Vermont v. Tracy
Annotate this CaseDefendant David Tracy's daughter was one of fifteen girls on a junior high school girls’ basketball team. The basketball coach did not play defendant’s daughter in the first two games of the season. Shortly after the end of the second game, defendant approached the coach and the coach’s nineteen-year-old daughter in the school parking lot. The coach and the coach’s daughter both testified that defendant was calm at the start of the conversation, but that the exchange soon became heated and agitated. Defendant began by saying that “he just wanted to know why [the coach] wouldn’t put his daughter in a game.” That exchange lead to charges against defendant for disorderly conduct by “abusive . . . language.” The trial court, following a bench trial, concluded that defendant’s language was not protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution because it constituted “fighting words.” On appeal, defendant argued that the “abusive language” prong of Vermont’s disorderly-conduct statute was overbroad and impermissibly chills a substantial amount of constitutionally protected speech without serving a compelling state interest. He further argued that, even if the statute was constitutional on its face, the speech for which he was convicted in this case was constitutionally protected. After review, the Supreme Court agreed that the speech for which defendant was convicted was beyond the reach of the abusive-language prong of the disorderly-conduct statute, and reversed the conviction.
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