Online debate surrounding a racist video that surfaced recently centers on whether or not hate speech is protected by the First Amendment.

Collegian Media spoke with a First Amendment lawyer from FIRE, who said that hate speech is indeed protected by the First Amendment. The lawyer, Haley Gluhanich, also said she didn’t think the speech in the video rose to the level of a true threat, which is not protected by the First Amendment.

Here is a quick primer on what kind of speech the First Amendment protects and what kind of speech it doesn’t protect.

PROTECTED SPEECH

• Political speech (the highest protection)

• Heated rhetoric

• Rhetorical hyperbole

• The endorsement of violence

• False speech, generally

• Offensive speech

• Hate speech

UNPROTECTED SPEECH

• Incitement: speech that is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” (Brandenburg v. Ohio)

• True Threats: a statement through which “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” and requires that the speaker consciously disregarded a substantial risk that their speech would place another in fear of serious physical harm.

• Fighting Words: speech that tends to incite the individual to whom they are addressed to respond violently and immediately. This encompasses only face-to-face communications.

• Obscenity: expression that meets all the following:

– whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the “prurient interest” (an inordinate interest in sex)

– whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct

– whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value (an “objective” standard that is judged by reference to national rather than community standards).

• Defamation (libel and slander) – a proven false statement that of fact that 1) is communicated to a third party, 2) is made with requisite guilty state of mind, and 3) harms an individual’s reputation

• Discriminatory Harassment- targeted conduct, including speech, that is (1) unwelcome, (2) discriminatory on the basis of gender or another protected class, and (3) “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it can be said to deprive the victims of access to the educational opportunities or benefits provided by the school.”

• Fraud

• Perjury

• Speech integral to criminal conduct

• Bribery

• False advertising

— Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)

Correction: Haley Gluhanich’s name was incorrectly spelled in this story, published March 10, 2026.