hate speech laws

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The Legalities Of Hate Speech

Often discussed on a variety of platforms, hate speech and the legalities associated with it can be a hotly debated topic. Hate speech is loosely defined by laypersons as any offensive speech targeted toward people based on race, religion , sexual orientation, or gender. Opinions about how such speech should be handled by legal authorities vary. Few seem to be familiar with the actual legalities of hate speech, and it is not uncommon for it to be confused with other crimes where hatred is believed to be a motivating factor.

Which Laws Govern Hate Speech?

In the United States, there are no laws against hate speech. Due to rights protected by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment , a person can say just about anything he or she wants to another person or group. By itself, such speech is allowed to take place without penalty under the law.

A person hurling insults, making rude statements, or disparaging comments about another person or group is merely exercising his or her right to free speech. This is true even if the person or group targeted by the speaker is a member of a protected class. According to U.S. law, such speech is fully permissible and is not defined as hate speech.

Under the First Amendment, American citizens have the legal right to say whatever they’d like to. While much ado is often made about so-called “hate speech”, no satisfactory definition for this type of speech exists within the confines of the law. Not to be confused with “hate crimes,” a person’s speech does not affect another person’s physical condition or personal property and is, therefore, not punishable by law.

Are There Any Exceptions?

There really aren’t any exceptions to this rule, but there are accompanying circumstances which can lead to a crime. For example, harsh words can feel threatening, and such a threat may result in criminal charges. Depending on the jurisdiction where the threat takes place, charges can range from a terrorist threat to harassment to criminal assault .

For example, a person who makes bigoted statements while threatening bodily harm to a person of the Muslim faith can be charged with a crime. Charges would not be brought about simply due to any insulting language used, but charges may be applied because it is illegal to make threats against a person. For the same reasons, this would also include inciting violence against a group being discriminated against. Again, it is not the speech that is deemed to be illegal, but rather what the speech is threatening or encouraging others to do.

It should further be noted that individuals employed by the Federal Government are not allowed to discriminate against any members of a protective class. Therefore, any speech representing hostility or disdain for a member of a protected class, may not be illegal but may result in the dismissal of the employee making such statements.

Members of a protected class are identified by:

• Age (applies primarily to those aged 40 years and above)
• Handicap (whether visibly apparent or not)
• Veteran status
• Country of origin (this includes a person’s citizenship status)

If allegations of hateful speech are proven, a person found guilty of discriminating against one of the above groups would not be legally charged with hateful speech but could be declared guilty of discrimination and summarily dismissed from work.

Should Hate Speech Be Illegal?

A 1969 U.S. Supreme Court case ruled it was perfectly legal for Clarence Brandenburg, a Ku Klux Klan member in Ohio, to speak in favor of violence toward minorities as long as he was not directly encouraging people to engage in violence or other activities that were against the law. So, while the court did not deem his speech to have broken the law, a line was drawn between speech supporting or favoring violence and speech that actually directly incites violence. The former is protected by law, but the latter is an actual crime.  

In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Westboro Baptist Church being punished by way of a civil judgment for actions many Americans deemed to be hateful. The church based in Topeka, Kansas, is known for showing up at the funerals of gay people and others whose lifestyles the church vehemently opposes, taunting and ridiculing grieving loved ones at the funeral services. They accomplish this by picketing outside with large signs displaying hateful rhetoric, as well as by shouting slurs and insults, and even by giving provocative media interviews using language mimicking what is displayed on their signs. Despite the public’s demands for local law enforcement to stop Westboro Baptist Church from spewing such offensive language and ideas, the Supreme Court insists that their right to free speech is fully protected under the law.

Some Americans have advocated in favor of the creation of hate speech laws. Resistance to the adoption of such stems from a failure to clearly define what hate speech actually is, though. Activists have also been challenged to clearly separate hate speech from free speech without infringing on a person’s right to the latter.

While the United States Constitution can be amended as it has been many times before, no one has yet been able to solve the difficulty of doing so as it applies to hate speech. Doing so would require taking away a person’s right to free speech. A single and solid definition of hate speech, which does not violate the First Amendment, continues to be difficult for courts to accept and probably will be for some time to come.

The Role of Hate Speech in Hate Crimes

A person’s speech can be used against them in establishing the occurrence of a hate crime. In some cases, it can be argued that a person’s offensive speech is literal evidence of a certain type of crime. For example, if a person is repeatedly called a racial slur, no crime has been committed. However, if the person is then assaulted by the person making those slurs, it can be argued that disdain for the person’s racial identity served as a motive for the crime against them as evidenced by the language used preceding or during the assault. If the assailant was found to be guilty and it is proven that their actions were motivated by bigotry, the offender could be charged with a hate crime.

Making sense of the difference between hate speech and hate crimes hearkens back to early childhood when we all learned about sticks and stones. Actions causing harm to person or property are a crime. Name-calling and degrading speech are not. Unless or until speech directly encourages or includes harm to a person’s body or property, it is protected as an American right.

Beyond the U.S.: Hate Speech Vs. Free Speech

Outside of the U.S., countries like Austria and Germany have strict laws against hate speech. Certain Neo-Nazi groups have found ways around anti-hate speech laws in those countries when it comes to disseminating information on the Internet. Using servers based in the United States, these groups have created websites filled with hateful rhetoric. Such sites would be illegal if associated with servers based in their home countries, but as they exist on American servers, they are completely protected by the First Amendment.

Russian citizens, in particular, have struggled with differentiating free speech from hateful speech. In less than a decade, multiple laws have passed making it difficult for Russian citizens to speak publicly, especially via social media, about any discontent with the country’s government or even with certain religious authorities, such as the Russian Orthodox Church. While Russia’s Constitution shuns censorship and claims to protect freedom of thought and expression, those espousing critical viewpoints may be subject to a fine, community service or prison.

Hate Speech is Perfectly Legal

To hate a person or group is not a crime in America. To voice one’s hatred is not a crime, either. Hate speech is very difficult to separate from mere opinion, and without a definition everyone can agree upon, words and statements may be interpreted by some as offensive while others may find the exact same speech perfectly acceptable and cite one’s freedom of expression.

If you still have questions about hate speech, including how it may be used in determining a hate crime, you may read more about the First Amendment or consult a civil rights attorney in your area.

This article contains general legal information but does not constitute professional legal advice for your particular situation. The Law Dictionary is not a law firm, and this page does not create an attorney-client or legal adviser relationship. If you have specific questions, please consult a qualified attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.

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Legal experts discuss hate speech and how to limit it

By susan kelley.

Nadine Strossen, right, discusses hate speech April 10 during a panel discussion with Sherry Colb and Jeremy Waldron.

Two pre-eminent legal scholars agree that hate speech is protected by the First Amendment under certain circumstances. But their opinions diverge on how most effectively to reduce hate speech incidents and their potential harmful impact.

Nadine Strossen, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union and professor of law at New York Law School, and Jeremy Waldron, professor of law at New York University, brought differing points of view to the topic of hate speech April 10 in Myron Taylor Hall. Sherry Colb, professor of law at Cornell Law School, moderated the discussion.

Both Strossen and Waldron agreed that the First Amendment protects hate speech – but not when it satisfies what is known as the “emergency principle.” When the hate speech poses a threat that can only be averted by suppressing the speech, it is punishable under U.S. law. “And the sad fact is a lot of hate speech does satisfy the emergency principle: It constitutes a general threat or targeted harassment or hostile environment harassment or an intentional incitement of imminent violence,” Strossen said.

However, Strossen and Waldron disagreed about the best way to deal with hate speech. Strossen said the best remedy is free speech and counter speech, while Waldron advocated for laws that would prohibit hate speech.

Historically around the world these laws have disproportionally singled out the dissident views of minority speakers and groups, Strossen said. “That is not a coincidence. After all, these laws are enforced by the government, or by the university if we’re talking about a public campus, which is accountable to the majority, not accountable to minority groups,” she said.

Just as important as avoiding censorship laws is the need to resist hate speech with free speech, “… which I am convinced will do more to counter the scourge of hatred,” Strossen said.

Waldron described the way legislators around the world have defined hate speech. (The U.S. is the only liberal democracy without laws or codes against it.) It’s tempting, he said, to think we can define hate speech, as we do hate crimes, in terms of the motivation of the speaker.

Jeremy Waldron gives his take on hate speech and the First Amendment.

But most advanced democracies do it the other way around: They prohibit speech that is likely to elicit, generate, incite or cause hate, Waldron said. This type of legislation is “looking for the effect of speech and the impact that it’s going have on the community, rather than it just being a cathartic expression of hatred by the person speaking,” he said. “I think it’s a reasonable task to put before our legislators that they do what they can to prevent the fomenting of intercommunal hostilities between social and religious groups. … That sort of poisoning of the social atmosphere is something that legislators have the social responsibility to worry about.”

The campus context is different because it is a community of free inquiry, “a place for speaking,” he said. And it is a place where, in living memory, mobs have screamed ugly epithets at members of some groups trying to get an education. “Campus administrators might reasonably think that they have to balance their obligations to free speech … with the possibility that the environment might be polluted, poisoned, in this way,” he said.

Strossen countered by saying India, for example, which has laws prohibiting hate speech, has seen many examples of politicians launching hate speech charges against their adversaries. Ironically, the laws have done more to stir up intercommunal violence than to alleviate it, she said.

Waldron pointed out that many countries have laws that prohibit group libel, such as defamation of a minority group. These laws offer the basic assurance of inclusion in society for all members, he said.

However, the group libel approach can be used against minority speakers, Strossen said. For example, a gay-rights organization in Paris was heavily fined for describing the leader of an anti-gay group as a “homophobe” – a term that was considered to be a defamatory slur.

And the group libel approach requires proof that the libel charge is false, which can have troubling consequences, Strossen said.

“You’re just giving a platform to the hate mongers to trot out whatever evidence they assert they have to substantiate their discriminatory views … and then play the role of being a persecuted martyr under the laws,” she said. “It worked for the Nazis, by the way, who were repeatedly prosecuted in Weimar Germany under the existing hate speech laws at the time.”

