R.A.V. v. ST. PAUL, (1992)
No. 90-7675
Argued: December 4, 1991 Decided: June 22,
1992
After allegedly burning
a cross on a black family's lawn, petitioner R.A.V. was charged under, inter
alia, the St. Paul, Minnesota, Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance, which prohibits
the display of a symbol which one knows or has reason to know "arouses
anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of
race, color, creed, religion or gender." The trial court dismissed this
charge on the ground that the ordinance was
substantially overbroad and impermissibly content based, but the State Supreme
Court reversed. It rejected the overbreadth claim because the phrase
"arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others" had been construed in
earlier state cases to limit the ordinance's reach to "fighting
words" within the meaning of this Court's decision in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 572 , a category of
expression unprotected by the First Amendment. The court also concluded that
the ordinance was not impermissibly content based, because it was narrowly
tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest in protecting the
community against bias-motivated threats to public safety and order.
Held: The ordinance is facially invalid under the
First Amendment. Pp. 381-396.
(a) This Court is bound
by the state court's construction of the ordinance as reaching only expressions
constituting "fighting words." However, R.A.V.'s request that the
scope of the Chaplinsky formulation be modified, thereby invalidating the
ordinance as substantially overbroad, need not be reached, since the ordinance
unconstitutionally prohibits speech on the basis of
the subjects the speech addresses. P. 381.
(b) A few limited
categories of speech, such as obscenity, defamation, and fighting words, may be
regulated because of their constitutionally proscribable
content. However, these categories are not entirely invisible to the
Constitution, and government may not regulate them based on hostility, or
favoritism, towards a nonproscribable message they
contain. Thus, the regulation of "fighting words" may not be based on
nonproscribable content. It may, however, be underinclusive, addressing some offensive instances and
leaving other equally offensive ones alone, so long as the selective
prescription is not based on content, or there is no realistic possibility that
regulation of ideas is afoot. Pp. 382-390. [505 U.S. 377, 378]
(c) The ordinance, even
as narrowly construed by the State Supreme Court, is facially unconstitutional,
because it imposes special prohibitions on those speakers who express views on
the disfavored subjects of "race, color, creed, religion or gender."
At the same time, it permits displays containing abusive invective if they are
not addressed to those topics. Moreover, in its practical operation, the
ordinance goes beyond mere content, to actual viewpoint, discrimination.
Displays containing "fighting words" that do not invoke the
disfavored subjects would seemingly be useable ad libitum by those arguing in
favor of racial, color, etc., tolerance and equality, but not by their
opponents. St. Paul's desire to communicate to minority groups that it does not
condone the "group hatred" of bias-motivated speech does not justify
selectively silencing speech on the basis of its
content. Pp. 391-393.
(d) The content-based
discrimination reflected in the ordinance does not rest upon the very reasons
why the particular class of speech at issue is proscribable,
it is not aimed only at the "secondary effects" of speech within the
meaning of Renton v. Playtime Theatres,
Inc., 475 U.S. 41 , and it is not for any other
reason the sort that does not threaten censorship of ideas. In addition, the
ordinance's content discrimination is not justified on the
ground that the ordinance is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling
state interest in ensuring the basic human rights of groups historically
discriminated against, since an ordinance not limited to the favored topics
would have precisely the same beneficial effect. Pp. 393-396.
\
464
N.W.2d 507 (Minn. 1991), reversed and remanded.
SCALIA, J., delivered
the opinion of the Court, in which REHNQUIST, C.J., and KENNEDY, SOUTER, and
THOMAS, JJ., joined. WHITE, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in
which BLACKMUN and O'CONNOR, JJ., joined, and in which STEVENS, J., joined except
as to Part I-A, post, p. 397. BLACKMUN, J., filed an opinion concurring in the
judgment, post, p. 415. STEVENS, J., filed an opinion concurring in the
judgment, in Part I of which WHITE and BLACKMUN, JJ., joined, post, p. 416.