Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-138_43j7.pdf
Page Number: 7

4 

COUNTERMAN v. COLORADO 

Opinion of the Court 

true-threats cases, and (2) if so, what mens rea standard is 
sufficient.  We therefore granted certiorari.  598 U. S. ___ 
(2023). 

II 

True threats of violence, everyone agrees, lie outside the 
bounds of the First Amendment’s protection.  And a state-
ment can count as such a threat based solely on its objective 
content.  The first dispute here is about whether the First 
Amendment nonetheless demands that the State in a true-
threats case prove that the defendant was aware in some 
way of the threatening nature of his communications.2  Col-
orado argues that there is no such requirement.  Counter-
man contends that there is one, based mainly on the likeli-
hood that the absence of such a mens rea requirement will
chill  protected,  non-threatening  speech.  Counterman’s 
view, we decide today, is the more consistent with our prec-
edent.  To combat the kind of chill he references, our deci-
sions have often insisted on protecting even  some histori-
cally  unprotected  speech  through  the  adoption  of  a 
subjective mental-state element.  We follow the same path 
today,  holding  that  the  State  must  prove  in  true-threats
cases  that  the  defendant  had  some  understanding  of  his 

—————— 

2 A preliminary clarification may be useful, concerning the difference
between awareness of a communication’s contents and awareness of its 
threatening nature.  Everyone agrees, again, that the State must prove
the former—and Colorado law appears to hold as much.  See Colo. Rev. 
Stat. §18–3–602(1)(c); Brief for Respondent 18.  So, for example, if a de-
fendant delivers a sealed envelope without knowing that a threatening
letter is inside, he cannot be liable for the communication.  So too (though 
this common example seems fairly preposterous) if a “foreigner, ignorant
of the English language, who would not know the meaning of the words,” 
somehow  manages  to  convey  an  English-language  threat.    Elonis  v. 
United States, 575 U. S. 723, 738 (2015) (internal quotation marks omit-
ted).  The question in this case arises when the defendant (unlike in those 
hypotheticals) understands the content of the words, but may not grasp
that others would find them threatening.  Must he do so, under the First 
Amendment, for a true-threats prosecution to succeed?