Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-138_43j7.pdf
Page Number: 26

Cite as:  600 U. S. ____ (2023) 

9 

SOTOMAYOR, J., concurring
Opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J. 

or “defamation” at will, this would achieve the same results 
as creating new categories of unprotected speech. 

Thus, the Court must first ask whether there is a long-
standing tradition of punishing inadvertent threats as “true 
threats.”  This Court’s prior definition of the word “threat”
in a federal statute, looking primarily to dictionaries, Elo-
nis,  575  U. S.,  at  733,  does  not  tell  us  the  scope  of  “true
threats” for First Amendment purposes.  Elonis itself made 
clear that it did “not . . . consider any First Amendment is-
sues.”  Id., at 740.  Instead, a careful examination of this 
Court’s  true-threats  precedent  and  the  history  of  threat
crimes does not support a long-settled tradition of punish-
ing inadvertently threatening speech. 

A 

A natural place to begin, one might think, would be with 
this  Court’s  most  recent  decision  involving  the  First 
Amendment, mens rea, and true threats.  Yet to read the 
Court’s decision, one would have little idea that in a semi-
nal 2003 decision, this Court held that a threat conviction 
could not stand because of an insufficient mens rea require-
ment.  See Black, 538 U. S. 343.  Black plainly sets out a 
conception of true threats as including a mens rea require-
ment. 

In Black, the Court confronted the constitutionality of a
Virginia statute that prohibited burning a cross with intent
to  intimidate.  Only  part  of  the  decision  in  Black  is  con-
tained  in  a  five-Justice  majority  opinion.    The  other  rele-
vant parts of the decision were written by the Members of 
that  majority,  who  split  into  a  four-Justice  plurality  and 
Justice Scalia’s partial concurrence in judgment. 

The majority explained why a prohibition on cross burn-
ing with intent to threaten was constitutional, beginning by 
defining the category of true threats.  “ ‘True threats,’ ” the 
majority explained “encompass those statements where the 
speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an