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Hate speech is constitutionally protected in the United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._A._V._v._City_of_St._Paul http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._A._V.

• tokenadult 15y ago
  I was a judicial clerk on the Minnesota Supreme Court when it ruled on that case. If I remember correctly [checking references, I see I do], the United States Supreme Court reversed the Minnesota Supreme Court in that case, being especially zealous to guard federally guaranteed individual rights.
• Groxx 15y ago
  >Holding The St. Paul Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance was struck down both because it was overbroad, proscribing both "fighting words" and protected speech, and because the regulation was "content-based," proscribing only activities which conveyed messages concerning particular topics. Judgment of the Supreme Court of Minnesota reversed. Well yeah. "protected speech" and "[specific] content-based" are good reasons to strike it down. Only defining certain things as offensive enough is just asking to become obsolete and have people toe the line. But note that "fighting words" are specifically not protected, not that it particularly applies to the OP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaplinsky_v._New_Hampshire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaplinsky_v._New_Hampshire Meanwhile, we have successful cases for harassment. Are you arguing that verbal harassment is constitutionally protected?
  • DavidSJ 15y ago
    Are you arguing that verbal harassment is constitutionally protected? No, but hot-or-not with a little bit of racial innuendo doesn't sound like harassment to me. It just sounds offensive. The comment I was replying to took the position that it "makes sense" to arrest American citizens for "disorderly conduct" simply because they engaged in offensive hate speech.