Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/18pdf/18-302_e29g.pdf
Page Number: 38

Cite as:  588 U. S. ____ (2019) 

13 

Opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J. 

not suggest that the State had targeted Cohen to suppress
his  view  itself  (i.e.,  his  sharp  distaste  for  the  draft),  such 
that it would have accepted an equally colorful statement 
of praise for the draft (or hostility toward war protesters). 
Rather,  the  Court  suggested  that  the  State  had  simply
engaged  in  what  later  courts  would  more  precisely  call 
viewpoint-neutral  content  discrimination—it  had  regu- 
lated “the form or content of individual expression.”  Id., at 
24; see id., at 25–26. 

Cohen  also  famously  recognized  that  “words  are  often
chosen as much for their emotive as their cognitive force,” 
id., at 26, and that “one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric,” 
id.,  at  25.  That  is  all  consistent  with  observing  that  a
plain,  blanket  restriction  on  profanity  (regardless  of  the 
idea to which it is attached) is a viewpoint-neutral form of 
content discrimination.  The essence of Cohen’s discussion 
is that profanity can serve to tweak (or amplify) the view-
point that a message expresses, such that it can be hard to 
disentangle  the  profanity  from  the  underlying  message—
without the profanity, the message is not quite the same.
See  id.,  at  25–26.  But  those  statements  merely  reinforce
that  profanity  is  still  properly  understood  as  protected 
First Amendment content.  See also R. A. V., 505 U. S., at 
384–385.  Cohen’s  discussion  does  not  also  go  further  to 
declare, as Brunetti suggests, that a provision that treats
all instances of profanity equally is nevertheless by nature 
an  instance  of  “the  government  target[ing]  . . .  particular
views  taken  by  speakers  on  a  subject.”  Rosenberger,  515 
U. S., at 829.  To be sure, such a restriction could have the 
incidental  effect  of  tamping  down  the  overall  volume  of 
debate  on  all  sides.  But  differential  effects  alone,  as  ex-
plained  above,  do  not  render  a  restriction  viewpoint  (or
even  content)  discriminatory.  See  Ward,  491  U. S.,  at 
791–792.8 

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8 That does not mean, of course, that a government may elude harsher