The event was the second in the Free Speech Presidential Speaker Series , initiated by President Martha E. Pollack. The series is co-sponsored by the Cornell Law School.

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You Don’t Say: American First Amendment Protection of Hate Speech

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Logan Kline, Associate Member, University of Cincinnati Law Review

Part One of a Two-part series comparing the American and Canadian systems of regulating hate speech.

I. Introduction

Despite being heralded as a pillar of the American conception of freedom, the First Amendment is an outlier when compared to the jurisprudence of the majority of other nations around the world. [1] Just to the north, the Canadian legal system takes a far more interventionist approach to the regulation of speech, with laws that prohibit various forms of expression such as hate speech. [2] Even the United States does not recognize an absolute right to unfettered speech, but the American threshold for acceptable speech is much more lenient than most others, including our neighbors to the north. [3]

The regulation of speech, specifically hate speech, is a hotly contested and often-debated subject. In light of the ambient public discourse, clarification of the scope of this article is crucial. First and foremost, hate speech and its progeny are abhorrent and an affront to civility. This is not in any capacity a defense of hate; it is a study of two contrasting approaches to fighting it, paired with an analysis of the effectiveness of each. By the end of this two-part article series, the goal is for each side to have been examined thoroughly enough to provide insight into the thought process behind both the American and the Canadian approach to the regulation of hate speech. Ultimately, the argument is not for the Canadian or American model, but instead it is against the common modern sentiment that positions one as a straw man to be effortlessly disposed of. Both sides have valid perspectives, so the goal of this series is to steel man each argument against the other, and argue that each is valid within its own legal system and premise of speech.

II. What Is Hate Speech?

Before diving into an analysis of the regulation of hate speech across Northern America, it is important to define the term. However, hate speech is not defined under U.S. law as it is not an outlawed class of language. Thus, it is not formally differentiated from any other protected speech in the United States. The United Nations in their “Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech” memorandum defined hate speech as “any kind of communication in speech, writing or behaviour, that attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of who they are, in other words, based on their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, colour, descent, gender or other identity factor.” [4]

III. The United States’ Approach

In the United States, freedom of speech is one of the core tenets set forth by the nation’s founders. [5] The First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech…” [6] However, the freedom of speech is not unlimited. [7] American law has held since the early 1900s that speech that actively incites violence or otherwise creates danger is not covered by the protection of the First Amendment. [8]

For example, in Schenck v. U.S. , Justice Holmes asserted that Congress has an interest in preventing words “of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils.” [9]   Justice Holmes further substantiated this concept by providing a now famous example: even under the most stringent of speech protections, a person cannot falsely yell “fire” in a crowded theater. [10] The Schenck decision provided this general test to be applied to restrictions on speech, known as the “clear and present danger” test. [11] The United States Supreme Court has since refined and adjusted this test through numerous cases, but the general concept that speech inciting violence and danger is unprotected remains in American jurisprudence today. [12]

Further, the United States Supreme Court has held that openly offensive speech and hate speech do not inherently cross into inciting violence or danger, and thus are protected under the United States Constitution. [13] In Cohen v. California , Justice Harlan wrote that offensive speech must be protected because “one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric.” [14] On the topic of hate speech specifically, the Supreme Court has decided a variety of cases outlining exactly what is, and what is not, protected. [15]

One preeminent example of the Supreme Court’s position on hate speech manifests in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, Minnesota . [16] In R.A.V. , the defendants burned a cross on the property of an African American resident, and the city prosecuted under a city ordinance outlawing hate crimes. [17] Justice Scalia delivered the opinion for the Court, striking down the city’s ordinance and ruling it unconstitutional on its face because “it prohibits otherwise permitted speech solely on the basis of the subjects the speech addresses.” [18] The Court went on to hold that the government cannot punish speech and expressive conduct only because it disapproves of the ideas expressed. [19] Justice Scalia noted the potential negative effect such a statute could have on public discourse in writing that: “[The City of] St. Paul has no such authority to license one side of a debate to fight freestyle, while requiring the other to follow Marquis of Queensberry rules.” [20] This holding had far-reaching implications, striking down not only this hate speech prohibition, but also hate speech legislation across the nation. [21]

After the R.A.V. decision, the nation was left wondering whether a state can outlaw cross burning specifically. In answer to this, Justice O’Connor delivered the opinion in Virginia v. Black , holding that cross burning could be banned if it was carried out with the “intent to intimidate.” [22] However, Justice Thomas in his dissent aptly noted that burning a cross is always an act meant to intimidate. [23] In Virginia v. Black , the Court considered the intimidation and threat of violence that comes with the burning of a cross. [24] However, some scholars retort that all hate speech comes with some threat of aggression or violence by the nature of the linguistic charge of the words used. [25]

In total, the American approach generally protects hate speech, so long as the speech does not fail one of the other tests set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court, such as the clear and present danger test in Schenck v. U.S. While hate speech may be limited if it presents danger or otherwise incites violence, the general premise is that pure hate speech is protected expression under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

IV. Strengths and Weaknesses of the United States’ Approach

The American approach relies on the concept of the Marketplace of Ideas, which derives from Justice Holmes’ language in the dissent of Abrams v. United States. [26] The Marketplace of Ideas theory holds that the best ideas will win out through competition if they are just allowed to enter the public discourse and relies on the premise that, given an open forum for discourse, the strongest and best ideas will prevail. [27] Reason appears to be the currency of this intellectual marketplace. In other words, ideas supported by more sound reason are the strongest that survive the marketplace.

Contemporary philosopher and cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Sam Harris conveyed the importance of open discourse and the role reason plays as follows:

I think the need is to be able to talk about the most important questions in human life without losing our connection to one another…We need to able to hear people out, we need to be able to reason about everything, because reasoning is the only thing that scales. It’s the only way of talking about a problem which stands the chance of being universalizable. [28]

In the context of the Marketplace of Ideas model, the result is well-reasoned arguments rising to the peak of the “market” through virtue of being the most logically sound.

Proponents of the American approach to hate speech would therefore argue that the government should not decide what does and does not qualify as acceptable discourse. [29] Instead, the morally-bankrupt ideas that truly are hate speech will be filtered out and exposed as weak in light of reason. [30] In this way, the dangerous and hateful ideas are dismantled out in the open for the world to see their unreasonable nature. [31] Others who may have similar thoughts then see their internal biases dismantled in a public way and can come to the conclusion that they are wrong. Otherwise, hateful people may resort to whispering amongst themselves in the shadows of society and spreading insidious ideologies like an undiagnosed disease. [32] If these ideas are allowed to spread beneath the surface in private forums, they can fester and grow to the point where they can no longer be easily cured by reason. [33] By the time the public realizes the societal disease is present, it has already cemented itself as a hate group.

The American approach also does not rely on the government to proscribe what is and is not hate speech. The danger of allowing the government to censor what it classifies as hate speech is that the term is relatively amorphous. [34] Lee Rowland, Senior Staff Attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, noted the danger of allowing the government to take on the role of censor as follows:

Your idea of “hate speech” may not be the government’s idea of “hate speech.” I know mine isn’t. But even if you agree with [the current president] — are you sure our next president will agree with your worldview? You shouldn’t be. That’s why I’m a true believer in the First Amendment. I am an anti-authoritarian. And I know that the government has historically wielded its raw power to silence those who speak truth to power. [35]

Therefore, rather than have government draw lines to govern the actions of individuals in their everyday conversations, the local community and members of the conversation themselves should act as their own censor. For example, if someone says something hateful, the first step should be to be for those involved to diffuse the situation on an interpersonal level. [36]

A conservative perspective on the American approach would argue that it is not the role of the federal government to step into the everyday lives of its citizens and limit what they can and cannot say. Instead, communities need to foster a sense of accountability in rejecting bias and hate wherever it manifests. There is little doubt that hate speech exists and should be stopped, but the issue at hand is who will define it, who will draw the lines of acceptability, and who will enforce it. Proponents of the American model reject the idea that legislators in Washington D.C. or anywhere should be able to place a linguistic fetter on what the entire nation can and cannot say. [37] Instead, personal accountability and other mechanisms of discourse, including the Marketplace of Ideas, should govern social acceptability. Finally, if the standard of whether something qualifies as hate speech or not is whether it offends, then many of the most forward-thinking, revolutionary ideas would be quelled. [38] Open discourse is necessary to drive societal collective knowledge forward, and before this can happen, hateful ideas need to be actively defeated in an open forum so that any who may silently hold discriminatory or insidious beliefs can learn and grow beyond them. [39]

Critics of the Marketplace of Ideas note that allowing hate speech to enter the public discourse results in significant harm done before logic can intervene. [40] This hateful language can be so demeaning that it does not engage with the public conversation on the level of reason, but instead subverts it by intimidating targets and silencing discussion. The result is not the defeat of hate speech through reason, but the stymying of rational conversation through intimidation and bigotry. To extrapolate the metaphor of a marketplace, some may argue that those who bring hate speech to the marketplace are bringing a weapon into the negotiation.

As for the argument that protecting hate speech allows it to come to the surface and be eliminated by better arguments, some critics assert that in the modern age of social media, public hate speech can actually attract others harboring internal resentment and embolden them to be more open in their bigotry. [41] Rather than serving as water to douse the flame, the public nature of the discussion stokes it into an inferno. [42] Writing for NPR, David Shih noted that the Marketplace of Ideas relies on several flawed assumptions. [43] According to Shih, one such falsehood, which he referred to as the “empathetic fallacy,” is that people actually care as a society to fight injustice and recognize hateful language when it manifests. [44] Further, Shih argued that racists and other peddlers of hate adapt and use code words as “dog whistles” to signal racist messaging and “game the system.” [45]

One fundamental disagreement in premise that could explain the competing perspectives on the Marketplace of Ideas model is whether speech itself, without incitement or threat of physical aggression, can constitute violence. If it cannot, then it logically follows that hate speech, no matter how abhorrent, should be weathered in order to keep the public discourse as unfettered as possible. However, if speech itself can be violence, then the logical conclusion would be to prevent the violence by stymying the hate speech. Further, if speech itself is violence and places targets in danger, the Supreme Court may need to reevaluate its test to encompass this form of harm.

