R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul

Facts

In the predawn hours of June 21, 1990, R.A.V. and several other teenagers allegedly assembled a crudely made cross by taping together broken chair legs. They then allegedly burned the cross inside the fenced yard of a black family that lived across the street from the house where R.A.V. was staying. The opinion notes that this conduct could have been punished under any of a number of laws. The city of St. Paul chose to charge R.A.V., then a juvenile, under two provisions. One was the St. Paul Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance. It made it disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor, to place on public or private property a symbol, object, appellation, characterization or graffiti, including a burning cross or Nazi swastika, which one knows or has reasonable grounds to know arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others "on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender." The Minnesota Supreme Court read the phrase about arousing anger, alarm or resentment to limit the ordinance to "fighting words," meaning conduct that itself inflicts injury or tends to incite immediate violence. St. Paul conceded that the ordinance applies only to racial, religious, or gender-specific symbols such as a burning cross or Nazi swastika.

Issues

1. Assuming the St. Paul ordinance reaches only fighting words, does it violate the First Amendment because it prohibits otherwise permitted speech solely on the basis of the subjects the speech addresses?
2. Can St. Paul justify the content discrimination in its ordinance as narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests?

Holding

Even assuming it reaches only fighting words, St. Paul's ordinance is facially unconstitutional because it prohibits fighting words only on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender, which is content and viewpoint discrimination within the class. No exception applies, and the content limitation is not reasonably necessary to serve the city's compelling interests.