Chaplinksy v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942)

Ponente: MURPHY J.

Appeal from a judgment affirming a conviction under the state law denouncing the use of offensive words when addressed by one person to another in a public place.

Facts:

November 1941, Saturday afternoon, Walter Chaplinsky, a Jehovah's Witness, was at a sidewalk in downtown Rochester, passing out his sect's pamphlets and “was said (by the local citizenry) to be calling organized religion a 'racket.'”

After a large crowd had begun blocking the roads and starting to cause a scene, a police officer removed Chaplinsky to take him to police headquarters.

Upon seeing the town marshal Bowering (who had returned to the scene after warning Chaplinsky earlier to keep it down and avoid causing a commotion), Chaplinsky attacked the marshal verbally. He was then arrested.

The complaint against Chaplinsky stated that he shouted: "You are a God-damned racketeer" and "a damned Fascist".

Chaplinsky's version

When he met Bowering, he asked him to arrest the ones responsible for the disturbance. In reply, Bowering cursed him and told him to come along.

Chaplinsky admitted that he said the words charged in the complaint, with the exception of the name of the deity.

He was charged and convicted under a New Hampshire statute preventing intentionally offensive speech being directed at others in a public place. Under New Hampshire's Offensive Conduct law (chap. 378, para. 2 of the NH. Public Laws) it is illegal for anyone to address "any offensive, derisive or annoying word to anyone who is lawfully in any street or public place ... or to call him by an offensive or derisive name."

Chaplinsky appealed, claiming that the law was "vague and indefinite" and that it infringed upon his 1st Amendment and 14th Amendment rights to free speech. He stated that it placed an unreasonable restraint on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of worship.

SC of New Hampshire affirmed the conviction.  Hence this appeal.

WON New Hampshire's Offensive Conduct law (chap. 378, para. 2 of the NH. Public Law) contravenes  1st Amendment and 14th Amendment.

Held: No.  The challenged statute, on its face and as applied, doe not contravene the 1^st and 14th Amendment.

(1) Appellant assails the statute as a violation of all three freedoms, speech, press and worship, but only an attack on the basis of free speech is warranted. The spoken, not the written, word is involved. Cursing a public officer is not an exercise of religion in any sense of the term.

(2)  It is well understood that the right of free speech is not absolute at all times and under all circumstances.

(3) The statute is narrowly drawn and limited to define and punish specific conduct lying within the domain of state power, the use in a public place of words likely to cause a breach of the peace.

State court:

•    The statute's purpose was to preserve the public peace, no words being "forbidden except such as have a direct tendency to cause acts of violence by the persons to whom, individually, the remark is addressed."

•    The word "offensive" is not to be defined in terms of what a particular addressee thinks. . . . The test is what men of common intelligence would understand would be words likely to cause an average addressee to fight

(4) The statute does not unreasonably impinges upon the privilege of free speech. Argument is unnecessary to demonstrate that the appellations "damned racketeer" and "damned Fascist" are epithets likely to provoke the average person to retaliation, and thereby cause a breach of the peace.