Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-138_43j7.pdf
Page Number: 12.0

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

9 

Opinion of the Court 

Given “the ambiguities inherent in the definition of obscen-
ity,”  the  First  Amendment  “requires  proof  of  scienter  to 
avoid the hazard of self-censorship.”  Mishkin, 383 U. S., at 
511.4 

The same reasoning counsels in favor of requiring a sub-
jective  element  in  a  true-threats  case.  This  Court  again 
must consider the prospect of chilling non-threatening ex-
pression, given the ordinary citizen’s predictable tendency
to steer “wide[ ] of the unlawful zone.”  Speiser, 357 U. S., at 
526.  The speaker’s fear of mistaking whether a statement 
is a threat; his fear of the legal system getting that judg-
ment wrong; his fear, in any event, of incurring legal costs—
all those may lead him to swallow words that are in fact not 
true threats.  Some 50 years ago, Justice Marshall made the 
point when reviewing a true-threats prosecution arguably 

—————— 

4 The dissent, in urging an objective standard here, reads the obscenity 
decisions as requiring merely that the defendant know “what the mate-
rial depicts” (as a speaker must know a communication’s contents).  Post, 
at 5–6 (opinion of BARRETT, J.) (relying on Hamling, 418 U. S., at 120– 
123).  But see the statements quoted above: That is not what they say.
And indeed, this Court recently rejected the dissent’s revisionist reading, 
explaining in detail—and in response to a near-identical argument—that
the obscenity decisions demand awareness of “the character of [the ma-
terials,] not simply [their] contents.”  Elonis, 575 U. S., at 739–740 (dis-
cussing Hamling, 418 U. S., at 120–123, and Mishkin, 383 U. S., at 510). 
The dissent’s use of two other First Amendment categories—fighting
words  and  false  commercial  speech—to  support  an  objective  test  also 
falls flat.  See post, at 3–4 (opinion of BARRETT, J.).  This Court has not 
upheld  a  conviction  under  the  fighting-words  doctrine  in  80  years.    At 
the least, that doctrine is today a poor candidate for spinning off other 
First Amendment rules.  False commercial speech is also a poor analog, 
though for different reasons.  Put aside that the line of cases the dissent 
invokes has never been listed among the historically unprotected catego-
ries  of  speech.  See,  e.g.,  United  States  v.  Stevens,  559  U. S.  460,  468 
(2010); see supra, at 5.  Yet more relevant, the Court has often noted that 
commercial speech is less vulnerable to chill than most other speech is. 
See, e.g., Board of Trustees of State Univ. of N. Y. v. Fox, 492 U. S. 469, 
481 (1989).  And it is the fear of chill that has led to state-of-mind re-
quirements in the context of unprotected speech.