The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the First Amendment imposes limits on legal guidelines that make it a criminal offense to difficulty threats on the web, saying that prosecutors should show {that a} Colorado man who had despatched disturbing messages to a singer-songwriter had acted recklessly in inflicting emotional hurt.

“The state must show that the defendant consciously disregarded a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as threatening violence,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote for 5 justices within the 7-to-2 resolution.

Justice Kagan acknowledged that “true threats,” like libel, incitement, obscenity and combating phrases, are usually not protected by the First Amendment. But she stated the chance of chilling protected speech warranted imposing an added burden on prosecutors.

“The speaker’s fear of mistaking whether a statement is a threat; his fear of the legal system getting that judgment wrong; his fear, in any event, of incurring legal costs — all those may lead him to swallow words that are in fact not true threats,” she wrote.

The case arose from the fixation of the defendant, Billy Counterman, with a singer-songwriter recognized in courtroom papers as C.W. He despatched her many messages on Facebook, opening new accounts when she blocked him.

“You’re not being good for human relations,” one message stated. “Die. Don’t need you.”

Another requested, “Was that you in the white Jeep?”

Justice Kagan wrote that “the messages put C.W. in fear and upended her daily existence,” including, “She stopped walking alone, declined social engagements and canceled some of her performances, though doing so caused her financial strain.”

Mr. Counterman was prosecuted beneath a Colorado law that made it a criminal offense to ship repeated communications that might trigger an inexpensive individual to endure critical emotional misery and did trigger such hurt. He was convicted and sentenced to 4 and a half years in jail.

The Supreme Court vacated the conviction and returned the case to the decrease courts, the place prosecutors might resolve whether or not to retry the defendant beneath the extra demanding commonplace.

Lawyers for Mr. Counterman had argued that the regulation violated the First Amendment as a result of it didn’t require proof that he supposed to trigger the misery.

“The notion that one could commit a ‘speech crime’ by accident is chilling,” they wrote in a Supreme Court brief. “Imprisoning a person for negligently misjudging how others would construe the speaker’s words would erode the breathing space that safeguards the free exchange of ideas.”

Lawyers for the state responded that it was sufficient to take a look at the phrases in query, how they had been conveyed and the response they elicited. The speaker’s subjective intent, they stated, doesn’t matter.

Justice Kagan analyzed the query by analyzing how the Supreme Court had handled different classes of unprotected speech, notably libel. Noting that public figures should present a minimum of reckless disregard of the reality — that means subjective consciousness of possible falsity — to prevail in libel instances, she stated one thing related was required in true-threats prosecutions.

In the context of threats, she wrote, quoting an earlier opinion, recklessness “means that a speaker is aware ‘that others could regard his statements as’ threatening violence and ‘delivers them anyway.’”

But she added that prosecutors weren’t required to show that Mr. Counterman supposed the hurt.

“As with any balance,” she wrote, “something is lost on both sides: The rule we adopt today is neither the most speech-protective nor the most sensitive to the dangers of true threats.”

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Brett M. Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined Justice Kagan’s majority opinion.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined for essentially the most half by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, agreed with Justice Kagan’s backside line however for various causes. She stated she would analyze the case as involving stalking fairly than threats.

Justice Clarence Thomas issued a quick dissent that repeated his call to rethink New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark 1964 libel resolution decoding the First Amendment to make it arduous for public officers to prevail in libel fits.

“It is thus unfortunate,” he wrote, “that the majority chooses not only to prominently and uncritically invoke New York Times, but also to extend its flawed, policy-driven First Amendment analysis to true threats, a separate area of this court’s jurisprudence.”

In a second dissent, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Justice Thomas, wrote that an goal commonplace was adequate in true-threats prosecutions.

“The bottom line is this,” she wrote, quoting phrases from Justice Kagan’s opinion. “Counterman communicated true threats, which, ‘everyone agrees, lie outside the bounds of the First Amendment’s protection.’ He knew what the words meant. Those threats caused the victim to fear for her life, and they ‘upended her daily existence.’ Nonetheless, the court concludes that Counterman can prevail on a First Amendment defense. Nothing in the Constitution compels that result.”

Justice Barrett urged that Justice Kagan’s place within the case, Counterman v. Colorado, No. 22-138, was unprincipled.

“The reality,” she wrote, “is that recklessness is not grounded in law, but in a Goldilocks judgment: Recklessness is not too much, not too little, but instead ‘just right.’”

Responding in a footnote, Justice Kagan didn’t seem offended. “In law, as in life,” she wrote, “there are worse things than being ‘just right.’”