In an article for The Washington Post entitled Why America Needs a Hate Speech Law , Richard Stengel wrote on the various criticisms of the American system and Marketplace of Ideas model. [46] Stengel argued that the Marketplace of Ideas is deeply flawed in that “no one ever quite explained how good ideas drive out bad ones, how truth triumphs over falsehood.” [47] He went on to write that this process would need to be “magical” in order to actually work properly. [48] Stengel argued that even if hate speech itself does not “pull the trigger,” it creates an environment that makes violent acts such as domestic terrorism more likely. [49] Further, he argued that hate speech enables discrimination and diminishes tolerance. [50]

The difference in Dr. Sam Harris’ perspective and that of Richard Stengel appears to spring from a fundamental difference in opinion on the capabilities of the American public to logically dismantle hate. Dr. Harris asserted that, when reason is juxtaposed with irrational thought, the reason will prevail. [51] However, Stengel wrote that not only does this not actually work in practice, but it also assumes a sterile, academic environment for discourse that does not exist in the social media era. [52] To support this, Stengel cited several studies in his article displaying that the vast majority of middle and high school students cannot tell the difference between real and fake news online and cannot even differentiate news from labeled ads. [53] Based on this research, Stengel argued that modern online discourse is not transparent and streamlined enough for truth to win out over falsehood or hate. [54]

V. Conclusion

The effectiveness of the American model has come under intense scrutiny recently with the number of hate crimes in the United States steadily rising over the past several years. [55] According to James Nolan, former F.B.I. crime analyst who helped oversee the National Hate Crime Data Collection Program from 1995-2000, “The trends show more violence, more interpersonal violence, and I think that’s probably reliable.” [56] That said, while critics may argue that this uptick necessitates change in our legal system, a solution is possible within the current framework if the American public embraces a cultural move toward rejecting hate at the personal level. For the American Marketplace of Ideas model of hate speech regulation to work, each individual must do their part in using reason to dismantle the arguments of those who wish to promulgate hate and bigotry. The model assumes that we will engage in our civic responsibility of cultivating the best possible community for rational thought to prevail over irrational prejudice. If Americans fail to oppose oppression wherever it arises and stay silent in the face of hate, then the American model fails. Therefore, the American public must take more personal accountability in the fight against hate if the American model of governmental hate speech protection is to succeed in the future.

Despite strong arguments for a more regulatory approach, the American model has proven effective throughout the nation’s history in both limiting hate speech and fostering an environment conducive to the rise of thought leaders. Ultimately, the measure upon which the success of the United States’ approach balances is whether the positive externalities of relatively unfettered speech outweigh the harm done by the hate speech that is allowed to remain. Even with merit on both sides of the debate, the United States’ culture of freedom and personal responsibility for maintaining that freedom tips the scale in favor of a libertarian approach to regulation of hate speech. That said, the only truly wrong answer to this debate is one that ignores the nuance and strength of the opposition. Stopping hate speech is a paramount issue that cannot afford to be looked at without considering all good solutions. 

[1] Melissa Block, Comparing Hate Speech Laws In The U.S. And Abroad , NPR, (last visited Nov. 7, 2020), https://www.npr.org/2011/03/03/134239713/France-Isnt-The-Only-Country-To-Prohibit-Hate-Speech .

[2] Canadian Human Rights Act, R.S.C., 1985, c. H-6 (Can.).

[3] That said, the United States is certainly not alone in its regulatory standards for hate speech. For instance, international law does not outlaw hate speech and mirrors the law of the United States very closely in applying an incitement standard. António Guterres, United Nations Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech (U.N. Docs.).

[5] U.S. Const. amend. I.

[7] Schenck v. U.S., 249 U.S. 47 (1919).

[9] Id. at 52.

[12] See Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494 (U.S. 1951) (In order for advocacy of violence to be unprotected, it must be connected with an act, and not just an abstraction of violence.); Yates v. U. S. , 354 U.S. 298 (U.S. 1957) (Advocacy for an idea only cannot be suppressed under the First Amendment. The relevant issue is whether there is advocacy for action.).

[13] Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969).

[14] Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15, 25 (1971).

[15] The cases include: Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U.S. 443 (2011); R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, Minn., 505 U.S. 377 (1992); Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343 (2003); and Wisconsin v. Mitchell, 508 U.S. 476 (1993).

[16] R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, Minn., 505 U.S. 377 (1992).

[17] Id. at 377.

[18] Id. at 381.

[19] Id. at 391.

[20] Id. at 392. (The Marquis of Queensberry rules are a commonly accepted code of rules governing boxing. Thus, Justice Scalia is commenting on the issue of regulating one side of an argument while allowing the opposition to engage unrestrained.)

[22] Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343 (2003).

[23] Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343 (2003) (THOMAS, J. dissenting).

[24] Virginia, supra note 22.

[25] Lee Rowland, Free Speech Can Be Messy, But We Need It , ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project (March 9, 2018) https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/free-speech-can-be-messy-we-need-it .

[26] Abrams v. United States , 250 US 616 (1919) (HOLMES, J. dissenting). The original concept of the Marketplace of Ideas can be traced back further than Justice Holmes to the seventeenth-century thinker John Milton.

[27] David Schultz, Marketplace of Ideas , The First Amendment Encyclopedia (June, 2017) https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/999/marketplace-of-ideas .

[28] Interview by Chris Anderson with Dr. Sam Harris, The TED Interviews, (Oct. 30, 2018) https://www.ted.com/talks/the_ted_interview_sam_harris_on_using_reason_to_build_our_morality/transcript?language=en#:~:text=We%20need%20to%20able%20to,the%20chance%20of%20being%20universalizable ; (For reference, “universalizability” mentioned here by Dr. Sam Harris refers to the concept expounded upon by eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant.)

[29] Rowland, supra note 25.

[30] Interview with John Anderson and Dr. Jordan Peterson, In Conversation, (April 3, 2018) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4NijLf3M-A .

[34] Rowland, supra note 25.

[36] Peterson, supra note 30.

[40] David Shih, Hate Speech and the Misnomer of ‘The Marketplace Of Ideas, NPR (May 3, 2017) https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/05/03/483264173/hate-speech-and-the-misnomer-of-the-marketplace-of-ideas .

[41] Richard Stengel, Why America Needs a Hate Speech Law , The Washington Post (Oct. 29, 2019) https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/29/why-america-needs-hate-speech-law/ .

[42] Shih, supra note 40.

[46] Stengel, supra note 41.

[51] Harris, supra note 28.

[52] Stengel, supra note 41.

[53] Id. (This statistic is cited to assert that the internet is not a sufficiently transparent or straight-forward forum for truth to rise to the surface. The internet tends to obscure messages as simple as ads, leading young adults to believe they are news stories, so it cannot be relied upon to self-regulate hate speech.)

[55] Adeel Hassan, Hate-Crime Violence Hits 16-Year High, F.B.I. Reports , N.Y. Times, (Nov. 12, 2019) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/hate-crimes-fbi-report.html .

Logan Kline

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Hate Crime Laws

About hate crimes.

Since 1968, when Congress passed, and President Lyndon Johnson signed into law, the first federal hate crimes statute, the Department of Justice has been enforcing federal hate crimes laws.  The 1968 statute made it a crime to use, or threaten to use, force to willfully interfere with any person because of race, color, religion, or national origin and because the person is participating  in a federally protected activity, such as public education, employment, jury service, travel, or the enjoyment of public accommodations, or helping another person to do so.  In 1968, Congress also made it a crime to use, or threaten to use, force to interfere with housing rights because of the victim’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; in 1988, protections on the basis of familial status and disability were added.  In 1996, Congress passed the Church Arson Prevention Act, 18 U.S.C. § 247.  Under this Act, it is a crime to deface, damage, or destroy religious real property, or interfere with a person’s religious practice, in situations affecting interstate commerce.  The Act also bars defacing, damaging, or destroying religious property because of the race, color, or ethnicity of persons associated with the property.  

In 2009, Congress passed, and President Obama signed, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, expanding the federal definition of hate crimes, enhancing the legal toolkit available to prosecutors, and increasing the ability of federal law enforcement to support our state and local partners.  This law removed then existing jurisdictional obstacles to prosecutions of certain race- and religion-motivated violence, and added new federal protections against crimes based on gender, disability, gender identity, or sexual orientation.  Before the Civil Rights Division prosecutes a hate crime, the Attorney General or someone the Attorney General designates must certify, in writing, that (1) the state does not have jurisdiction; (2) the state has requested that the federal government assume jurisdiction; (3) the verdict or sentence obtained pursuant to state charges did not demonstratively vindicate the federal interest in eradicating bias-motivated violence; or (4) a prosecution by the United States is in the public interest and necessary to secure substantial justice.

Hate Speech: Its Protection Under the First Amendment and Resisting It With Counterspeech

Introduction.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” 2 Each aspect of the First Amendment has its exceptions: people may assemble, but not violently riot; people may practice religion freely, as long as the practice excludes harming others; the press may report, save for printing libel and slander. Regarding the freedom of speech, the Constitution allows for anyone to say anything, unless the words have the potential to incite violence or if the speech includes threatening language. The bounds of free speech, save for these exceptions, are limitless such that extremely offensive language—also known as hate speech—runs rampant, especially in today’s political and social climate. In these cases, using the constitutional freedom of speech to one’s advantage when attempting to put down or prevent hate speech is the most valid option. Attempts to change the law regarding punishment of offensive speech is not feasible, according to previous court cases and current professional opinion.

