Burning crosses, exhibitions of hangman's nooses and similar displays are the subjects of criminal statutes in virtually every state in the Union. The coverage of those statutes varies a great deal. The Supreme Court's decision in Black v. Virginia serves as a reminder that efforts to enlarge their scope raise serious, but not insurmountable, First Amendment implications. Legislatures in almost half of the states have enacted statutes that explicitly outlaw cross burning in one form or another. The most common variety simply states, "It shall be unlawful for any person, with the intent of intimidating any person or group of persons to burn, or cause to be burned, a cross on the property of another, a highway, or other public place." In other places, a specific cross burning proscription has been affixed to the state's civil rights law, its threat statute, or its harassment provision. Without more, these proscriptions do not ordinarily reach beyond burning crosses to hangman's nooses or other such harbingers of violence. In response several jurisdictions have resorted to generic condemnation of symbols or exhibitions calculated to intimidate or threaten. One such example states briefly, It shall be unlawful for any person or persons to place, or cause to be placed, anywhere in the state any exhibit of any kind whatsoever with the intention of intimidating any person or persons, to prevent them from doing any act which is lawful, or to cause them to do any act which is unlawful. Fla.Stat.Ann. Â§876.19. Both the states that have explicit cross burning statutes, as well as those that do not, often have coercion, terroristic threat, harassment or civil rights statutes of sufficient breadth to prosecute misconduct that might otherwise be tried under a cross burning statute. Coercion is a crime that dates from the Nineteenth Century Field Code (1865). It is a crime reminiscent of extortion but without the extraction of property required of that offense. In those states in which it is found, it is essentially the same. It prohibits efforts to compel another through the use of threats to do or refrain from doing something the victim is legally entitled to do: A person commits the crime of criminal coercion if, without legal authority, he threatens to confine, restrain or to cause physical injury to the threatened person or another, or to damage the property or reputation of the threatened person or another with intent thereby to induce the threatened person or another against his will to do an unlawful act or refrain from doing a lawful act. A few states characterize as the crime of intimidation the crime known elsewhere as coercion. In either case, the proscription would apply where a cross burning or other symbolic threat is designed to discourage another from exercising or refraining from exercising a particular lawful prerogative. State terroristic threat statutes are diverse. At one time, such statutes encompassed only threats to commit a serious crime against person or property. Today those elements have been replaced and augmented with an array of provisions relating to hoaxes and false alarms of catastrophic consequences. In those states where one of the elements of the crime is either the fear of imminent serious injury or property destruction or of a threat directed against the general population, prosecution of intimidation by symbolic threats may be difficult if not impossible under most circumstances. On the other hand, in those states where the terroristic threats statute proscribes threats of death, serious injury or property destruction, particularly where the statute has a hate crime element, the circumstances surrounding a cross burning or similar display may present all the elements for a prosecution. Most states have a harassment statute. In various configurations, they cover repetitious annoyances; threats specifically conveyed, orally, electronically, or by telephone or mail; and conduct likely to stimulate an immediate violent response. Most are unlikely to reach symbolic threats and intimidation such as cross burning, hangman's nooses or their ilk. A few, however, may qualify, especially those that resemble terroristic threat statutes. The Nevada statute, for example, states in relevant part: A person is guilty of harassment if: (a) Without lawful authority, the person knowingly threatens: (1) To cause bodily injury in the future to the person threatened or to any other person ... and (b) The person by words or conduct places the person receiving the threat in reasonable fear that the threat will be carried out. Nev.Rev.Stat. Â§200.571[1]. Here too, constitutional anxieties aside, coverage is most apparent in those statutes that feature a hate crime element. Most jurisdictions have hate crime sentencing statutes that enhance the penalties imposed for commission of other criminal offense when the defendant was motivated by racial, religious or some other discriminatory animus. As already noted, the presence of such animus is an element in several of the cross burning, harassment and threat statutes. Apart from these, a handful of states also have statutes that criminalize the deprivation of civil rights generally: (B) If any person does by force or threat of force, willfully injure, intimidate or interfere with, or attempt to injure, intimidate or interfere with, or oppress or threaten any other person in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him or her by the Constitution or laws of the State of West Virginia or by the Constitution or laws of the United States, because of such other person's race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, political affiliation or sex, he or she shall be guilty of a felony.... W.Va.Code Ann. Â§61-6-21(B). No cross burning statute or law of similar comportment can be assessed without considerations of its First Amendment implications. Generally, these statutes will pass constitutional muster so long as they can be read only to proscribe expressive conduct that falls outside of the protection of the First Amendment. The First Amendment provides that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech." The Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause imposes the same restriction upon the states, many of whose constitutions house a comparable limitation on state legislative action. The First Amendment protects both pure speech and expressive conduct used to convey a message or embody an ideology. However, the Supreme Court has long recognized that the First Amendment does not afford all forms of expression absolute protection, and the government constitutionally may prohibit the forms of expression that fall outside of the First Amendment's protections. The First Amendment permits "restrictions upon the content of speech in a few limited areas, which are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality." The proscribable categories of speech include, but are not limited to, obscenity, "fighting words," and "true threats." The Supreme Court recently decided a case analyzing the constitutionality of a cross-burning statute, categorizing the prohibited conduct as a "true threat." Virginia v. Black considered the constitutionality of a Virginia statute that banned cross-burning "with the intent to intimidate." Men had been convicted under the statute in two separate cases, which the Supreme Court consolidated and heard together. In the first case, Mr. Black burned a cross on the property of a fellow member of the Ku Klux Klan ("Klan"). The property was located in full view of a public highway where neighbors and passers-by could view the ceremony and the burning cross. In the second case, Mr. Elliot burned a cross on the front lawn of an African American family who had moved in next door. The statute under which the men were convicted read, in pertinent part: It shall be unlawful for any person or persons, with the intent of intimidating any person or group of persons, to burn, or cause to be burned, a cross on the property of another, a highway or other public place.... Any such burning of a cross shall be prima facie evidence of an intent to intimidate. After laying out the statute, the Court proceeded to trace the history of cross-burning, placing particular emphasis upon the use of the burning cross as a threat of future bodily harm by the Klan. The Court noted that "while cross burning sometimes carries no intimidating message, at other times the intimidating message is the only message conveyed." Writing for the Court, Justice O'Connor indicated that cross burning, if accomplished with the intent to intimidate a person or group, could be considered a "true threat" in light of the history of burning crosses. In endorsing the constitutionality of the statutory provision banning cross burning with the "intent to intimidate," the Court defined a true threat. "True threats" encompass those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals. See Watts v. United States , [394 U.S. 705, 708 (1969)] ("political hyperbole" is not a true threat); R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul , 505 U.S. at 588. The speaker need not actually intend to carry out the threat. Rather, a prohibition on true threats "protects individuals from the fear of violence" and "from the disruption that fear engenders," in addition to protecting people "from the possibility that the threatened violence will occur." Ibid. Intimidation in the constitutionally proscribable sense of the word is a type of true threat, where a speaker directs a threat to a person or group of persons with the intent of placing the victim in fear of bodily harm or death . Because cross burning is often intimidating, and often done with the intent of creating pervasive fear in victims that they are a target of violence, it seems to fall squarely within the type of constitutionally proscribable speech described by the Court. The Court also recognized that, historically, crosses have been burned for reasons that are protected by the First Amendment.