403 U.S. 15 (1971)
Cohen v. California is a landmark First Amendment case that set crucial limits on the government's power to criminalize speech merely because it is offensive.
Whether the State may, consistent with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, criminalize the public display of an offensive expletive on clothing, not directed at any particular person and not accompanied by disruptive conduct, on the ground that it is "offensive" or might disturb the peace.
The First Amendment generally prohibits the government from criminalizing speech solely because it is offensive. The narrow "fighting words" exception (Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire) applies only to direct, personal insults likely to provoke an immediate breach of the peace. Obscenity is confined to prurient sexual expression and does not encompass profanity devoid of erotic content. Absent a more particularized and compelling justification—such as preventing actual disruption, addressing true threats, or regulating content-neutral time, place, and manner concerns—the State may not make the mere public display of an offensive word a crime. Listeners in public spaces are typically expected to avert their eyes rather than invoke government censorship.
Reversed. As applied to Cohen's conduct, California's conviction violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The displayed phrase was not obscene, not a direct personal insult amounting to fighting words, and there was no sufficient justification to criminalize the expression simply because it was offensive.
Cohen is a cornerstone of First Amendment law on offensive speech. It clarifies that profanity, without more, does not fall within the categories of unprotected speech; sharpens the limits of the fighting words doctrine to face-to-face personal insults; and recognizes that the emotive dimension of speech is constitutionally protected. The case is frequently cited to resist government efforts to sanitize expression in public spaces, to distinguish protected profanity from obscenity or incitement, and to underscore that the State must use content-neutral, narrowly tailored tools to address genuine disruptions rather than broadly criminalize offense. For law students, Cohen provides essential doctrinal grounding for evaluating content-based restrictions, captive-audience claims, time/place/manner regulation, and the interplay between speech's cognitive and emotive elements.