Petitioner
R.A.V.
Respondent
City of St. Paul, Minneapolis
Petitioner's Claim
That a St. Paul city ordinance banning all public displays of symbols that arouse anger on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, or gender was invalid under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Edward J. Cleary
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Thomas J. Foley
Justices for the Court
Harry A. Blackmun, Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor, William H. Rehnquist (writing for the Court), Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter, John Paul Stevens, Clarence Thomas, Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting
None
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
22 June 1992
Decision
Reversed the court of appeals ruling and held that the St. Paul ordinance didin fact violate First Amendment free speech protections.
Significance
The unanimous decision in this case clarified the concept of "fighting words"left unprotected under the First Amendment.
Fighting Words
In a 1941 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court defined "fighting words" as wordsthat "by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace." It further held that such speech is not entitled to protection under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The decision in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul hinged on how broadly and under what criteriaa local government can define "fighting words."
In St. Paul, Minnesota, the local government enacted a law, the Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance. It banned the display of symbols and objects which offendothers on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, or gender. A white teenager challenged the law after he and two others were charged with burning a cross on the lawn of a black family. The teenager claimed that the law was toobroadly drawn and violated his right to free speech. He first took his case to a state trial court.
The Lower Court's Rule
The trial court in Minnesota ruled in the teenager's favor. It held that theordinance was overbroad and that it sought to regulate speech based on its content, not its impact (i.e. its potential to incite violence). The city of St. Paul then appealed to the Minnesota Supreme Court, which reversed the lowercourt's decision. The state supreme court construed the kind of speech banned in the ordinance to fall under the definition of "fighting words" left unprotected by the Constitution. It also expressed the view that the ordinance was a reasonable measure taken by the city to protect its citizens against bias-related crimes. Not satisfied with this decision, the teenager then appealedhis case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court Rules
On 22 June 1992, the Supreme Court issued its decision. In a unanimous vote,it reversed the Minnesota Supreme Court's ruling and decreed the St. Paul ordinance unconstitutional. Justice Scalia wrote a majority opinion signed by four other justices. The remaining four justices issued various opinions outlining their reasoning for coming to the same judgment.
"Let there be no mistake about our belief that burning a cross in someone's front yard is reprehensible," Scalia declared in his opinion. But he went on to decry the city of St. Paul's method for addressing the problem of bias crime. In his view, the ordinance was too selective in picking out certain topicsand types or expression for official disfavor. "Selectivity of this sort creates the possibility that the city is seeking to handicap the expression of particular ideas," Scalia wrote--i.e. only ideas that incite on the basis of race, creed, religion, or gender. If a city wants to ban fighting words, Scalia declared, it must ban all fighting words, not those in a few selected categories. As he analogized, "[T]he government may proscribe libel; but it may not make the further content discrimination of proscribing only libel criticalof the government." He went on to laud the city of St. Paul for taking stepsto safeguard the human rights of all its citizens, but recommended other methods to pursue that end that did not infringe upon First Amendment rights.
In a separate opinion, Justice White joined in the judgment but expressed thedecidedly different view that the government does in fact have a right to discriminate among different types of speech. He lampooned Scalia's "all-or-nothing" formulation for banning fighting words. As White wrote:
Impact
The decision in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul cast doubt on a number of state laws and university codes designed to prohibit prejudiced or offensive speech. Subsequent to this case, lawmakers became careful to craft laws that did not contain the content-based classifications struck down as unconstitutional here.
Related Cases
R.A.V.
Respondent
City of St. Paul, Minneapolis
Petitioner's Claim
That a St. Paul city ordinance banning all public displays of symbols that arouse anger on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, or gender was invalid under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Edward J. Cleary
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Thomas J. Foley
Justices for the Court
Harry A. Blackmun, Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor, William H. Rehnquist (writing for the Court), Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter, John Paul Stevens, Clarence Thomas, Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting
None
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
22 June 1992
Decision
Reversed the court of appeals ruling and held that the St. Paul ordinance didin fact violate First Amendment free speech protections.
