WHAT STARTED OUT AS LITTLE more than a racist publicity stunt ended up being the defining Supreme Court decision on the meaning of the Constitutional guarantee of free speech—a ruling far more protective of controversial speech than previous high court holdings. Those prior decisions essentially told courts to balance the harm the contested speech posed against the benefits of unfettered freedom of expression, but now the Justices were “putting the thumb firmly on the scale in favor of the First Amendment,” explains Katherine Fallow, senior counsel at Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute.
The case began in the summer of 1964, when Clarence Brandenburg telephoned Cincinnati, Ohio, NBC-TV affiliate WLWT with a tip: Ku Klux Klan members were to rally at a
