Sometimes, I’ve seen people cite Chaplinsky for the proposition that even general expressions of opinion are unprotected simply because they might yield a violent reaction. But while one can read Chaplinsky itself this way, later precedents make clear that this is not the law. Cohen v. California (1971) is the clearest example: Cohen was convicted for wearing a jacket that said “Fuck the Draft,” but the Court rejected the view that the conviction could be upheld on the grounds that the statement was “fighting words”:

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This Court has also held that the States are free to ban the simple use, without a demonstration of additional justifying circumstances, of so-called “fighting words,” those personally abusive epithets which, when addressed to the ordinary citizen, are, as a matter of common knowledge, inherently likely to provoke violent reaction. Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942). While the four-letter word displayed by Cohen in relation to the draft is not uncommonly employed in a personally provocative fashion, in this instance it was clearly not “directed to the person of the hearer.” Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940). No individual actually or likely to be present could reasonably have regarded the words on appellant’s jacket as a direct personal insult.

(Cantwell v. Connecticut [1940], on which Cohen relied, really did involve “hate speech” as many people use the term — an attack on Catholicism by a Jehovah’s Witness, in a neighborhood that was about 90 percent Catholic — and did indeed enrage listeners to the point where they said they were tempted to violence, though they resisted the temptation. But Cantwell and Cohen make clear that such speech is protected.)

So Chaplinsky doesn’t hold that “Hate speech is not protected by the first amendment.” Indeed, as my earlier post noted, other cases make clear that what is usually labeled “hate speech” — advocacy of bigoted views — is protected by the First Amendment.