Case Law Protecting Hate Speech

The law does not look kindly upon cases in which a party attempts to legally limit hate speech. In major hate speech cases, courts have tended to favor the expansion of free speech, not the limitation of it. For example, in the context of Skokie v. National Socialist Party (1977), the National Socalist Party of America (NSPA) made hateful and racist comments about Jewish people and people of color. 3 At the time, the village of Skokie, Illinois had a population of about 5,000 to 7,000 Nazi concentration camp survivors. 4 The Illinois Supreme Court ruled in favor of the NSPA, which sought to hold a public demonstration, and established that “public expression of ideas may not be prohibited merely because the ideas are themselves offensive to some of their hearers.” 5 To reach their decision, the Illinois Supreme Court relied partially on Cohen v. California (1971), a U.S. Supreme Court (“the Court”) case that similarly dealt with free/hate speech that included controversial language and symbolism. In this case, Paul Cohen wore a jacket opposing the Vietnam War, which read “Fuck the Draft. Stop the War.” 6 In Cohen , the Court ruled that government restriction of speech should only occur in the most extreme cases, due to the “premise of individual dignity and choice upon which our political system rests.” 7 Though the language and symbols that the NSPA used were extremely offensive and hateful toward marginalized and persecuted groups of people, the First Amendment right to free speech triumphed in both cases. This Note addresses how the United States can eradicate hateful and offensive expression for the sake of unity without limiting the individual freedoms that the Constitution promises.

Case Law Restricting Hate Speech

In only a select few cases, the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of restricting hate speech. For example, in Virginia v. Black (2003), three defendants had placed burning crosses in the yards of Black families and individuals. 8 They were tried and convicted on this account under a Virginia statute that prohibited cross burning. 9 According to the case law, the Court stated that the First Amendment “affords protection to symbolic or expressive conduct as well as to actual speech.” 10 In this case, the protection would be surrounding the symbolism of a burning cross. However, the Court also considered the group that was being targeted, along with the intention behind the symbol in this case. The burning cross in Virginia was an intimidation, according to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, and this intimidation fell under the umbrella of a threat “where a speaker directs a threat to a person or group of persons with the intent of placing the victim in fear of bodily harm or death.” 11 This ruling begs the question of how to determine whether a form of speech incites fear within a person or group of people, and whether that incitement constitutes a threat (and is therefore no longer legally protected).

In evaluating Skokie , the Swastika symbol that the NSPA used is similar to the symbolism of a burning cross. Both symbols accentuate hatred and potential threats towards a marginalized group. Burning crosses as a symbol of hatred against people of color originated in 1915 after the debut of the movie The Birth of a Nation , sparking the revival of the Klu Klux Klan. 12 Similarly, the use of the Nazi-appropriated Swastika represents “Aryan identity and German Nationalist pride,” which advances the idea of those of non-Aryan or German descent as inferior and racially impure, leading to physical discrimination against them. 13 In an appellate court review, the NSPA was forbidden to fly the Swastika during their marches. 14 Yet, the use of discriminatory and hateful language was able to persist based on later court rulings, and the organization retained permission to march against Jewish people and people of color. 15 This retainment calls into question the disparate rulings. The courts failed to recognize the incitement of fear in one instance of an organization that runs on racial, ethnic, and religious discrimination and hate speech, and yet, the courts were able to recognize the incitement of fear within another group based on very similar circumstances.

Two Ways to Inhibit Hate Speech

Limiting speech in general, regardless of the personal feelings of the judges rendering the decisions, is an arduous task—though possible. Scholars disagree on what would eradicate it more effectively: providing counterspeech to hate speech or attempting to enact laws to limit it. Jeremy Waldron, a professor at New York University School of Law, and Nadine Strossen, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union and professor at New York Law School, engaged in a public discourse about hate speech and presented differing views on how to fix the problems that hate speech breeds. 16 Before presenting their arguments, both agreed that “a lot of hate speech does satisfy the emergency principle: it constitutes a general threat or targeted harassment or hostile environment harassment or an intentional incitement of imminent violence.” 17 The best way to go about eradicating it, however, was a topic of disagreement: Strossen sides with the counterspeech method, and Waldron favors a legal solution. The biggest takeaway of Strossen’s point of view is the avoidance of censorship laws while still resisting hate speech to the highest extent; Waldron thinks that having legislators come up with ways to legally restrict hate speech is not unattainable, but “reasonable.” 18 While both speakers make valid points, the idea of counterspeech, logically speaking, seems to be the most reasonable if the courts are to adhere to the text of the First Amendment. Waldron’s idea would be the ideal solution, but it is less attainable and has the potential of crossing some constitutional boundaries, while Strossen’s idea stays away from legal impropriety.

The Benefits of Counterspeech

The Supreme Court holds the viewpoint that freedom of speech should be completely protected unless it breaks laws already in place, but it also pushes the idea that “the constitutionally permissible response to speech conveying controversial, disfavored views is ‘counterspeech,’ not censorship—more speech, not silence.” 19 Examples of counterspeech, or speech that directly shuts down discriminatorily-motivated hate speech, would include instances like the dialogue and symbols of the Civil Rights Movement, countless parades and marches for the LGBTQ+ community, and more. According to the American Bar Association, recently, there has been “remarkable and bipartisan outpouring of speech and peaceful dem­onstrations that have denounced hateful ideologies while celebrating our nation’s renewed commitments to equality, inclusivity, and intergroup harmony.” 20 Though instances of counterspeech do not cater to individual hateful biases, it proves that changing the rhetoric and pushing inclusivity by using the freedom of speech for good successfully reduces public forms of hate speech. For example, the outpour of support for the people being discriminated against during the neo-Nazi incident at Charlottesville greatly outnumbered the number of white supremacists supporting the oppressive movement. 21 Not only that, but chief executive officers of many companies offered their own counterspeech arguments in support of marginalized people. Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase stated, “Constructive economic and regulatory policies…will not matter if we do not address the divisions in our country.” 22 He offered support of both unification and of using the freedom of speech to advocate for the oppressed, rather than attempting to make laws to limit speech in general.

The examples of court rulings failing to suppress hate speech and the fact that social movements do more for shutting down discriminatory organizations and parties prove that counterspeech is a favorable alternative to shutting down hateful discourse. Making laws that contravene the First Amendment just to theoretically rid the United States of hate speech does not necessarily help to eradicate wrongful prejudice itself. However, through counterspeech and the social movements that typically go along with it, hateful discourse is reduced to an extent, and provides an educational experience on putting aside bias, stereotypes, and prejudice against marginalized communities at the same time.

• *B.A. Candidate for Philosophy and History, Fordham College at Rose Hill, Class of 2025. Thank you to the Fordham Undergraduate Law Review team, my friends, and my family for supporting me in writing this note.
• U.S. Const. amend. I.
• Skokie v. National Socialist Party, 69 Ill. 2d 605, 610 (Ill. 1978); see Chris Demaske, Village of Skokie v. National Socialist Party of America (Ill) (1978) , The First Amendment Encyclopedia, https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/728/village-of-skokie-v-national-socialist-party-of-america-ill.
• Skokie , 69 Ill. 2d at 610.
• Id . The U.S. Supreme Court heard National Socialist Party of America v. Skokie on appeal in 1977 and reversed and remanded the Illinois Supreme Court’s denial to lift the lower court’s injunction. The Court wrote that the state must allow the stay because the injunction will deprive the petitioners of their First Amendment rights “during the period of appellate review which, in the normal course, may take a year or more to complete.” National Socialist Party v. Skokie, 432 U.S. 43 (1977). However, this case still shows a reverence of the protection of free speech over its limitation since it represents a move in the Supreme Court to limit the application of restrictions on free speech. See Nadine Strossen, Hate: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship (2018).
• Cohen v. Cal., 403 U.S. 15, 16 (1971).
• Id . at 25.
• Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343, 348 (2003).
• See id . at 344.
• Id . at 358.
• Id . at 360.
• The Various Shady Lives of the Ku Klux Klan , Time (Apr. 9, 1965), http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,898581,00.html.
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Introduction to the Holocaust , Holocaust Encyclopedia (Nov. 5, 2021), https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/introduction-to-the-holocaust.
• Skokie v. National Socialist Party, 51 Ill. App. 3d 279, 293 (Ill. App. Ct. 1977). The court said that “[t]he swastika is a personal affront to every member of the Jewish faith, in remembering the nearly consummated genocide of their people committed with memory by those who used the swastika as their symbol.” This appellate court decision was affirmed in part and reversed in part by the Illinois Supreme Court in Skokie v. National Socialist Party .
• See High Court Judge Upholds Ban on Swastikas in Skokie March , The Chicago Tribune (Aug. 27, 1977) (The article refers to the appellate case occurring after the original court case, in which the NSA was allowed to march but not hold offensive and hateful symbols).
• See Susan Kelley, Legal Experts Discuss Hate Speech and How to Limit It , Cornell Chronicle (Apr. 11, 2018), https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2018/04/legal-experts-discuss-hate-speech-and-how-limit-it.
• Id (Waldron finds that presenting hate speech instances in front of legislators and persuading them to make laws protecting against it is feasible).
• See Nadine Strossen, Counterspeech in Response to Changing Notions of Free Speech , American Bar Association (2018), https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/the-ongoing-challenge-to-define-free-speech/counterspeech-in-response-to-free-speech/.

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Table of Contents

Is hate speech legal.

There is no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment. So, many Americans wonder: Is hate speech legal?

Contrary to a common misconception, most expression one might identify as “hate speech” is protected by the First Amendment and cannot lawfully be censored, punished, or unduly burdened by the government — including public colleges and universities. 

The Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly rejected government attempts to prohibit or punish hate speech. Instead, the Court has come to identify within the First Amendment a broad guarantee of “ freedom for the thought that we hate ,” as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes described the concept in a 1929 dissent. In a 2011 ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts described our national commitment to protecting hate speech in order to preserve a robust democratic dialogue: 

Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and—as it did here—inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.

In other words, the First Amendment recognizes that the government cannot regulate hate speech without inevitably silencing the dissent and dialogue that democracy requires. Instead, we as citizens possess the power to most effectively answer hateful speech — whether through debate, protest, questioning, laughter, silence, or simply walking away. 

