St. Paul, Minnesota, enacted the Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance, which prohibited the display of a symbol that a person knows or has reason to know “arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender” (Ordinance, St. Paul, Minn., Legis. Code § 292.02 (1990)).
In R.A.V.v.St.Paul, 505 U.S. 377 (1992), the US Supreme Court held that this ordinance was unconstitutional on its face because regulation was based on the content of speech, with no additional requirement for imminent lawless action. The Court held that the ordinance did not proscribe the use of fighting words (the display of a symbol) toward specific groups of individuals, which would be an equal protection clause challenge. Instead, the Court determined that the statute prohibited the use of specific types of fighting words, for example, words that promote racial hatred, and this is impermissible as viewpoint-based censorship. As the Court stated, “[c]ontent-based regulations are presumptively invalid.” 1
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