"If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment," the U.S. Supreme Court said in the 1989 case Texas v. Johnson, "it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable." In practice, that principle means all sorts of despicable utterances, including "hate speech," are constitutionally protected.
But the Court also has said that the First Amendment has its limits. One of them involves "true threats" of violence. In the 2003 case Virginia v. Black, the justices defined that category as "those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals." The First Amendment, the Court held, "permits" the government "to ban a 'true threat.'"