Significance
The unanimous decision in this case clarified the concept of "fighting words"left unprotected under the First Amendment.
Fighting Words
In a 1941 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court defined "fighting words" as wordsthat "by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace." It further held that such speech is not entitled to protection under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The decision in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul hinged on how broadly and under what criteriaa local government can define "fighting words."
In St. Paul, Minnesota, the local government enacted a law, the Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance. It banned the display of symbols and objects which offendothers on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, or gender. A white teenager challenged the law after he and two others were charged with burning a cross on the lawn of a black family. The teenager claimed that the law was toobroadly drawn and violated his right to free speech. He first took his case to a state trial court.
The Lower Court's Rule
The trial court in Minnesota ruled in the teenager's favor. It held that theordinance was overbroad and that it sought to regulate speech based on its content, not its impact (i.e. its potential to incite violence). The city of St. Paul then appealed to the Minnesota Supreme Court, which reversed the lowercourt's decision. The state supreme court construed the kind of speech banned in the ordinance to fall under the definition of "fighting words" left unprotected by the Constitution. It also expressed the view that the ordinance was a reasonable measure taken by the city to protect its citizens against bias-related crimes. Not satisfied with this decision, the teenager then appealedhis case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court Rules
On 22 June 1992, the Supreme Court issued its decision. In a unanimous vote,it reversed the Minnesota Supreme Court's ruling and decreed the St. Paul ordinance unconstitutional. Justice Scalia wrote a majority opinion signed by four other justices. The remaining four justices issued various opinions outlining their reasoning for coming to the same judgment.
"Let there be no mistake about our belief that burning a cross in someone's front yard is reprehensible," Scalia declared in his opinion. But he went on to decry the city of St. Paul's method for addressing the problem of bias crime. In his view, the ordinance was too selective in picking out certain topicsand types or expression for official disfavor. "Selectivity of this sort creates the possibility that the city is seeking to handicap the expression of particular ideas," Scalia wrote--i.e. only ideas that incite on the basis of race, creed, religion, or gender. If a city wants to ban fighting words, Scalia declared, it must ban all fighting words, not those in a few selected categories. As he analogized, "[T]he government may proscribe libel; but it may not make the further content discrimination of proscribing only libel criticalof the government." He went on to laud the city of St. Paul for taking stepsto safeguard the human rights of all its citizens, but recommended other methods to pursue that end that did not infringe upon First Amendment rights.
In a separate opinion, Justice White joined in the judgment but expressed thedecidedly different view that the government does in fact have a right to discriminate among different types of speech. He lampooned Scalia's "all-or-nothing" formulation for banning fighting words. As White wrote:
Itis inconsistent to hold that the government may proscribe an entire categoryof speech because the content of that speech is evil . . . but that the government may not treat a subset of that category differently without violating the First Amendment; the content of the subset is, by definition, worthless and undeserving of constitutional protection.However, White agreedwith Scalia that the St. Paul ordinance was too broadly drawn. "[T]he ordinance reaches conduct that is unprotected," White opined. "[I]t also makes criminal expressive conduct that causes only hurt feelings, offense, or resentment, and is protected by the First Amendment." Thus, in White's view, if the ordinance had been tailored more narrowly to include only those expressions that truly incite violence, it would have passed constitutional muster.
Impact
The decision in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul cast doubt on a number of state laws and university codes designed to prohibit prejudiced or offensive speech. Subsequent to this case, lawmakers became careful to craft laws that did not contain the content-based classifications struck down as unconstitutional here.
Related Cases
- Wisconsin v. Mitchell, 508 U.S. 476 (1993).
- Ladue v. Gilleo, 512 U.S. 43 (1994).
- Kansas v. Hendricks, 521 U.S. 346 (1997).
User Comments Add a comment…