The setting matters. Words shouted at a named person from inches away during an escalating confrontation present a different risk from the same words printed on a distant protest sign. If listeners have time to reflect, walk away, answer, or seek help, the immediate face-to-face rationale is weaker.

Fighting words differ from incitement. Incitement concerns a speaker urging listeners to commit imminent unlawful action; the feared actor is the audience being mobilized. Fighting words concern a direct addressee reacting violently to a personal provocation. They also differ from a true threat, which communicates serious unlawful violence by the speaker or associated actor against a person or group. One volatile encounter can raise more than one question, but the categories have distinct elements.

Offense alone is never enough. A political slogan may be shocking and provoke hostile listeners without becoming fighting words. Government generally must protect a lawful speaker rather than give an audience a "heckler's veto" merely because opponents threaten disruption.

Even an otherwise unprotected category does not give government unlimited power to select viewpoints. Under R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, a law may not single out fighting words expressing disfavored positions on race, religion, or another subject while leaving comparable fighting words on other subjects unpunished. Government can target the immediate personal provocation through a properly drawn rule; it cannot use the category as a vehicle for ideological favoritism.

Vague ordinances banning words that "annoy," "offend," or "disrespect" another person reach far beyond the narrow doctrine and invite selective enforcement.

One protester steps directly toward another, delivers a personally abusive epithet, and the addressee immediately raises a fist. Those facts may support fighting-words analysis. Put the same epithet on a general political placard across the street, and the personal confrontation and immediate reaction are missing even though observers remain offended.

The decisive facts are the addressee, distance, immediacy, and likely reaction. Profanity, hate speech, or unpopular advocacy does not become unprotected by label alone. The Constitution recognizes no general exception for offensive speech; fighting words remain a small category tied to direct and immediate provocation.

Video lesson: Freedom of Speech: Crash Course Government and Politics #25