Opinion ID: 4538050
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Virginia v. Black

Text: ¶38 Thirty-four years later, in Virginia v. Black, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the First Amendment permits states to ban “true threats,” which it defined to “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.” 538 U.S. at 359. The Court also clarified that “[t]he speaker need not actually intend to carry out the threat,” because the true 20 threats exception exists to “protect[] individuals from the fear of violence,” “from the disruption that fear engenders,” and from “the possibility that the threatened violence will occur.” Id. at 359–60 (quoting R.A.V., 505 U.S. at 388). ¶39 At issue in Black was the constitutionality of a Virginia statute banning cross burning done with intent to intimidate a person or group of persons. Id. at 347. One provision of the statute treated cross burning as prima facie evidence of intent to intimidate. Id. at 347–48. The Court explained that “[i]ntimidation 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.” Id. at 360. The Court held that the statute did “not run afoul of the First Amendment insofar as it ban[ned] cross burning with intent to intimidate,” id. at 361, but a plurality concluded that the provision treating cross burning as prima facie evidence of such intent was overbroad, reasoning that cross burning is sometimes protected expression, see id. at 364–67 (plurality opinion).