If hate speech is legally protected, then is it constitutional to stack on additional punishment for hate crimes? Wikipedia, Hate speech in the United States: &quot;In a Supreme Court case on the issue, Matal v. Tam (2017), the justices unanimously reaffirmed that there is effectively no &quot;hate speech&quot; exception to the free speech rights protected by the First Amendment and that the U.S. government may not discriminate against speech on the basis of the speaker’s viewpoint.&quot; Then why is hate crime punished more severely than non-hate crimes? There are laws that specifically state that if a crime is motivated by hate, then extra punishment should be added during sentencing. https://www.justice.gov/hatecrimes https://www.police.iastate.edu/hate-crimes/ &quot;In Iowa, a hate crime is considered a “penalty enhancement,” which means a person convicted of one of the above enumerated crimes would receive a sentence one degree higher than it would be for the same crime without a bias or hate component.&quot; But if there is no such thing as &quot;hate speech&quot; in the eyes of the law, then how can &quot;hate crime&quot; exist as a separate category? If the government is not allowed to define &quot;hate speech&quot;, then how can it define &quot;hate crime&quot;? I wish to expand on this further. The supreme court has ruled that same sex marriage is a constitutional right. So the government is not allowed to pass laws banning same sex marriage or sexual activity between two men. Got it. But can the government pass a law saying that if someone is currently in a same sex marriage, and also charged with sexual abuse of a minor, then such a person shall &quot;receive a sentence one degree higher than it would be for the same crime committed by a heterosexual person&quot; ? The supreme court also ruled that access to abortion is a constitutional right (for now, at least). But can the government pass a law saying that if someone is charged with say driving under the influence of alcohol, and also previously had an abortion, then such a person shall &quot;receive a sentence one degree higher than it would be for the same crime committed by a person who never had an abortion&quot; ?
The First Amendment says that &quot;Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech&quot;, so to the extent that such a definition serves to limit one's freedom of speech, it is unconstitutional. If would also be unconstitutional to reward &quot;love speech&quot; or any other viewpoint. Crimes, such as murder, arson, rape and so on, are not constitutionally protected. The government can therefore define various parameters of severity (various degrees of assault defined in terms of &quot;wantonness&quot;). Assault, arson and murder are not legal forms of &quot;expression&quot;, so assault motivated by a viewpoint is not &quot;protected speech&quot; – it isn't speech at all.
Under 42 USC 2000a(a): All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin. So a business may be generally prohibited from discriminating against you on the basis of your religion, but I don't know of any law that requires stores to accommodate whatever aversion or hostility you may feel toward gay people or their allies. On the contrary, such businesses have a First Amendment right to display such decor. So legislation that required them to stop speaking out in support of nice gay people would be struck down as unconstitutional.
The relevant portion of the U.S. Constitution is the full faith and credit clause (which the Respect for Marriage act is primarily an implementation and enforcement of). This requires states to honor marriages and divorces entered into in different states (subject to limited public policy exceptions that the Respect for Marriage act further limited), and also, for example, paternity determinations and court judgments from other states. This was one argument among many used to argue that same sex marriages from other states should be recognized in other states. But the U.S. Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015), in which it established a right to same sex marriage in all U.S. states, relied instead mostly upon a substantive due process clause analysis similar to that of Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), which held that bans on interracial marriage were unconstitutional. The Article IV privileges and immunities clause protects very little (mostly the right to interstate travel and the right for an out of state resident to be licensed in a profession in a state). The Slaughterhouse cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1872), in the late 19th century gave a very crabbed interpretation to the 14th Amendment privileges and immunities clause, limited that only to rights arising from federal citizenship. The logic of the Slaughterhouse line of cases spilled over into the privileges and immunities clause of Article IV of the U.S. Constitution. The Article IV privileges and immunities clause applies to rights specific to state citizenship to prevent those rights from being denied to out of state U.S. citizens. But those rights are few and far between, and court crafted exceptions have been carved out in cases where it does exist (hunting and fishing license fees and college tuition, for example).
