Chris Christie on HATE SPEECH and FREE SPEECH

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“There is a difference, everyone, between free speech and hate speech.”
-Chris Christie

FIRE Senior Program Officer and First Amendment attorney Zach Greenberg reacts to recent remarks by Chris Christie. Christie claims that there is a difference between free speech and hate speech, however the Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that there is no 'hate speech' exception to the First Amendment.

Is hate speech legal?
https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/hate-speech-legal

The Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly rejected government attempts to prohibit or punish “hate speech.” Instead, the Court has come to identify within the First Amendment a broad guarantee of “freedom for the thought that we hate,” as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes described the concept in a 1929 dissent. In a 2011 ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts described our national commitment to protecting “hate speech” in order to preserve a robust democratic dialogue:

Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and—as it did here—inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.