“A man who cursed at police officers in Brookings, S.D., engaged in protected free speech, the state high court has ruled. The court voted 4-1 to reverse a lower court decision that had found Marcus Suhn used unprotected fighting words — defined by the U.S. Supreme Court more than 60 years ago as words ‘which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.’ The majority, in an opinion written by Justice Judith Meierhenry, examined the origins and development of the ‘fighting words’ doctrine articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1942 decision Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire. … Meierhenry wrote that ‘the United States Supreme Court has made it clear that in order for speech to fall within the ‘fighting words’ exception, the words by their very utterance have ‘to tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace’ under the circumstances of the case.’ According to Meierhenry, Suhn’s profanity about the police did not ‘tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace,’ as the other people standing on Main Street did not react with any type of violence.” (01/02/09)