As Justice Louis Brandeis put it, the framers of the Bill of Rights “believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.” 

Justice Brandeis argued that our nation’s founders believed that prohibiting “evil counsels” — what today we might call hate speech — would backfire:

They recognized the risks to which all human institutions are subject. But they knew that order cannot be secured merely through fear of punishment for its infraction; that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies; and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones. Believing in the power of reason as applied through public discussion, they eschewed silence coerced by law — the argument of force in its worst form. Recognizing the occasional tyrannies of governing majorities, they amended the Constitution so that free speech and assembly should be guaranteed.

Banning hate speech without restricting political speech is prohibitively difficult because of the target’s inherent subjectivity. Each American all but certainly has a different understanding of exactly what expression should lose First Amendment protection as hate speech. One citizen’s hateful screed is another’s religious text; one citizen’s slur is another’s term of endearment; or, as the Court put it, “ one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric .” 

As a result, crafting a generally applicable definition of hate speech is all but impossible without silencing someone’s “legitimate” speech. Hate speech is also a moving target, making a workable definition still more elusive. Conceptions of what constitutes “hate” do not remain stable over time. As ideas gain or lose acceptance, political movements advance or recede, and social commitments strengthen or erode, notions of what is unacceptably “hateful” change, too. 

Today’s majority viewpoint should not be allowed to foreclose that of tomorrow. For example, thirty years ago, the Board of Regents of Texas A & M University sought to deny recognition to a gay student organization because it believed that  “[s]o-called ‘gay’ activities run diabolically counter to the traditions and standards of Texas A & M.” At the time, the Board may have voiced the majority view, which found the gay students’ speech to be beyond the pale. Today, the opposite characterization might be true. 

Contrary to another common misconception, however, the First Amendment’s protection is not absolute. The Supreme Court has identified narrow exceptions to the First Amendment , including but not limited to speech that constitutes unlawful incitement, true threats, intimidation, or discriminatory harassment. Some of these carefully-defined exceptions encompass speech that one might identify as hate speech. 

So, is hate speech legal? Most of the time, yes, with a few narrow exceptions.

For More on “Hate Speech”

It is quite clear that the perceived benefits of censoring psychically harmful hate speech are far outweighed by the costs of such suppression. The plus side, from the perspective of those who seek speech suppression, is quite limited.  That is because the new suppression would extend to only a subset of hate speech, since we already punish hate speech that causes specific tangible harms: threats, harassment, incitement, and hate crimes.  Of that newly suppressible subset — psychically harmful hate speech — we would only punish yet another subset, consisting of the most blatant expression. In contrast, even advocates of restricting psychically harmful hate speech acknowledge that free speech principles would nonetheless protect more subtle expressions of racism, sexism, and other bias.  Yet, it is likely that these more subtle expressions may well be the most damaging precisely because they cannot as easily be dismissed as biased. On the cost side, permitting the government to punish psychically harmful hate speech would undermine equality and exert an incalculable chilling effect on any speech that challenges the prevailing orthodoxy in any community. Nadine Strossen, “ Freedom of Speech and Equality: Do We Have to Choose? ,” Journal of Law and Policy , December 2, 2016.  

There is no general 1st Amendment exception allowing the government to punish "hate speech" that denigrates people based on their identity. Things we call "hate speech" might occasionally fall into an existing 1st Amendment exception: a racist speech might seek to incite imminent violence against a group, or might be reasonably interpreted as an immediate threat to do harm. But "hate speech," like other ugly types of speech we despise, is broadly protected. Ken White, “ Actually, hate speech is protected speech ,” Los Angeles Times , June 8, 2017. 

“The big problem for proponents of hate-speech laws and codes is that they can never explain where to draw a stable and consistent line between hate speech and vigorous criticism, or who exactly can be trusted to draw it. The reason is that there is no such line.“ Jonathan Rauch, “ A new argument for hate-speech laws? Um … no ,” Washington Post , Feb. 4, 2014. 

“The proposed remedies for ‘hate speech’ tend to be administrative. So in practical terms if you demand the policing of speech, what you want is to beef up the university administration. You are accelerating a process, already under way, toward bloating up the administrative apparatus in an increasingly corporatised university. It can’t be a good thing to turn the development of a culture of coexistence and decency—which is what you were rightly proposing—to turn it into a police matter. I think that is misguided, however motivated.” Rosemary Bechler and Todd Gitlin, “ Safe spaces, the void between, and the absence of trust ,” openDemocracy , January 4, 2016. 

“Defining hate speech is not just difficult; it’s impossible, as evident from the vastly different definitions surveyed by Sellars. This inability to agree on even a basic framework underscores the futility of creating a definition narrow enough to protect free speech yet broad enough to cover any discernible category of expression. Sellars’ research encompassing hundreds of irreconcilable definitions has yielded no happy medium, only the realization that the United States already strikes this balance through the narrow categories of speech unprotected by the First Amendment.” Zach Greenberg, “ Law review article ‘Defining Hate Speech’ attempts the impossible ,” FIRE, April 4, 2017. 

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Hate speech: A growing, international threat

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Whilst hate speech is nothing new, it has arguably been super-charged by the internet, which has allowed lies, conspiracies, and threats to instantly spread around the world. In a short series of features, based on the new UN Podcasts series, UNiting Against Hate , we look at the effects, and possible solutions, to this growing problem.

Hate speech is having a demonstrable effect on society: one of the many similarities between the January attacks on Brazil’s government buildings, and the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, is that each occurred after certain groups repeatedly directed dangerous rhetoric and false claims against others.

Concerns over the growing phenomenon have prompted independent human rights experts to call on major social media platforms to change their business models and become more accountable in the battle against rising hate speech online.

Recently, the case of divisive social media influencer Andrew Tate captured widespread media attention, following his detention in Romania, as part of an investigation into allegations of human trafficking and rape, which he denies.

Tate was previously banned from various prominent social media platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube for expressing misogynistic views and hate speech.

In the new UN Podcasts series UNiting Against Hate , producer Katy Dartford speaks to prominent activists whose work has made them the subjects of online attacks, disinformation, and threats.

Hate speech and deadly violence in South Sudan

In South Sudan, internet access is limited to a small elite, but activists such as Edmund Yakani, one of the country’s most prominent human rights defenders, are nevertheless targeted by online hate speech.

In this episode of the UNiting Against Hate podcast, Mr. Yakani explains how hate speech, both in-country and from the diaspora, is contributing to further violence in the world's newest internationally recognized country: 60 per cent of deadly violence in the country, he says, is triggered by hate speech.

Mr. Yakani says that has often been the victim of online attacks, in which his image, or statement has made, have been distorted. “Some describe me as a type of an animal, a cockroach, monkey or snake, or just call me a murderer.”

“This narrative has huge implications. It destroys my social fabric, my relationships with others, and it generates mistrust and a lack of confidence in people towards me.” 

Hate speech is having a destabilizing influence on his country, worries Mr. Yakani, making violence the primary tool for resolving disputes. The answer, in his opinion, is more investment in effective responses, which include targeted sanctions on those responsible, improved legislation, and education.

Despite the many risks to his own security, Mr Yakani continues to strive to ensure accountability, justice and respect for human rights. “ Anybody who is standing and demanding accountability, transparency, and fighting against corruption, or demanding democratic transformation, is always a target of hate speech .”

‘Coming out’ as Dalit

When in 2015  Yashica Dutt, publicly described herself as Dalit – a group of people who, according to those who subscribe to the Indian caste system, sit at the bottom of the pyramid – she became another victim of hate speech.

“I was very vocal. I was talking about what caste looks like and how we need to identify and acknowledge that it exists and no longer erase it. And obviously that narrative bothered a lot of people, so I have been a part of many troll attacks ”. 

The journalist and award-winning author of the memoir “Coming out as Dalit” says that caste exists within Indian societies, whether in the country itself, or the Indian diaspora. The rise of social media has, she says, led to racism, hate, and verbal assaults making an unwelcome comeback.

Her Tumblr blog, “Documents of Dalit discrimination”, is an effort to create a safe space to talk about the trauma of what it comes to be a lower-caste person, but she says she now faces hate speech every day on Twitter and Facebook .

“If I give a talk or have a panel discussion, there are always a few trolls,” she says. “I'm told that I'm being paid by a mysterious agency, rather than because I'm truly sick of the discrimination that I face and that people around me face.” 

Hate speech “truly does have a heinous form online because you can mobilise armies of trolls to swarm on your account and make sure that you never use your voice again. And it's quite scary,” she says.

According to Ms Dutt one prominent right-wing account incited its million or so followers to hurl abuses, slurs, and make threat of physical or sexual assault, and even death.

“I had to go offline for a long time. Even though I live in New York, a lot of the threats comes from India. And now we have the rise of fundamentalist Hindu communities in the US as well. It was scary, and over time I've learnt how to cope with it.” 

“Consciously or subconsciously, this affects how we use our voice. Ultimately, you think if I tweet this in this particular way, what is going to be the consequence?”

‘I buried all my hopes’

Another female writer and journalist who has experienced the life-threatening effects of hate speech is writer and journalist Martina Mlinarević .

For years, Ms Mlinarević, who is also the ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Czech Republic, wrote about aspects of corruption in her country. For this she faced threats and insults online, but the level of abuse reached a new level, when a photo of her mastectomy scar was published in a magazine, a first for Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“I had to move with a small child to another city due to threats and cyberbullying. The toughest and saddest part for me was fleeing my home town, where I lived for 37 years.” 

Ms Mlinarević explains how, in 2020, when she came to Prague, a doll created to resemble her was burned at a traditional carnival. “It was a kind of persecution campaign to punish me not only for the exposure of the scar on my breast, but also for daring to comment on politics and to promote gender issues and all other problems.”

All these attacks were unpunished at that time, and they escalated into misogynistic, intimidating threats to her safety and family. “For me that was the point when I buried all my hopes regarding the area where I came from”. 

