“Nope, you're still not understanding. The government can't do that either, because that law would target the content of a communication” It can, because that

“Nope, you're still not understanding. The government can't do that either, because that law would target the content of a communication” It can, because that communication would be considered to create a hostile work environment. The most recent nominee to the SCOTUS has noted he’d consider a single use of a particularly evil racial slur to qualify for the creation of said hostile environment. (“a single verbal (or visual) incident can likewise be sufficiently severe to justify a finding of a hostile work environment”) Your response equates slurs (words) with lynching (an incredibly violent crime). Lynching is something the government can and does prohibit with laws directly, because it’s a violent action not covered by any interpretation of the 1A. Your example of “fire in a crowded theater” is another - a word directly designed to create violence and immediate physical damage to other people. Slurs, on the other hand, the government does not prohibit directly: judges would block jail or fines for speaking such as 1A violations. Instead, they order your company to take care of it by firing you under hostile environment laws. If your argument equating hostile environments with behavior/action, not speech, were legally correct, then the government would be permitted by judges to regulate hostile environments directly by jailing citizens who create them by doing things like e.g. watching porn, speaking a racial slur, or discussing their sex lives. I doubt that a law doing such would pass constitutional muster in today’s courts (rightly or wrongly). Nevertheless the government has had success stamping out those behaviors by having the employer do it for them. In general I’m wondering if we are simply speaking past each other. I thought I clearly recognized that hostile environment laws are considered OK by judges despite the 1A. My main point was to show that the government, when it can find such a legal justification, can generally exert more power than a naive understanding of the 1A might suggest.