Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire

Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942), is a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court.

Walter Chaplinsky, a Jehovah’s Witness, was distributing religious literature on the streets of Rochester, New Hampshire. After a disturbance, he was taken to a police station. There, he called the city marshal a ‘God-damned racketeer’ and ‘a damned Fascist.’ He was convicted under a state law prohibiting offensive speech in public.

Significance

Justice Murphy’s unanimous opinion established the ‘fighting words’ doctrine. Certain categories of speech — including lewd, obscene, profane, libelous, and insulting or ‘fighting’ words — are not protected by the First Amendment because their utterance inflicts injury or tends to incite an immediate breach of the peace. While the fighting words doctrine remains good law, the Court has since narrowed its application significantly, holding that it only covers speech directed at an individual that is likely to provoke a violent response.

Category

US Federal Case Law