Despite her experiences, Ms. Mlinarević remains optimistic for the future. “I'm trying to work with young people as much as I can, trying to empower their voice, girls’ and women’s voices, and trying to teach them to stand up for themselves, and for others. Let's hope the future will bring something better for all of our children.” 

You can subscribe to our UN Podcasts series, UNiting Against Hate, here .

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6 Major U.S. Supreme Court Hate Speech Cases

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The American Bar Association defines hate speech as "speech that offends, threatens, or insults groups, based on race , color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, or other traits." While Supreme Court justices have acknowledged the offensive nature of such speech in recent cases like  Matal v. Tam (2017) , they have been reluctant to impose broad restrictions on it.

Instead, the Supreme Court has chosen to impose narrowly tailored limits on speech that is regarded as hateful. In  Beauharnais v. Illinois (1942) , Justice Frank Murphy outlined instances where speech may be curtailed, including "lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous and the insulting or 'fighting' words — those which by their very utterances inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace." 

Later cases before the high court would deal with the rights of individuals and organizations to express messages or gestures many would consider patently offensive—if not intentionally hateful—to members of a given racial, religious, gender, or other population.

Terminiello v. Chicago (1949)

Arthur Terminiello was a defrocked Catholic priest whose anti-Semitic views, regularly expressed in newspapers and on the radio, gave him a small but vocal following in the 1930s and '40s. In February of 1946, he spoke to a Catholic organization in Chicago. In his remarks, he repeatedly attacked Jews and Communists and liberals, inciting the crowd. Some scuffles broke out between audience members and protesters outside, and Terminiello was arrested under a law banning riotous speech, but the Supreme Court overturned his conviction.

[F]reedom of Speech," Justice William O. Douglas wrote for the 5-4 majority, is "protected against censorship or punishment, unless shown likely to reduce a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest ... There is no room under our Constitution for a more restrictive view."

Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969)

No organization has been more aggressively or justifiably pursued on the grounds of hate speech than the Ku Klux Klan , but the arrest of an Ohio Klansman named Clarence Brandenburg on criminal syndicalism charges, based on a KKK speech that recommended overthrowing the government, was overturned.

Writing for the unanimous Court, Justice William Brennan argued that "The constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."

National Socialist Party v. Skokie (1977)

When the National Socialist Party of America, better known as Nazis, was declined a permit to speak in Chicago, the organizers sought a permit from the suburban city of Skokie, where one-sixth of the town's population was made up of families that had survived the Holocaust. County authorities attempted to block the Nazi march in court, citing a city ban on wearing Nazi uniforms and displaying swastikas. 

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower ruling that the Skokie ban was unconstitutional. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, where the justices declined to hear the case, in essence allowing the lower court's ruling to become law. After the verdict, the city of Chicago granted the Nazis three permits to march; the Nazis, in turn, decided to cancel their plans to march in Skokie.

R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992)

In 1990, a St. Paul, Minn., teen burned a makeshift cross on the lawn of an African-American couple. He was subsequently arrested and charged under the city's Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance, which banned symbols that "[arouses] anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender."

After the Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the legality of the ordinance, the plaintiff appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the city had overstepped its bounds with the breadth of the law. In a unanimous ruling written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Court held that the ordinance was excessively broad.

Scalia, citing the Terminiello case, wrote that "displays containing abusive invective, no matter how vicious or severe, are permissible unless they are addressed to one of the specified disfavored topics."

Virginia v. Black (2003)

Eleven years after the St. Paul case, the U.S. Supreme Court revisited the issue of cross-burning after three people were arrested separately for violating a similar Virginia ban.

In a 5-4 ruling written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor , the Supreme Court held that while cross-burning may constitute illegal intimidation in some cases, a ban on the public burning of crosses would violate the First Amendment .

"[A] State may choose to prohibit only those forms of intimidation," O'Connor wrote, "that are most likely to inspire fear of bodily harm." As a caveat, the justices noted, such acts can be prosecuted if the intent is proven, something not done in this case.

Snyder v. Phelps (2011)

The Rev. Fred Phelps, the founder of the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church, made a career out of being reprehensible to many people. Phelps and his followers came to national prominence in 1998 by picketing the funeral of Matthew Shepard, displaying signs the used slurs directed at homosexuals. In the wake of 9/11, church members began demonstrating at military funerals, using similarly incendiary rhetoric.

In 2006, members of the church demonstrated at the funeral of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq. Snyder's family sued Westboro and Phelps for intentional infliction of emotional distress, and the case began making its way through the legal system.

In an 8-1 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Westboro's right to picket. While acknowledging that Westboro's "contribution to public discourse may be negligible," Chief Justice John Roberts' ruling rested in existing U.S. hate speech precedent: "Simply put, the church members had the right to be where they were." 

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Scottish Hate Crime Law Takes Effect as Critics Warn It Will Stifle Speech

The legislation expands protections and creates a new charge of “stirring up hatred.” Critics, including J.K. Rowling, said the law was “wide open to abuse.”

By Sopan Deb

A sweeping law targeting hate speech went into effect in Scotland on Monday, promising protection against threats and abuse but drawing criticism that it could have a chilling effect on free speech.

The law, which was passed by the Scottish Parliament in 2021, expands protections for marginalized groups and creates a new charge of “stirring up hatred,” which makes it a criminal offense to communicate or behave in a way that “a reasonable person would consider to be threatening, abusive or insulting.”

A conviction could lead to a fine and a prison sentence of up to seven years.

The protected classes as defined in the law include age, disability, religion, sexual orientation and transgender identity. Racial hatred was omitted because it is already covered by a law from 1986. The new law also does not include women among the protected groups; a government task force has recommended that misogyny be addressed in separate legislation.

J.K. Rowling, the “Harry Potter” author who has been criticized as transphobic for her comments on gender identity , said the law was “wide open to abuse by activists,” and took issue with its omission of women.

Ms. Rowling, who lives in Edinburgh, said in a lengthy social media post on Monday that Scotland’s Parliament had placed “higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls.”

“I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offense under the terms of the new act,” she added, “I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.”

On Tuesday, the police in Scotland said that while Ms. Rowling’s post had generated complaints, the author would not be facing criminal charges.

Rishi Sunak, the Conservative prime minister of the United Kingdom, expressed support for Ms. Rowling, telling the British newspaper The Telegraph that “people should not be criminalized for stating simple facts on biology. We believe in free speech in this country, and Conservatives will always protect it.”

Although Scotland is part of Britain, it enjoys political and fiscal autonomy on many matters, including economy, education, health, justice and more.

The new law has long had the support of Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, but it has raised concerns about the effect it might have on free speech. Mr. Yousaf, who was Scotland’s justice secretary when the bill was passed, was asked directly on Monday about the criticism from Ms. Rowling and others who oppose the law.

“It is not Twitter police. It is not activists, it is not the media. It is not, thank goodness, even politicians who decide ultimately whether or not crime has been committed,” Mr. Yousaf told Sky News . He said that it would be up to “the police to investigate and the crown, and the threshold for criminality is incredibly high.”

The law was introduced after a 2018 study by a retired judge recommend consolidating the country’s hate crime’s laws and updating the Public Order Act of 1986, which covers Britain and Northern Ireland. Scotland’s Parliament approved the new law 82-32 in March 2021.

Supporters of the legislation have spent years rallying support for it, saying it is crucial to combating harassment.

“We know that the impact on those on the receiving end of physical, verbal or online attacks can be traumatic and life-changing,” Siobhan Brown, Scotland’s minister for victims and community safety, said in a statement celebrating the law. “This legislation is an essential element of our wider approach to tackling that harm.”

But there has been fierce pushback against the law, including from Ms. Rowling, and the Scottish Conservative Party, whose leader, Douglas Ross, told Mr. Yousaf during first minister’s questions on March 14 that “the controversial new law is ripe for abuse.” In a separate questions exchange on March 21, Mr. Ross said that the law was “dangerous and unworkable” and that he expected it to “quickly descend into chaos.”

“People like J.K. Rowling could have police at their door every day for making perfectly reasonable statements,” he said.

Mr. Yousaf, who is of Pakistani descent, has cited the 1986 law as proper precedent for the new bill.

“If I have the protection against somebody stirring up hatred because of my race — and that has been the case since 1986 — why on earth should these protections not exist for someone because of their sexuality, or disability or their religion?” he told Parliament on March 21.

The issue of how the Scottish government should handle misogyny has been examined by a government-commissioned task force, which recommended in 2022 that protections for women be added in a separate bill with elements similar to the hate crimes bill that was passed the previous year.

The first minister at the time, Nicola Sturgeon, welcomed the report , promising that her government would give it full consideration. Mr. Yousaf, her successor, has also indicated his support, but there has been no serious movement in Parliament yet.

Claire Moses contributed reporting from London.

Sopan Deb is a Times reporter covering breaking news and culture. More about Sopan Deb

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Scotland’s government says a new law will tackle hate crime. Critics say it could hurt free speech

Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf speaks during First Minster’s Questions (FMQ’s) at the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood, Edinburgh, Scotland, Thursday March 28, 2024. (Jane Barlow/PA via AP)

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LONDON (AP) — A new law against hate speech came into force in Scotland on Monday, praised by some but criticized by others who say its sweeping provisions could criminalize religious views or tasteless jokes.

The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act makes it an offense to stir up hatred with threatening or abusive behavior on the basis of characteristics including age, disability, religion, sexual orientation and transgender identity. Racial hatred was already banned under a law dating from 1986.

The maximum sentence is seven years in prison.

The legislation does not specifically ban hatred against women. The Scottish government says that will be tackled by a separate forthcoming law against misogyny.

Scottish Minister for Victims and Community Safety Siobhian Brown said the new law would help build “safer communities that live free from hatred and prejudice.”

“We know that the impact on those on the receiving end of physical, verbal or online attacks can be traumatic and life-changing,” she said. “This legislation is an essential element of our wider approach to tackling that harm.”

Critics argue that the law will have a chilling effect on free speech, making people afraid to express their views. The legislation was passed by the Scottish Parliament almost three years ago but has been delayed by wrangling over its implementation.

