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Categories: U.S. Supreme Court cases | U.S. free speech case law | First Amendment case law | Conscription in the United States | 1971 in law
Cohen v. California
| Cohen v. California | ||||||||
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| Supreme Court of the United States | ||||||||
| Argued February 22, 1971 Decided June 7, 1971 | ||||||||
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| Holding | ||||||||
| The First Amendment, as applied through the Fourteenth, prohibits states from making the public display of a single four-letter expletive a criminal offense, without a more specific and compelling reason than a general tendency to disturb the peace. Court of Appeal of California reversed. | ||||||||
| Court membership | ||||||||
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| Case opinions | ||||||||
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| Laws applied | ||||||||
| U.S. Const. amend. I, XIV; Cal. Penal Code § 415 |
Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971) was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with freedom of speech.
Paul Robert Cohen, 19, was arrested for wearing a jacket with the words "Fuck the Draft" inside the Los Angeles Courthouse. He was convicted of violating section 415 of the California Penal Code, which prohibits "maliciously and willfully disturb[ing] the peace or quiet of any neighborhood or person [by] offensive conduct."
The conviction was appealed to the state Court of Appeals, which held that "offensive conduct" means "behavior which has a tendency to provoke others to acts of violence or to in turn disturb the peace," and affirmed the conviction.
The Court, by a vote of 5-4, overturned the appellate court's ruling. "Absent a more particularized and compelling reason for its actions," it said, "the State may not, consistently with the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment, make the simple public display of this single four-letter expletive a criminal offense."
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun, joined by Burger and Black, suggested that Cohen's wearing of the jacket in the courthouse was not speech but conduct (an "absurd and immature antic"), and therefore not protected by the First Amendment. However, it was pointed out that Cohen took his jacket off while inside the city courtroom, and was not held in contempt of court for its content; rather, he was arrested after he left the room.
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