Although the First Amendment protects peacefulspeech and assembly, if speech creates a clear and present danger to the public, it can be regulated. 1 This includes fighting words, “those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.” 2
Any criminal statute prohibiting fighting words must be narrowly tailored and focus on imminent rather than future harm. Modern US Supreme Court decisions indicate a tendency to favor freedom of speech over the government’s interest in regulating fighting words, and many fighting words statutes have been deemed unconstitutional under the First Amendment or void for vagueness and overbreadth under the Fifth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment due process clause. 3
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