Veteran human rights activist Peter Tatchell said the law was well-intended but vague, relying on “subjective interpretation” of what constitutes abuse and allowing people to report alleged offenses anonymously.

The Scottish National Party-led government in Edinburgh says the legislation includes free speech protections, including a specific guarantee that people can still “ridicule or insult” religion.

“The threshold of criminality in terms of the new offenses is very, very high indeed,” First Minister Humza Yousaf said. “Your behavior has to be threatening or abusive and intended to stir up hatred.”

“Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling, who has called the law “ludicrous,” is among critics who say it could be used to silence what are known as “gender-critical” feminists, who argue that rights for trans women should not come at the expense of those who are born biologically female.

In a series of posts on X, Rowling referred to several prominent trans women as men. Misgendering could be an offense under the new law in some circumstances.

“I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment,” Rowling wrote.

Scottish National Party lawmaker Joanna Cherry, another critic of the law, said that “if you are a woman, you have every right to be concerned.”

“Biological sex is not included as a protected characteristic in the act, despite women being one of the most abused cohorts in our society,” she wrote in The National newspaper.

Meanwhile, police organizations are concerned the law will trigger a flood of reports over online abuse.

David Kennedy, general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, said the law could “cause havoc with trust in police.” And the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents wrote to lawmakers to express worry that the law could be “weaponized” by an “activist fringe.”

The law is the latest case of Scotland’s semi-autonomous government, which is led by the pro-independence SNP, diverging from the Conservative U.K. administration in London. In 2022, the Scottish Parliament passed a law allowing people to change their legally recognized gender through self-declaration, without the need for medical certification.

The gender-recognition legislation was vetoed by the British government , which said it conflicted with U.K.-wide equalities legislation that, among other things, guarantees women and girls access to single-sex spaces such as changing rooms and shelters.

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UN actions against hate speech

International Human Rights Law

There is no formal definition of “hate speech” in international human rights law. Therefore, most United Nations instruments refer to “incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence”.

Limitations of the freedom of speech under International Law seek to strike a fine balance between two fundamental principles:

• On the one hand, the principle of equality and non-discrimination for all people that guarantees the equal enjoyment of human rights, protection of the law and dignity, without any discrimination;
• On the other hand, the right to freedom of opinion and expressi on that protects the right to hold opinions without interference and the freedom of expression, including the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kind, regardless of frontiers and through any media.

While certain restrictions on freedom of expression may be motivated by principles of equality and non-discrimination, “direct and public incitement to genocide” and “advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence” are strictly prohibited under international law, and are considered the “severest forms of hate speech”.

The International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) , adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1965, prohibits “propaganda” and “dissemination of ideas” about racial superiority and racial discrimination, including from public authorities or public institutions (art. 4).

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is the first human rights treaty adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948, on the heels of the atrocities committed during the Second World War. It specifies that genocide is a crime that can take place in times of war or peace and it obliges States to take measure to prevent it and punish perpetrators.

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court adopted in 1998 also holds “criminally responsible and liable for punishment” anyone who ”directly and publicly incites others to commit genocide” (art. 25).

“Addressing hate speech does not mean limiting or prohibiting freedom of speech. It means keeping hate speech from escalating into something more dangerous, particularly incitement to discrimination, hostility and violence, which is prohibited under international law.” — United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, June 2019 .

“Addressing hate speech does not mean limiting or prohibiting freedom of speech. It means keeping hate speech from escalating into more something more dangerous, particularly incitement to discrimination, hostility and violence, which is prohibited under international law.”

— United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, June 2019

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Friday briefing: Scotland’s new hate crime law descends into disarray

In today’s newsletter: Scotland’s new Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act was supposed to protect its most vulnerable communities. Instead, it’s served only to create even bigger divides

Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First Edition

I should be broadcasting to Australia right now, but I politely declined the request so I could write to you instead. I love my job as Scotland correspondent and, of course, lots of the topics I report on have global relevance. But it’s not every week that I’m fielding calls from international newsrooms desperate for me to explain the technicalities of the latest Holyrood parliament legislation.

So it was this week. The Scottish government’s new hate crime law is supposed to protect vulnerable communities from abuse. Instead, it has resulted in an almighty omnishambles that has dominated the headlines at home and abroad , with fierce arguments about the limits of free speech, police officers overwhelmed by thousands of potentially vexatious complaints and, most critically, the groups it was seeking to protect warning that the debate has veered too far from the reality of hate crime they experience on the streets of Scotland every day. I’ll explain what the law was designed to do and why it has proved so controversial after this morning’s headlines.

Five big stories

Gaza | Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has said Israel will increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, including the temporary reopening of a key crossing that was destroyed in the 7 October Hamas attack. The move came after Joe Biden said future US support for Israel will depend on it taking concrete action to protect civilians and aid workers.

Garrick Club | The men-only Garrick Club has moved closer to admitting female members , after an emergency committee meeting acknowledged there was nothing in the rules to prevent them from joining. The late-night vote means women could become members within months, 193 years after the club was founded, sources said.

Politics | Leaked documents show Tory executives discussed exploiting Conservative party members’ personal data to build a mobile phone app that could track users’ locations and allow big brands to advertise to Conservative supporters. The party would then take a cut of sales.

Crime | A senior Conservative MP has reportedly admitted giving out the personal phone numbers of colleagues to a person he met on a dating app. William Wragg told the Times he gave the information after he had sent intimate pictures of himself, saying he was “scared” and “mortified”. Police are investigating after MPs were apparently targeted in a “spear-phishing” attack , in what security experts believe could be an attempt to compromise parliament.

Journalism | Hella Pick, the Guardian’s pioneering former foreign correspondent and diplomatic editor, has died at the age of 96 . Her career spanned more than seven decades, covering geopolitical upheavals and tectonic shifts in global power. Her last article , on the war in Gaza, was published in January.

In depth: Defining hate

The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act has two elements – it consolidates the existing law in Scotland on crimes that are “aggravated by prejudice”, including age for the first time in the list of protected characteristics, but it also creates a new offence of “threatening or abusive behaviour which is intended to stir up hatred” on the grounds of age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity and variations in sex characteristics. These additional provisions add to longstanding offences relating to stirring up racial hatred, which have been in place across the UK since 1986.

The bill, which was spearheaded by Humza Yousaf , when the first minister was justice secretary, prompted extensive and angry debate as it passed through Holyrood in 2021. MSPs voted to strengthen freedom of speech provisions after earlier drafts provoked an outcry from religious and arts groups, and there were profound concerns that the “dwelling defence” was ditched, meaning that the new law applies in private homes as well as online. There was also outrage that women were not protected. Instead, the Scottish government agreed to follow Helena Kennedy’s working group, which recommended a standalone act to tackle misogynistic abuse but this has yet to be timetabled, adding to the frustration of gender-critical feminists who believe women’s protections are being downgraded.

And that is central to why this law has captured the limelight. This Holyrood debate is happening in the context of a global culture war around freedom of speech and the right to offend, and what some feminists believe is a clash between transgender rights and women’s rights. Since 2021 those divisions have only become more entrenched across the world and in Scotland the mood was heightened by another contentious piece of legislation, on gender recognition reform that was ultimately blocked by the UK government , which argued it cut across the UK Equality Act.

Despite repeated assurances from ministers about the balance with free speech, concerns grew that the new measures could be used maliciously against certain groups for expressing their opinions, in particular gender-critical feminists who wanted to state that sex is a biological fact and not affected by the gender someone chooses to identify with. Repeated assurances that these sorts of statements – misgendering, for example – were not a crime under the act did little to assuage critics, whose fears were amplified in certain sections of the Scottish media.

What actually happened in the first week?

The first week of the act has resulted in a deluge of complaints – which can be sent in using an online form. While Police Scotland say they are still collating figures, reports suggest up to 4,000 complaints were filed in the first 48 hours, an extraordinary number, and one the police are not set up to handle. Police Scotland is badly overstretched, with falling recruitment and rising absences for mental ill-health. The officers’ federation has also complained bitterly about the inadequacy of the two-hour online training module provided to navigate this complex and emotive territory.

A substantial number of those complaints, it is believed, related to a social media thread posted by author and prominent gender-critical feminist JK Rowling. In it, she challenged Police Scotland to arrest her after listing sex offenders who had described themselves as transgender alongside well known trans women activists, describing them as “men, every last one of them”. Police Scotland later confirmed this was not criminal, nor would it be logged as a “non-crime hate incident”, a method of recording that has been in place for many years as a means of monitoring community tensions.

Another chunk of the early complaints are thought to relate to a speech given by Yousaf himself in 2020, during which he highlighted the preponderance of white people in senior public roles. Police Scotland again confirmed that no crime had been committed in this case, nor was a non-crime hate incident recorded.

What does it mean for the SNP?

While the Scottish government has to take much of the responsibility for explaining their legislative intent to the public, let’s keep in mind that online disinformation and some mainstream media misreporting has played its part in this mess. Yousaf himself has robustly defended the act, pointing to racist graffiti targeting him, which appeared near his family home in Broughty Ferry on Monday, as a reason why there should be “zero tolerance” of hate in Scottish society.

But it’s noticeable that other senior government ministers have not been rushing to the microphone – it is the Easter holidays after all. (Nor have Labour or Lib Dem MSPs, the majority of whom also voted for the act in 2021. Perhaps they’re all at the same caravan park.)

It’s worth remembering that Lord Bracadale, whose 2018 review of hate crime law was the basis of the bill, envisaged that the prosecutions for stirring up hatred would be used sparingly – indeed, in England, a similar offence for stirring up hatred based on people’s sexual orientation has been prosecuted only a handful of times. He planned that the hate crime aggravations – an assault because someone is holding hands with a same-sex partner, the verbal abuse of a wheelchair user or hijab-wearer on public transport – would continue to be where the full force of the law was felt.