The United States gives the accused the right to a fair trial. However, it also gives exceptionally strong protection to the media (and to people in general) to speak on matters of public concern; there are very, very few cases where a US government (federal, state, or local) can legally order someone not to publish something (as opposed to letting it be published and then issuing sanctions). The rule of thumb for content-based restrictions on speech is that they must be the least restrictive way of achieving a compelling government interest. For trials, there are other ways to achieve a fair trial without restricting the press. One of the most preferred ways to do it is to use the voir dire process, in which jurors can be rejected for prejudice. Courts can also move the trial to a new location; they can grant motions from the defense to delay the trial while things cool down; they can sequester the jurors (meaning that the jurors are kept in a central place and prevented from talking to anyone else or reading anything about the case); if none of these are done, a conviction can potentially be reversed on appeal. US courts will, wherever possible, modify the trial to mitigate the damage done by the press, rather than restrict the press to mitigate the damage to the trial. For a review of a few different approaches to this in different jurisdictions, you might want to look at this law journal article.
There is no federal prohibition against sexual discrimination in public accomodations. Colorado has an applicable state law, which covers "any place of business engaged in any sales to the public", where "It is a discriminatory practice and unlawful ...to refuse, withhold from, or deny to an individual or a group, because of ...sexual orientation...the full and equal enjoyment of the goods...". No provision exempts lemonade stands. Churches etc. are specifically exempted: "'Place of public accommodation' shall not include a church, synagogue, mosque, or other place that is principally used for religious purposes". Sex discrimination is allowed "if such restriction has a bona fide relationship to the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of such place of public accommodation", an argument that can't reasonably be made in the described case. It is also not obvious that running a lemonade stand is a business (the courts will not admit unsubstantiated Wiki assertions as evidence). It would be relevant to wonder what constitutes a "business" under Colorado law. E.g. is a business license required? In Colorado (US) law, it has not been definitively decided whether there can be a religious exception to the anti-discrimination law. Masterpiece Cakeshop was decided without answering that (the state showed clear religious intolerance in its handling of the case). We do not know how a similar case will be decided: Arlene's Flowers was handed back to the state court with the instruction "do it again" (with nothing more than a mention of Masterpiece Cakeshop). The court cannot establish certain beliefs and practices as "valid religions" (Establishment Clause); the proxy expression that is used is "deeply held belief", which includes atheism. The relationship of the issue to the First Amendment is uncertain.
Usually these words refer to whether something (e.g. a law or government action) is or is not in accordance with the Constitution, including its amendments, as currently interpreted by US courts including the Supreme Court. So in view of Chaplinsky, the Constitution (as interpreted) does not protect "fighting words", and therefore a law that forbids "fighting words" is constitutional. As phoog points out in the comments, the word can also be used to refer to whether something is in accordance with the Constitution, as the speaker thinks it ought to be interpreted. So somebody might say that a certain law or action is (un)constitutional, even if a court has not considered it, if their own personal interpretation of the Constitution is (or isn't) consistent with it. Or, if a court has struck it down (or upheld it) but the speaker thinks they erred in doing so.
As many parties as have standing. The First Amendment protects the right to petition for redress of grievances, so any limitation on that right would be highly disfavored. When there's a rush of cases like this, though, there are a few option for dealing with them. For instance, a plaintiff may seek class certification, permitting him to stand in for similarly situated parties so they don't need to litigate themselves, or a court may consolidate the cases if they are sufficiently similar.
Almost certainly, there is no such right. It's illegal under 18 USC 831 to possess "nuclear material" without specific authorization. 18 USC 832 forbids the possession of a "radiological weapon". If there is intent to use the device to cause death, serious bodily injury, or damage to property or the environment, that's also a violation of 18 USC 2332i. I don't think these laws have been explicitly tested against the Second Amendment, but related cases suggest they would hold up (if the challenge wasn't simply dismissed as frivolous). The Second Amendment doesn't grant a blanket right to own weapons. Federal law, 18 USC 922 (o) makes it unlawful to own a "machinegun" (as defined in the statute), and in the case of Hollis v. Lynch, the Fifth Circuit held that this law was constitutional, because, as they said, the Second Amendment only protects weapons that are in "common use [...] for lawful purposes like self-defense." This case doesn't seem to have been appealed further, but the reasoning cited by the Fifth Circuit comes from the Supreme Court's opinion in D.C. v. Heller. If machineguns aren't in "common use", and therefore not protected, surely the same would apply to nuclear weapons.