# Virginia v. Black

> Supreme Court of the United States · April 7, 2003 · 538 U.S. 343

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9434415

## Case

- **Full name:** VIRGINIA v. BLACK Et Al.
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** April 7, 2003
- **Citations:** 538 U.S. 343; 123 S. Ct. 1536; 155 L. Ed. 2d 535; 2003 U.S. LEXIS 2715
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Stevens
- **Judges:** O'Connor, Rehnquist, Stevens, Scalia, Breyer, Thomas, Souter, Kennedy, Gms-Burg
- **Cited by:** 1,000 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9434415

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- explaining that the First Amendment does not protect “fighting words”—“those personally abusive epithets which, when addressed to the ordinary citizen, are, as a matter of common knowledge, inherently likely to provoke violent reaction”—or “true threats”—“those statements wher…
- explaining that “true threats” are not protected by the First Amendment and “encompass . . . 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,” regardles…
- explaining that "[t]he 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 mora…
- recognizing that "true threats" are not constitutionally protected and describing them as "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"
- holding statute prohibiting cross burning with an intent to intimidate - 12 - J-S12006-19 did not violate First Amendment, but provision that burning cross in view of the public constituted prima facie evidence of intent to intimidate was unconstitutional

## Opinion text

Justice Stevens,
concurring.
Cross burning with “an intent to intimidate,” Va. Code Ann. § 18.2-423 (1996), unquestionably qualifies as the kind of threat that is unprotected by the First Amendment. For the reasons stated in the separate opinions that Justice White and I wrote in R. A. V. v. St. Paul, 505 U. S. 377 (1992), that simple proposition provides a sufficient basis for upholding the basic prohibition in the Virginia statute even though it does not cover other types of threatening expressive conduct. With this observation, I join Justice O’Connor’s opinion.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9434415. Public record. Not legal advice.