The Washington Standard
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court has provided greater protections on speech by ruling that when the government seeks to punish what it considers to be threatening speech, it must prove a defendant had some understanding of his statements’ character and acted recklessly by disregarding the risk his words would be viewed as threatening violence.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in Counterman v. Colorado follows part of the argument put forth in the amicus brief filed by The Rutherford Institute and the Cato Institute that the government should have to prove statements are both objectively understood and subjectively intended to threaten an illegal act in order to convict someone of making threats. In its ruling, the Court sought to create more breathing room for protected speech by lowering the risk that law-abiding citizens would self-censor out of fear of punishment when the government only had to prove how a so-called “reasonable person” might interpret their statements regardless of the speaker’s actual motive.
“The government must not be given the power to criminalize speech it deems distasteful or annoying,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “Nowhere in the First Amendment does it permit the government to limit speech in order to avoid causing offense or hurting someone’s feelings, protect government officials from criticism, discourage bullying, penalize hateful ideas, combat prejudice and intolerance, and the like…
