorities or women, even when the utterances are "fighting words." A Wisconsin Supreme Court decision, State v. Mitchell, has held that added penalties for bias-related violent crimes likewise run afoul of the first amendment. Until the decision in R.A.V., "fighting words," defined as words "plainly tending to excite the addressee to a breach of the peace," had long been deemed beyond the protection of the first amendment. The "fighting words" doctrine, like most rules in the free speech area, has undergone some fine tuning, but until R.A.V. it was a well-recognized category of speech, along with obscenity, defamation, and criminal incitement, subject to State regulation and outside the first amendment. "Mitchell" illustrates the mischief R.A.V. will engender unless contained. In the real world, Americans are being hurt by slurs based on race, gender, and national origin, as well as the violence and harassment into which they easily slide. When divisive or anger-inducing speech is protected, as in lectures and debate, the first amendment properly bars State interference. When the words are fighting words and not within the first amendment's protection, the State should be able to regulate them without being held to some artificial neutrality between bigot and victim. 138 footnotes