There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which has never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or "fighting" words -- those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.

The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the criminal conviction of Walter Chaplinsky, who, proselytizing on the street in Rochester, New Hampshire, denounced organized religion as a "racket." When Chaplinsky would not moderate his attacks, and when the crowd got angry and restive, a police officer took Chaplinsky toward the police station (but did not yet arrest him). During this trip, Chaplinsky accused the city marshal of being "a goddamned racketeer" and "a damned Fascist," and when on to charge that "the whole government of Rochester are Fascists or agents of Fascists." For this, Chaplinsky was arrested and charged under a statute prohibiting anyone from addressing "any offensive, derisive or annoying word to any other person who is lawfully in any street or other public place, nor call[ing] him by any offensive and derisive name."