The F-word will soon be coming to the nation’s most august courtroom — again.
This time, it will get there courtesy of B.L., an anonymous young woman who wrote a profanity-filled Snapchat post after she was rejected for her high school’s varsity cheerleading team. Her post — and her school’s decision to punish her for it — has ignited a free speech case that will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court next week.
But B.L. was not the first to focus the justices’ attention on the F-word. That distinction belongs to Paul Robert Cohen, whose case 50 years ago resulted in a landmark decision on the 1st Amendment and the regulation of profanity.