For Montana to conduct a criminal prosecution for hate speech
The prosecutor’s office in Flathead County, Montana (where Kalispell is located) is arguing that speech that exposes Jews — or other religious, racial, and other groups — “to hatred, contempt, ridicule, degradation, or disgrace†is criminally punishable, unless it consists of true factual statements. As the Montana criminal defamation statute is worded, this means that hatred-inducing opinions are criminally punishable, too. Yes, this is that extraordinarily rare thing: an American prosecution for “hate speech†(State v. Lenio). The First Amendment doesn’t allow that.
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You might think that, if Lenio is being prosecuted for these messages, he would be prosecuted under a statute that bans threats — and you would be right, since that is Count I of the criminal charge against Lenio. Whether such general statements that don’t focus on a particular person or a small group of people (or a particular location), but instead talk about killing schoolchildren generally or Jews generally, are punishable “true threats†is an interesting question. (It’s also one that has come up recently when people have posted about wanting to kill police officers, or in past decades when people have posted about wanting to have a revolution and kill capitalists.)
The noteworthy — and much more dangerous — thing about this case is that Lenio was also charged, in Count II, for criminal defamation of Jews.
The guy is on the shallow end of the gene pool, to be sure. But even mental midgets get covered by the 1st Amendment.