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Page Number: 34.0

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

17 

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

own cases show time and again how true-threats prosecu-
tions  sweep  in  political  speech.    See  Black,  538  U. S.,  at 
348–349; Watts, 394 U. S., at 707 (antiwar protest); Rogers, 
422 U. S., at 41–42 (Marshall, J., concurring) (opposition to
Nixon’s policies toward China).6  Not only that, but incite-
ment itself is often only a hair’s-breadth away from threats.
Take  the  seminal  incitement  case  NAACP  v.  Claiborne 
Hardware Co., 458 U. S. 886 (1982).  During a civil rights
boycott, NAACP leader Charles Evers, brother of the mur-
dered  civil  rights  hero  Medgar  Evers,  gave  a  series  of 
heated speeches.  See id., at 898–902.  He intoned that “boy-
cott violators would be ‘disciplined’ ” and that “ ‘[i]f we catch
any of you going in any of them racist stores, we’re gonna 
break your damn neck.’ ”  Id., at 902.  The Court acknowl-
edged that in this charged context, these speeches “might
have been understood as inviting an unlawful form of disci-
pline or, at least, as intending to create a fear of violence.” 
Id.,  at  927.    Yet  inflammatory  and  threatening  as  these 
speeches  were,  they  did  not  constitute  incitement.    That 
was  because  “there  [was]  no  evidence—apart  from  the 
speeches themselves—that Evers authorized, ratified, or di-
rectly threatened acts of violence.”  Id., at 929.  His speeches
were thus not “ ‘directed to inciting or producing imminent 
lawless action’ ” and he had not “specifically intended to fur-
ther an unlawful goal.”  Id., at 925, n. 68, 928. 

Under  a  recklessness  rule,  Claiborne  would  have  come 
out the other way.   So long as Evers had some subjective
awareness of some risk that a reasonable person could re- 

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6 Nor is this limited to decisions by this Court.  Threats cases sweep in 
political speech.  See, e.g., State v. Taylor, 379 N. C. 589, 590, 866 S. E. 
2d 740, 744 (2021).  Incitement cases can sweep in nonpolitical speech. 
See, e.g., Rice v. Paladin Enterprises, Inc., 128 F. 3d 233, 264, n. 11, 267 
(CA4 1997).  And still other cases show how incitement and threats can 
often go hand in hand.  See, e.g., State v. Caroll, 456 N. J. Super. 520, 
544–545, 196 A. 3d 106, 120–121 (App. Div. 2018).