R. A. v. v. City of St. Paul
The Court struck down a St. Paul ordinance that made it a crime to display symbols like a burning cross or Nazi swastika if they were likely to provoke anger on the basis of race, religion, or gender, ruling that even though such displays could be banned as "fighting words," the city could not single out only bias-motivated fighting words for punishment.
The decision means governments generally cannot ban only some kinds of otherwise-punishable speech while leaving other, equally punishable speech alone, if the line they draw is based on the speech's subject matter or viewpoint.
“The government may not regulate use based on hostility — or favoritism — towards the underlying message expressed.”
The core rule barring the government from singling out speech based on its content or viewpoint.
How it got here: A trial court dismissed the charge as unconstitutional; the Minnesota Supreme Court reversed, narrowing the ordinance to \"fighting words\"; the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
The Case in Depth
What happened
In June 1990, a teenager allegedly built a crude cross from broken chair legs and burned it inside the fenced yard of a Black family living across the street. St. Paul charged him under a Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance making it a misdemeanor to display symbols, including burning crosses or swastikas, known to arouse anger or resentment based on race, color, creed, religion, or gender.
The question before the Court
Could a city punish cross-burning and similar hate symbols under an ordinance that only targeted bias based on race, religion, or gender, or did singling out those topics violate free speech?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that even though cross burning and similar bias-motivated symbols could be banned as unprotected \"fighting words,\" St. Paul's ordinance went too far by punishing only fighting words tied to race, religion, or gender while leaving equally vicious fighting words aimed at other traits untouched. That selective approach amounted to picking favored and disfavored viewpoints, which the First Amendment forbids even within a category of speech the government could otherwise ban entirely.
The Court explained that the city's goal of protecting vulnerable groups was compelling, but that goal could be achieved just as effectively through a neutral ban on all fighting words, so there was no real need for the ordinance's narrower, subject-specific approach. Because content discrimination wasn't necessary to serve St. Paul's interest, the ordinance could not stand, and the case was sent back for further proceedings.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Cities and states that want to criminalize hate speech or bias-motivated intimidation must write laws that do not single out particular topics like race or religion for special treatment; they generally must ban a broader category of unprotected speech (like all threats or all fighting words) rather than carving out only the most politically salient categories, reshaping how hate-crime and hate-speech statutes get drafted nationwide.
What changes now
The case was sent back to Minnesota, and because the ordinance itself was struck down as facially invalid, prosecutors there had to rely on other, content-neutral criminal statutes to charge the underlying conduct. The ruling became a lasting benchmark for how hate-crime and hate-speech laws must be drafted, prompting many jurisdictions to rewrite bias-motivated conduct laws to avoid singling out specific topics or viewpoints.
What this does not decide
The Court repeatedly stressed that cross burning and similar conduct can still be punished under other laws — such as arson, terroristic threats, or laws targeting threats directed at specific people or groups — and that its ruling addressed only this ordinance's subject-matter selectivity, not whether hate-motivated conduct in general can be criminalized.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice White
Justice White agreed the ordinance was unconstitutional but thought the majority invented an unnecessary new rule. He argued the case should have been decided simply because the ordinance was overbroad, criminalizing not just fighting words but also protected speech that merely caused hurt feelings or offense. He rejected the majority's content-discrimination theory as a radical, unbriefed departure from settled law that would destabilize other areas, like Title VII harassment law.
Concurrence — Justice Blackmun
Justice Blackmun regretted the decision, warning it would either weaken First Amendment protections generally by abandoning the categorical approach to unprotected speech, or be dismissed as an aberration driven by discomfort with the ordinance's politically correct framing. He agreed only in the judgment because he found the ordinance reached beyond fighting words into protected speech.
Concurrence — Justice Stevens
Justice Stevens rejected both the majority's near-absolute rule against content discrimination and Justice White's view that fighting words are wholly unprotected. He argued for a more contextual, multi-factor analysis and concluded that, properly understood, the St. Paul ordinance targeted the distinct harm caused by bias-based fighting words rather than any viewpoint, and would have been constitutional had it not been overbroad.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court accepted the Minnesota Supreme Court's narrowing interpretation that the ordinance reached only "fighting words" — face-to-face insults that by their very utterance tend to provoke immediate violence, a category the First Amendment does not fully protect.
- Even assuming all the speech covered by the ordinance qualified as unprotected fighting words, the Court held that the First Amendment still forbids the government from picking and choosing among categories of otherwise-punishable speech based on the topic or viewpoint that speech addresses.
- The Court explained that unprotected categories like obscenity or fighting words are not entirely invisible to the Constitution: the government can ban the whole category, but it cannot then further narrow the ban to only the instances of that category it dislikes on ideological grounds, because that recreates the very risk of viewpoint suppression the First Amendment guards against.
- Applying this content-discrimination principle, the Court found the St. Paul ordinance banned fighting words only when they insulted people based on race, color, creed, religion, or gender, while allowing equally vicious fighting words aimed at other traits (like political affiliation or sexual orientation) to go unpunished — a selective ban tied to disfavored subjects.
- The Court also found the ordinance amounted to viewpoint discrimination in practice, since it would let someone use fighting words to argue in favor of racial tolerance but not to argue against it, and rejected the city's argument that the law was aimed only at the "secondary effects" of the speech, since listeners' emotional reactions are not a secondary effect under the Court's precedent.
- Because the city's compelling interest in protecting targeted groups could be served just as well by a content-neutral ordinance banning all fighting words, the Court concluded the selective, subject-based restriction was not necessary to serve that interest and therefore could not survive.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Limits Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (315 U.S. 568)
The Court accepted fighting words as unprotected but limited how far that category insulates content-based line-drawing within it.
Distinguishes Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc. (475 U.S. 41)
The Court said the ordinance did not fit Renton's secondary-effects exception because listener reactions are not secondary effects.