Illegal to Flip Off Cops in Kentucky (Script & Sources)
Added 2021-04-17 00:49:29 +0000 UTCGood morning. Bad news, Kentucky’s Senate just voted to pass a law that would make it a crime, punishable by jail time, to taunt, insult, or flip off police officers. Kentucky Senate Bill 211 states that anyone who, “challenges a law enforcement officer with offensive or derisive words, or by gestures or other physical contact, that would have a direct tendency to provoke a violent response” would be guilty of disorderly conduct in the second degree, which is a misdemeanor punishable by up to 90 days in jail, and fines.
First of all, before even diving into the legality of this, “gestures that would have a direct tendency to provoke a violent response?” that’s assault and battery, it’s a Class A misdemeanor, you can’t hit someone for insulting you, it’s already illegal.
And in any case this law is obviously unconstitutional, and it doesn’t need to go to the Supreme Court because it already did - in 1987, SCOTUS ruled in City of Houston v. Hill that the First Amendment “protects a significant amount of verbal criticism and challenge directed at police officers” in fact it basically says that your limit to being rude to cops is a LOT higher than it is for normal people.
How high is that limit for normal people? Well another Supreme Court case in 1969, Brandenburg v. Ohio, ruled that racist and antisemitic hate speech that includes racial slurs and calls for violence, is protected under the First Amendment unless it provokes “imminent lawless action”. That’s the bar! Flipping off a cop? Yeah, that’s legal 100% of the time everywhere, no matter what Kentucky’s Senate says, seriously those guys are idiots.
