ABSTRACT
In Cohen v. California, 403 US 15, the US Supreme Court significantly expanded the limits of offensive speech as an extension of the protection for expression provided by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Paul Cohen was arrested for displaying the message "Fuck the Draft" on the back of his jacket in the corridor outside the municipal court in the Los Angeles County Courthouse. Cohen appealed the California ruling to the US Supreme Court. Justices Harry A. Blackmun and Hugo L. Black and Chief Justice Warren E. Burger dissented in Cohen, arguing that the defendant's conduct constituted fighting words that could be repressed under Chaplinsky. They maintained Cohen's act was an "absurd and immature antic," and that since it constituted action rather than speech, the First Amendment did not protect it. The impact of Cohen as precedent was readily seen in 1972 in some related cases in which the Court vacated state-court judgments restricting the use of offensive speech.