This chimes with what campaigners representing all the protected characteristics included in the new act have told the Guardian over the past week – they have grave concerns that this current hyper focus on social-media postings distracts from real-world hate crimes which, sadly, remain a daily occurrence on our streets.

What else we’ve been reading

Come for the image of Tim Dowling immersed in a ball pit , stay for his attempt to find wonder in everyday life. Toby Moses, head of newsletters

Frances Ryan’s searing Opinion piece on how disabled children are edited out of “perfect” school photographs is made all the more powerful by the number of other people who came forward with similar stories after the initial incident went viral. Libby

Zoe Williams is characteristically brilliant on the end of the ex-MP gravy train : “There is no reason why they’d walk into jobs with businesses who are at the sharp end of a project that had ‘ fuck business ’ as one of its core principles.” Toby

Peter Bradshaw counts down Marlon Brando ’s top 20 performances, and somehow The Island of Dr Moreau doesn’t cut the mustard. Pah! Toby

The Greens have their sights set on adding a second MP, targeting Bristol Central in the next general election. But first the council elections in May – and Steven Morris has spent time on the ground in the city with the councillors aiming to wrestle control from Labour. Toby

Football | Another decisive contribution from Alexis Mac Allister returned Jürgen Klopp’s team to the Premier League summit as Liverpool held their nerve to beat Sheffield United 3-1. Meanwhile Erik ten Hag blamed individual errors and poor decision-making for Manchester United’s second “unacceptable” capitulation in five days, after Cole Palmer seaked their 4-3 defeat at Chelsea with two added time goals.

Formula One | Lewis Hamilton has said he would “love it” if Sebastian Vettel made a return to the sport. The four-time world champion is being linked with the car vacated by Hamilton at Mercedes.

Cycling | Tour de France champion, Jonas Vingegaard, was taken to hospital with a broken collarbone after a serious crash on stage four of Itzulia Basque Country. He also suffered several broken ribs in the high-speed accident and his Tour defence is now in doubt.

The front pages

The Guardian leads with Joe Biden’s call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, warning that future US support for Israel depends on it taking concrete action to protect civilians and aid workers. The Telegraph has “Biden to Israel: stop killing civilians”. The i says “Sunak urged to publish legal advice on arms sales to Israel”.

The Times has a story on William Wragg: “Senior Tory: I gave MPs’ numbers to honeytrap”. The Mail says “Top Tory: I gave MP’s’ numbers to sex sting plotter”.

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The Mirror has “Justice in the name of Sharon”, referring to a guilty verdict over the 2005 murder of police officer Sharon Beshenivsky.

The Express quotes a Home Office source as saying every loophole is being closed so as to allow migrants to be sent to Rwanda. “Make no mistake! Migrant flights to take off soon” is the headline.

The FT says “Chinese state banks hold key role in future of Thames Water”.

The Sun has a report on King Charles being keen to visit Australia in October.

Something for the weekend

Our critics’ roundup of the best things to watch, read and listen to right now

TV Ripley Netflix Here he is, then: every ounce of his talent, ineffable charm and lightly reptilian hotness on display. Andrew Scott steps up to play Patricia Highsmith’s titular antihero in Netflix’s noirish black-and-white, eight-part adaptation of The Talented Mr Ripley (the first volume of a series of pulpy novels now known as the “Ripliad”). With those who find it initially slow, or the relentless monochrome beauty slightly exhausting or pretentious, I understand entirely. But stick with it; allow yourself to yield to both and let Ripley seduce you. There is magic at work here. Lucy Mangan

Music Fabiana Palladino: Fabiana Palladino Describing debut albums as long-awaited is par for the course, but in Fabiana Palladino’s case it’s true – it’s been 13 years since she started self-releasing her songs online. The official line is that Palladino’s eponymous debut took so long to arrive as a result of its author’s perfectionism, an excuse that’s surprisingly easy to believe when you hear it. The daughter of celebrated session bassist Pino Palladino has clearly made good use of the contacts on her dad’s phone. All 10 songs boast killer melodies – in a more just world recent single Stay With Me Through the Night would have been a huge hit, and the charts a brighter place for it – and Palladino’s voice has understated power. Alexis Petridis

Film Monkey Man Cinemas nationwide Dev Patel brings the gonzo chaos starring in his very impressive writing-directing feature debut – a wildly over-the-top revenge action thriller on the teeming but uncliched streets of Mumbai, which doubles as a boisterous satire of Modi-esque nationalism. Patel shows us some pretty serious martial arts chops, kickboxing and thumping seven shades of ordure out of the punchbag, and then the bad guys – and periodically pausing, of course, attractively dropletted with sweat, to let us get an eyeful of those sculpted abs. His previous acting work didn’t obviously point to a kick-ass action career, although his performance in The Green Knight might have given us a hint. He’s evolved. Peter Bradshaw

Podcast Kicking Back With the Cardiffians BBC Sounds, episodes weekly “I’m Cardiff-born, Cardiff-bred, and when I die I’ll be Cardiff dead.” So opens Charlotte Church’s new show, which gives listeners an insight into her home town. But it is just as much a series about family, love and working-class life, given it’s largely interviews with her relatives, friends and the local pub landlord. Expect a lively, warm listen that wears its heart on its sleeve and is “pretty sweary – because that’s just who we are”. Alexi Duggins

Today in Focus

Should the UK stop arming Israel?

As the Guardian’s diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour , explains, the mood at the highest level in the UK has noticeably shifted since the strikes on a team from the aid organisation World Central Kitchen. Now there is an open debate among senior figures in the legal profession and at the top of politics about whether Britain should continue to arm Israel. Polling of the public suggests more than half of people believe it should stop.

Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings

A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad

Affecting 10 million people globally, Parkinson’s is a disease for which there is no known cure. New research, however, has found that a drug used in the treatment of type 2 diabetes could help slow its devastating impact .

In a French study of 156 people, a daily injection of the medication lixisenatide was found to slow the progression of motor problems in participants when compared to those who received a placebo. This, the researchers say, shows that lixisenatide can protect the brain against the loss of neurons, paving the way for further clinical trials.

Reacting to the research, Heather Mortiboys, a professor of cellular neuroscience and metabolism at the University of Sheffield, said: “The new clinical trial results for lixisenatide … represent a really promising and very exciting step forward in our research fight to get new drugs to the clinic for Parkinson’s.”

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Critics slam Scotland’s new hate speech law as an attack on freedom

Scotland’s controversial new hate speech law went into effect Monday despite fierce backlash from critics.

"Scotland continues to infringe upon the right of her citizens to speak freely. This bill will force police to investigate those who ‘misgender’ someone online," Thomas Corbett-Dillon, a former adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, told Fox News Digital. "In a country riddled by knife crime, and with one of the lowest life expectancies in Europe, you would think the Scottish Government has more important things to focus on, but no, they are desperate to pander to an extremely small group of men in dresses who feel offended when they are not referred to as women."

The comments come as Scotland officially announced that its hate crime law aimed at providing "greater protection for victims and communities" came into force Monday, creating new criminal offenses for those who use "threatening or abusive" behavior intended to "stir up hatred based on prejudice toward characteristics including age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity and variations in sex characteristics," according to a press release by the Scottish government.

The new law warns that people can be prosecuted for sharing offensive rhetoric across multiple media platforms, which includes "displaying, publishing or distributing the material e.g. on a sign; on the internet through websites, blogs, podcasts, social media etc., either directly, or by forwarding or repeating material that originates from a third party; through printed media such as magazine publications or leaflets, etc. Giving, sending, showing or playing the material to another person e.g. through online streaming, by email, playing a video, through public performance of a play, etc." 

SCOTLAND TO LAUNCH NEW HATE SPEECH LAW ON APRIL FOOL’S DAY THAT WILL JAIL PEOPLE FOR UP TO 7 YEARS

People convicted of running afoul of the new laws could face fines and even a prison sentence of up to seven years, with proponents arguing the legislation will send "a strong and clear message to victims, perpetrators, communities and to wider society that offences motivated by prejudice will be treated seriously and will not be tolerated."

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But the legislation has also been widely panned by critics, with renowned author J.K. Rowling describing the law as "ludicrous" in social media posts last month.

"If you genuinely imagine I’d delete posts calling a man a man, so as not to be prosecuted under this ludicrous law, stand by for the mother of all April Fools’ jokes," Rowling, a frequent critic of transgender ideology, said on X.

Corbett-Dillon pointed to Rowling, noting that the Harry Potter author could be one of those targeted under the new legislation.

BBC DISCIPLINES TOP RADIO HOST FOR CALLING TRANS WOMEN MALE DURING RADIO SHOW

"This law could lead to renowned Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling being arrested because she refuses to call trans people ‘She’ online. This new law does nothing to protect women, or to stop men from entering into female sports competitions, or men entering into women’s bathrooms," Corbet-Dillon said. "Trans people have become a ‘protected community’ in Scotland, but women remain unprotected."

The Scottish government has defended the law, with Minister for Victims and Community Safety Siobhian Brown arguing that the country is "building safer communities that live free from hatred and prejudice."

"We know that the impact on those on the receiving end of physical, verbal or online attacks can be traumatic and life-changing. This legislation is an essential element of our wider approach to tackling that harm," Brown said in the release.

Brown also argued that there were protections for free speech built into the legislation, noting the new offenses would have a "higher threshold for criminality" than old laws that have been in place since 1986.

But critics have still questioned those protections, with Faculty of Advocates’ Criminal Bar Association President Tony Lenehan worrying that the law could target journalists, comedians, debaters and dramatists, in comments to BBC last month.

Those claims were pushed back on by Scotland’s national police , who denied that the agency would proactively "target actors, comedians, or any other people or groups."

Nevertheless, Corbet-Dillon argued that the Scottish government should instead focus its attention on protecting free speech.

"The trans community continue to destroy women’s rights in their desperate pursuit to receive affirmation of their gender delusions," Corbet-Dillon said. "Scotland, and England, both urgently need to enshrine freedom of speech into their laws."

Original article source: Critics slam Scotland’s new hate speech law as an attack on freedom