For the last half century, the outer limit of free speech in America has been defined by violence. In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969)—involving an Ohio Ku Klux Klan leader who was arrested following a hate-filled public speech that police saw as advocating for crime—the United States Supreme Court ruled in a majority opinion that the government cannot restrict or punish inflammatory speech unless it can prove that such speech is both “directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and “likely to incite or produce such action.”
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