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R.A.V. V. City Of St. Paul: The Right Decision, Flawed Reasoning, Tracy Lynne Hulsey

Mercer Law Review

In R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, the United States Supreme Court struck a St. Paul, Minnesota ordinance prohibiting bias-motivated disorderly conduct, holding that the ordinance was facially invalid under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Police arrested Petitioner R.A.V., then a juvenile, and charged him with violating a city ordinance, which provided:

[w]hoever places on public or private property a symbol, object, appellation, characterization or graffiti, including, but not limited to, a burning cross or Nazi swastika, which one knows or has reasonable grounds to know arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis …