Permissible restrictions on expression
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Despite the broad freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment, there are some historically rooted exceptions. First, the government may generally restrict the time, place, or manner of speech, if the restrictions are unrelated to what the speech says and leave people with enough alternative ways of expressing their views. Thus, for instance, the government may restrict the use of loudspeakers in residential areas at night, limit all demonstrations that block traffic, or ban all picketing of people’s homes.
Second, a few narrow categories of speech are not protected from government restrictions. The main such categories are incitement, defamation, fraud, obscenity, child pornography, fighting words, and threats. As the Supreme Court held in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the government may forbid “incitement”—speech “directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and “likely to incite or produce such action” (such as a speech to a mob urging it to attack a nearby building). But speech urging action at some unspecified future time may not be forbidden.
Defamatory lies (which are called “libel” if written and “slander” if spoken), lying under oath, and fraud may also be punished. In some instances, even negligent factual errors may lead to lawsuits. Such exceptions, however, extend only to factual falsehoods; expression of opinion may not be punished even if the opinion is broadly seen as morally wrong.
Certain types of hard-core pornography, labeled obscenity by the law, may also be punished, as the Supreme Court held in Miller v. California (1973). Exactly what constitutes obscenity is not clear, but since the 1980s the definition has been quite narrow. Also, obscenities in the sense of merely vulgar words may not be punished (Cohen v. California [1971]).
Material depicting actual children engaging in sex, or being naked in a sexually suggestive context, is called child pornography and may be punished. Sexually themed material that uses adults who look like children or features hand-drawn or computer-generated pictures of fictional children does not fall within this exception, though some such material might still be punishable as obscenity.
Fighting words—defined as insults of the kind likely to provoke a physical fight—may also be punished, though general commentary on political, religious, or social matters may not be punished, even if some people are so upset by it that they want to attack the speaker. Personalized threats of illegal conduct, such as death threats, may also be punished.
No exception exists for so-called hate speech (see also hate crime). Racist threats are unprotected by the First Amendment alongside other threats, and personally addressed racist insults might be punishable alongside other fighting words. But such speech may not be specially punished because it is racist, sexist, antigay, or hostile to some religion.
Speech on government property and in government-run institutions
The preceding sections have dealt with laws that apply even to speakers who are using their own resources on their own property. But the government has considerable—though not unlimited—power to control speech that uses government property.
Government employees, for example, may be fired for saying things that interfere with the employer’s efficiency. Elementary, junior high, and high school students may be disciplined for saying things that risk substantially disrupting the educational process or for using vulgarities at school. If the government gives people money to express the government’s views, it may demand that the money not be used to express things the government does not want to support. Speech on government land or in government buildings usually may be limited, if the government does not discriminate on the basis of the viewpoint of the speech. Additionally, speech by prisoners and by members of the military may be broadly restricted.
Speech on government-owned sidewalks and in parks (often labeled “traditional public forums”) is as protected against government suppression as is speech on the speaker’s own property. The same is true for speech by public-university students, at least when the speech is not part of class discussions or class assignments.
The government has some extra authority to restrict speech broadcast over radio and television. Because the government is considered the owner of the airwaves, it may dictate who broadcasts over the airwaves and, to some extent, what those broadcasters can say. This is why the Supreme Court, in FCC v. Pacifica Foundation (1978), upheld a ban on broadcasting vulgar words, though such words are generally constitutionally protected outside the airwaves. It is also why the Supreme Court, in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC (1969), upheld the “fairness doctrine,” a regulation of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that at the time required broadcasters to give time to people who wanted to present contrary viewpoints. But that extra government authority extended only to radio and television broadcasting and not to other media, including newspapers, cable television, and the Internet. (The FCC abolished the fairness doctrine in 1987.)