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

Heading: The Post-Black Debate

Text: ¶40 Though Watts and Black made clear that the First Amendment does not protect a “true threat,” the decisions resulted in a split of authority over how to discern whether a particular statement amounts to one. 21 ¶41 A majority of jurisdictions have interpreted Black’s definition of a true threat—a statement where the speaker “means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence”—to require only that the speaker intended to make the statement. Under this reading, “means to” modifies only the word “communicate.” See, e.g., United States v. Clemens, 738 F.3d 1, 10 (1st Cir. 2013) (requiring the speaker to intend to make the communication, but not the threat). Courts adopting this view judge whether a statement constitutes a true threat using an objective standard, asking how a reasonable person would interpret the words.17 Proponents of an objective standard have reasoned that a speaker’s lack of intent to threaten does nothing to reduce the harms identified in Black that justify the exception of true threats from First 17The objective test has several variations, with some courts asking whether the statement is one a reasonable speaker would foresee would be interpreted as a serious expression of intention to inflict bodily harm, see, e.g., State v. Trey M., 383 P.3d 474, 478 (Wash. 2016), some asking how a reasonable listener would construe the speech in context, see, e.g., United States v. White, 670 F.3d 498, 507 (4th Cir. 2012), and some considering both perspectives, see, e.g., Haughwout v. Tordenti, 211 A.3d 1, 9 (Conn. 2019) (requiring that “a reasonable person would foresee that the statement would be interpreted by those to whom the maker communicates the statement as a serious expression of intent to harm or assault” and that “a reasonable listener, familiar with the entire factual context of the defendant’s statements, would be highly likely to interpret them as communicating a genuine threat of violence rather than protected expression, however offensive or repugnant” (quoting State v. Krijger, 97 A.3d 946, 957, 963 (Conn. 2014))). 22 Amendment protection. Black, 538 U.S. at 359; see also, e.g., United States v. Jeffries, 692 F.3d 473, 480 (6th Cir. 2012) (“Much like their cousins libel, obscenity, and fighting words, true threats ‘by their very utterance inflict injury’ on the recipient.” (quoting Chaplinsky, 315 U.S. at 572)). ¶42 On the other hand, some courts have interpreted Black to require the speaker to have the subjective intent to threaten. Under this reading, “means to” modifies the entire phrase, “communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence.”18 Proponents of a subjective intent requirement have tended to posit that a purely objective listener test would chill protected speech. See Rogers v. United States, 422 U.S. 35, 47–48 (1975) (Marshall, J., concurring) (arguing that “charging the defendant with responsibility for the effect of his statements on his listeners . . . would have substantial costs in discouraging the ‘uninhibited, robust, and wide-open’ debate that the First Amendment is intended 18 See, e.g., United States v. Heineman, 767 F.3d 970, 978 (10th Cir. 2014); United States v. Cassel, 408 F.3d 622, 631–33 (9th Cir. 2005); State v. Boettger, 450 P.3d 805, 813–15 (Kan. 2019); see also Perez v. Florida, 137 S. Ct. 853, 855 (2017) (Sotomayor, J., concurring in denial of petition for writ of certiorari) (“Together, Watts and Black make clear that to sustain a threat conviction without encroaching upon the First Amendment, States must prove more than the mere utterance of threatening words—some level of intent is required. . . . These two cases strongly suggest that it is not enough that a reasonable person might have understood the words as a threat—a jury must find that the speaker actually intended to convey a threat.”). 23 to protect” (quoting N.Y. Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 270 (1964))); United States v. White, 670 F.3d 498, 525 (4th Cir. 2012) (Floyd, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (“Under a purely objective test, speakers whose ideas or views occupy the fringes of our society have more to fear, for their violent and extreme rhetoric, even if intended simply to convey an idea or express displeasure, is more likely to strike a reasonable person as threatening.”).19