California AG’s Brief Claims “Hate Speech” Is Constitutionally Unprotected
From a brief filed by the California Attorney General’s office in Ogilvie v. Gordon, a case dealing with restrictions on personalized license plates (such as exclusions of “racially degrading term[s]”):
There are well-defined and narrowly-limited classes of speech, “the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem.” Chaplinsky v. N.H., 315 U.S. 568, 571-572 (1942) (emphasizing that certain types of speech are protected by the First Amendment). Obscenity, vulgarity, profanity, hate speech, and fighting words fall outside the scope of the First Amendment’s protections. See Brunetti, 139 S. Ct. at 2303 (Roberts, C.J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (forbidding registration of “obscene, vulgar, or profane marks does not offend the First Amendment”); Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass’n, 564 U.S. 786,
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