mr. beat presents supreme the cold briefs rural Ohio just northeast of
Cincinnati the summer of 1964 Clarence Brandenburg leads a Ku Klux
Klan rally he invites a Cincinnati TV station out to cover the events they
agree and film portions of the rally showing men in robes and hoods some
carrying guns and others shouting horrible ethnic slurs they also filmed
them burning across Brandenburg concluded the rally with a speech and
portions of it ended up airing on TV in that speech Brandenburg said quote if
our president our Congress our Supreme Court continues to suppress the white
Caucasian race it's possible that there might have to be some revengeance taken
okay so I don't know what that word revengeance means I googled it and urban
dictionary told me it's quotes the act of gaining revenge at a rate of at least
two point five four times greater to that of standard revenge so yeah that
doesn't seem too nice it seems rather threatening actually after the TV
station aired the KKK rally local authorities arrested Brandenburg for
leading the rally and arranging it to be on the news they charged him with
breaking the Ohio criminal syndicalism Act a law that prohibited promoting
violence as a means for social or political change a local court convicted
Brandenburg fined him $1,000 and sentenced him to one to ten years in
prison Brandenburg argued that his actions were
protected under both the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment even though he
hated the ACLU he asked them for help after he ran out of money to pay for
legal counsel in early 1968 Brandenburg appealed to the Ohio first District
Court of Appeal which agreed with a lower court so then he appealed to the
Ohio Supreme Court's who dismissed his appeal without even giving an opinion to
the courts in Ohio it was clear that this speech was not protected under the
First Amendment and use the Supreme Court case Dennis V
United States to back this up however Brandenburg and the ACLU wasn't
done yet they appealed to the Supreme Court and the court heard arguments on
February 27 1969 Brandenburg's lawyer Alan Brown convinced Brandenburg to stay
home probably for the best Raun received several threats over the
phone for representing a KKK leader some even accused him of agreeing with KKK
positions but Braun later said he was just defending free speech the court
announced its decision on June 8th 1969 citing unanimously with Brandenburg and
reversing the decisions of the lower courts not one judge authored the
decision showing how unified the court was with it they argued the Ohio
criminal syndicalism acts went against Brandenburg's right to free speech the
court presented what's known as the Brandenburg test also more boringly
known as the imminent lawless action test this ended up strengthening the
clear and present danger doctrine adopted by the court and written by
justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in Schenck V United States in addition it overruled
the bad tendency test set later by whitney V California the Brandenburg
test had two parts number one speech can be banned if it is quote directed at
inciting or producing imminent lawless action and most importantly number two
it is quote likely to incite or produce action because Brandenburg's rally and
speech was more vague and didn't make it seem likely that the KKK was actually
going to carry out a revolt against the government lacks in Jews it passed the
Brandenburg test their speech was protected by the First Amendment
Brandenburg v Ohio further protected speech even speech that was extremely
offensive and unpopular it provided an answer to the debate between those who
wanted more government control of speech to keep people safe and those who wanted
speech to be as free as possible the Brandenburg test continues to be this
standard when Americans want to punish speed
that is meant to get people angry to a point where they are violent it's the
reason why the courts continue to stick up for creators of violent video games
even when there is much public outcry
I'll see you for the next Supreme Court case jury I hadn't planned on covering
this case for a while but what happened in Charlottesville last month changed
that do you think that the white supremacist inside of the violence that
occurred in Charlottesville let me know in the comments below if you like this
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