Abstract

The article traces and problematizes the ascendancy of content-neutrality and the emergence of viewpoint neutrality as the core of free speech doctrine. Content neutrality prohibits government from regulating speech not just on the basis of a category of speech (like racist speech) but also on the basis of regulating a specific viewpoint within that category (racist speech directed at African-Americans but not whites). The article scrutinizes the Supreme Court’s decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) where the majority opinion equated the discriminatory expression of the Ku Klux Klan to communist speech without deliberating about the different conceptual issues raised by the racial dimensions of the case. This ahistorical and acontextual approach to free speech conflates Klan speech (a species of hate speech) with communist speech (purely dissident speech), ignoring crucial analytical concerns about oppression, inequality, and power. As a result, contrary to the connotations of the content-neutrality principle, the doctrine is non-neutral in application.