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Page Number: 52.0

10 

COUNTERMAN v. COLORADO 

BARRETT, J., dissenting 

Id., at 365, 367.  Thus, the presumption was unconstitution-
ally overbroad.

The Black plurality’s reasoning can be boiled down to the
following  insight:  When  context  is  ignored,  true  threats
cannot  be  reliably  distinguished  from  protected  speech.
The  reverse  also  holds:  When  context  is  properly  consid-
ered,  constitutional  concerns  abate.  See,  e.g.,  Watts  v. 
United States, 394 U. S. 705, 708 (1969) (per curiam) (con-
cluding that a statement was “political hyperbole” instead
of  a  true  threat  based  on  “context,”  “the  expressly  condi-
tional nature of the statement,” and the “reaction of the lis-
teners”).

One more point: Many States have long had statutes like
Colorado’s on the books.  See Brief for Illinois et al. as Amici 
Curiae 16–17.  Before we took this case, the vast majority 
of Courts of Appeals and state high courts had upheld these 
statutes as constitutional.  So objective tests are effectively 
the  status  quo  today,  yet  Counterman  still  struggles  to 
identify past prosecutions that came close to infringing on
protected  speech.    Tr.  of  Oral  Arg.  28–30.  The  silence  is 
telling. 

C 

So is the silence in the historical record.  Since 1791, true 
threats have been excluded from the “speech” protected by 
the First Amendment.  R. A.V., 505 U. S., at 382–383, 388. 
If  Counterman  could  show  that  a  subjective  requirement 
has been inherent in the definition of “true threat” since the 
founding, he would have a compelling case.  But Counter-
man cannot make that showing. 

For starters, he produces no evidence directly addressing
the meaning of the First Amendment—nothing from state
ratifying conventions, political commentary, or even early 
debates about efforts to regulate threats in ways that might 

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true threat.”  Id., at 360 (emphasis added).