{"id":292,"date":"2024-10-07T04:17:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-07T04:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=292"},"modified":"2025-09-27T23:59:24","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T23:59:24","slug":"is-hate-speech-protected-by-the-first-amendment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=292","title":{"rendered":"Is “hate speech” protected by the First Amendment?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The answer is … yes! From the WSJ a few days ago. I bolded and enlarged the obvious point below in the Journal excerpt.<\/p>\n

Criticize Harris and Walz While You Still Can. One thing they haven\u2019t been able to hide is hostility to free speech.<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a curious thing that Vice President Kamala Harris<\/a> and her running mate Gov. Tim Walz (D., Minn.) are enjoying generally friendly media coverage even as they set modern campaign records for avoiding media scrutiny. Odder still is that while avoiding discussion of the policies they will employ to govern us, they\u2019ve clearly expressed contempt for the bedrock liberty that allows all of us to criticize government policies.<\/p>\n

Recently this column noted <\/a>Ms. Harris\u2019s history of hostility to free expression. Now we know that if voters give her the promotion she seeks, we can\u2019t expect her vice president to serve as a moderating influence.<\/p>\n

\n

Writing<\/a> for Reason, Robby Soave notes that at this week\u2019s vice presidential debate, Gov. Tim Walz repeated his false claim that the U.S. Constitution\u2019s First Amendment does not protect misinformation or \u201chate speech.\u201d Mr. Soave writes of Mr. Walz:<\/p>\n

Walz defended his position by glibly asserting that it is constitutionally impermissible to yell \u201cfire in a crowded theater.\u201d This is an oft-expressed sentiment\u2014and one that\u2019s completely and utterly false. It comes from the Supreme Court\u2019s odious opinion in the 1919 case Schenk v. United States,<\/em> in which the majority held that the government could stop people from distributing leaflets opposing World War I. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes likened such activism as akin to yelling fire in a crowded theater; in other words, he believed that raising doubts about the desirability of the U.S. participating in such a global catastrophe was dangerous, and could be prohibited.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Today we recognize that the right to criticize U.S. military policy and oppose foreign wars is an essential component of the First Amendment. And the Supreme Court agrees: Schenk <\/em>was gradually overturned by subsequent decisions. The right to engage in speech that the government might deem reckless, dangerous, or hateful was explicitly affirmed in the 2017 case Matal v. Tam, <\/em>in which Justice Samuel Alito observed \u201cthe proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express \u2018the thought that we hate.\u2019\u201d It could not be more simple: Hate speech is protected by the First Amendment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This shouldn\u2019t be surprising; after all, if hate speech constituted unprotected <\/em>speech, it would create all sorts of problems. What counts as hateful speech is purely subjective. Religious people, for instance, might find blasphemy to be hateful\u2014but it\u2019s sufficiently obvious that the federal government cannot criminalize criticism of religion. Similarly, political figures might determine that their opponents running attack ads against them are examples of hateful messaging. If censorship was allowed on this basis, there would be no end in sight.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The answer is … yes! From the WSJ a few days ago. I bolded and enlarged the obvious point below in the Journal excerpt. Criticize Harris and Walz While You Still Can. One thing they haven\u2019t been able to hide is hostility to free speech. It\u2019s a curious thing that Vice President Kamala Harris and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7075,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions\/7075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}