Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-138_43j7.pdf
Page Number: 10.0

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

7 

Opinion of the Court 

falls.  Or he may worry that the legal system will err, and
count speech that is permissible as instead not.  See Phila-
delphia  Newspapers,  Inc.  v.  Hepps,  475  U. S.  767,  777 
(1986).  Or he may simply be concerned about the expense 
of  becoming  entangled  in  the  legal  system.    The  result  is 
“self-censorship” of speech that could not be proscribed—a
“cautious and restrictive exercise” of First Amendment free-
doms.  Gertz, 418 U. S., at 340.  And an important tool to
prevent that outcome—to stop people from steering “wide[ ] 
of the unlawful zone”—is to condition liability on the State’s
showing of a culpable mental state.  Speiser v. Randall, 357 
U. S. 513, 526 (1958).  Such a requirement comes at a cost: 
It will shield some otherwise proscribable (here, threaten-
ing)  speech  because  the  State  cannot  prove  what  the  de-
fendant thought.  But the added element reduces the pro-
spect of chilling fully protected expression.  As this Court 
has noted, the requirement lessens “the hazard of self-cen-
sorship”  by  “compensat[ing]”  for  the  law’s  uncertainties. 
Mishkin v. New York, 383 U. S. 502, 511 (1966).  Or said a 
bit differently: “[B]y reducing an honest speaker’s fear that 
he may accidentally [or erroneously] incur liability,” a mens 
rea requirement “provide[s] ‘breathing room’ for more valu-
able speech.”  Alvarez, 567 U. S., at 733 (Breyer, J., concur-
ring in judgment).

That kind of “strategic protection” features in our prece-
dent  concerning  the  most  prominent  categories  of  histori-
cally unprotected speech.  Gertz, 418 U. S., at 342.  Defama-
tion is the best known and best theorized example.  False 
and defamatory statements of fact, we have held, have “no
constitutional value.”  Id., at 340; see Alvarez, 567 U. S., at 
718–719 (plurality opinion).  Yet a public figure cannot re-
cover  for  the  injury  such  a  statement  causes  unless  the
speaker  acted  with  “knowledge  that  it  was  false  or  with 
reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”  New York 
Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254, 280 (1964); see Garri-
son  v.  Louisiana,  379  U. S.  64,  74  (1964)  (using  the  same