Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-138_43j7.pdf
Page Number: 33.0

16 

COUNTERMAN v. COLORADO 

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

concerns  about  chilling  support  a  subjective  mens  rea  re-
quirement  for  true  threats.  Yet  these  same  chilling  con-
cerns only further buttress the conclusion that true threats
should be limited to intentionally threatening speech.  In-
deed, in the concurrence by Justice Marshall that the Court
invokes, ante, at 9–10, he advocated “requir[ing] proof that
the speaker intended his statement to be taken as a threat,”
based on concerns about punishing “pure speech.”  Rogers, 
422 U. S., at 47–48.  In determining the appropriate mens 
rea, the Court analogizes to three categories of traditionally 
unprotected speech: incitement, obscenity, and defamation. 
None of these warrants expanding the narrow boundaries 
of true threats. 

1 

Speech  inciting  harm  is  the  closest  cousin  to  speech 
threatening harm.  Both incitement and threats put other
people  at  risk,  and  both  “sprin[g]  from  [Justice]  Holmes’s
‘clear  and  present  danger’  test.”  G.  Blakey  &  B.  Murray,
Threats, Free Speech, and the Jurisprudence of the Federal 
Criminal Law, 2002 B. Y. U. L. Rev. 829, 1069 (2002).  Like 
true threats, incitement’s scope is defined in terms of both
intention  and  effect,  covering  speech  “[1]  intended  to  pro-
duce, and [2] likely to produce, imminent disorder.”  Hess v. 
Indiana, 414 U. S. 105, 109 (1973) (per curiam).

Despite their similar nature and source, the Court today
draws  a  hard  line  between  the  two.    Incitement  requires
“ ‘inten[t].’ ”  Ante, at 8.  While for threats, the speaker need
only be “aware that others could regard his statements as 
threatening violence and delive[r] them anyway.”  Ante, at 
11 (internal quotation marks omitted).  The Court justifies
this asymmetry by the idea “that incitement to disorder is
commonly a hair’s-breadth away from political ‘advocacy,’ ” 
ante, at 13, and the lead dissent says much the same, post, 
at 7 (opinion of BARRETT, J.).  These opinions offer little ba-
sis for distinguishing threats on this ground, as this Court’s