![]() ![]() Speech isn't restricted to the spoken or written word. “The American free speech tradition holds unequivocally that hate speech is protected, unless it is intended to and likely to incite imminent violence,” says Jeffrey Rosen, president of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.Īdds Justice Stephen Breyer: "It's there for people whose speech you don't like." Censorship He's been banned from visiting large portions of Europe and Great Britain by government officials who said his speeches foster hatred. Under the First Amendment, those bans would not stand. Spencer is better off giving sparsely attended speeches and facing opponents in Florida, Michigan and Virginia than he would be overseas. Watch Video: Richard Spencer is reportedly banned from over 26 European nations He's been allowed to speak, along with counter-demonstrators aligned with a left-wing coalition known as Antifa. Richard Spencer, a white nationalist who has traveled the country on a controversial "alt-right" speaking tour, is but the most recent example. The Supreme Court made that clear in 1969 when it protected a Ku Klux Klan member decrying Jews and blacks in Ohio because he did not pose an imminent threat. If right-wing demonstrators are protected by the First Amendment, so too are right-wing speakers. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented in the cross-burning case, reasoning that "those who hate cannot terrorize and intimidate," but he was on the losing end of an 8-1 vote. ![]() flag burner from Texas in 1989, three cross burners from Virginia in 2003 and homophobic funeral protesters in 2011.Įven symbols of intimidation, such as torches carried by some marchers in Charlottesville, are protected unless they have specific targets. The First Amendment, the justices have said, protected neo-Nazis seeking to march through heavily Jewish Skokie, Ill., in 1977. ![]() In a series of cases dating back to the 1960s, the Supreme Court has struck down restrictions on so-called "hate speech" unless it specifically incites violence or is intended to do so. That raises the potential for violence, which public officials have the authority to prevent. What remains in doubt: whether such protests can be accompanied by displays of weapons, even in states that permit firearms to be carried in public. If white nationalists and neo-Nazis can march through the college town of Charlottesville, Va., and win backing from the American Civil Liberties Union, the rights of demonstrators are in safe hands. ![]()
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