R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, Minnesota
505 U.S. 377 (1992)
R.A.V. (a minor) and several
other kids burned a cross to intimidate a black family. He was arrested
and charged under a Minnesota law that made it a crime to use racially
objectionable symbols (crosses, swastika, etc) to arouse anger or
resentment.
R.A.V. et. al. were convicted
of disorderly conduct for their use of the cross. They appealed.
R.A.V. argued that the
Minnesota law was an unconstitutional infringement of his freedom of
speech, as guaranteed by the 1st
Amendment.
The US Supreme Court
overturned the conviction and found the Minnesota law to be
unconstitutional.
The US Supreme Court
acknowledged that certain forms of speech (including fighting words) were not constitutional protected.
See Chaplinsky v. New
Hampshire (315 U.S. 568 (1942)).
However, the Court found
that the Minnesota law was too narrow in that it only outlawed certain
types of content (e.g. racist hate speech). That amounted to a content-based distinction.
The Court found that there
is a strong presumption that a law that distinguishes speech on the basis
of content is a violation of the 1st Amendment.
There are two exceptions to
this presumption:
Where the distinction
advances the reason why the category is unprotected.
Where the restriction is
meant to prevent secondary effects.
Basically, this case said that
there are types of speech that the government can censor (aka unprotected
speech), but it is only constitutional
if the censoring is based on the type of the speech, and the government regulates it in a content-neutral way.
So, for example, the
government may "proscribe libel, but it may not make the further
content discrimination of proscribing only libel critical of the
government."
