Connecticut: Where Ridicule is a Crime
by Alan M. Dershowitz • November 2, 2019 at 5:00 am
Among the most fundamental First Amendment rights is to ridicule — regardless of the reason. The same is true of holding people or groups up to contempt. Were Connecticut's absurd statute to be upheld — which it will not be — it could be applied to comedians, op-ed writers, politicians, professors and other students.
And what about "creed"? Is being a conservative or a Trump supporter a creed that cannot be ridiculed?... [T]herein lies its greatest danger: selective prosecution based on current political correctness. Precisely the kind of unpopular speech which the First Amendment was designed to protect...
Such hateful expressions [Anti-Semitic, anti-Christian and anti-conservative] are not only tolerated, they are often praised as "progressive" by some of the same students and faculty members who would censor politically incorrect hate speech. Under the First Amendment, such selective censorship is intolerable.
All who care about civil liberties, regardless of race, should now join with the racist students in opposing their criminal prosecution and demanding that the Connecticut statute be struck down as unconstitutional.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the president of the university should lead the campaign against criminalizing speech that ridicules. Now that would take courage in our age of political correctness and at a time when the hard left is demanding "free speech for me but not for thee." But this is not an age in which courage is widely practiced, especially on university campuses, and most especially by administrators.
Two students at the University of Connecticut have been charged with the crime of ridiculing African Americans by shouting the N-word as part of a childishly inappropriate game. A video of the incident went viral and generated protests on and off the campus.
Outrageous as shouting this racist epithet is, the First Amendment protects it from criminal prosecution or other governmental sanctions. The Connecticut General Statute under which the students were charged is just about as unconstitutional as any statute can be. It is not even a close case. Here is what the statute criminalizes:
Section 53-37 - Ridicule on account of creed, religion, color, denomination, nationality or race.
