Still On The Books

Fresh on the heels of our discussion in my course "The Law and Social Change" comes this piece from the First Amendment Center in the United States:

Watch your language out there, because profanity and blasphemy could lead to criminal charges. We might hope that First Amendment-protected free speech lets us utter profanities, blasphemies and other choice phrases that occasionally slip from our intemperate tongues. After all, the U.S. Supreme Court protected a man who wore a jacket into a Los Angeles County Courthouse bearing the words "Fuck the Draft." That led to the famous Cohen v. California (1971) ruling in which Justice John Marshall Harlan — a conservative during the Warren Court years — uttered a phrase that has become First Amendment lore: "One man's vulgarity is another's lyric." But hold on. Yes, in a free society adult citizens outside of special contexts (jobs, military, school) can speak their minds in the open air. But if you think old laws punishing profanity and blasphemy no longer exist, you're wrong — a surprising number of state laws still prohibit such speech. Even though the laws are rarely enforced, they are still on the books.

You can read more here.