Law against ridicule draws its own ridicule

But repeal unlikely

When two University of Connecticut students were charged this fall with violating a century-old state law against ridiculing people, opposition came quickly from critics in the state and around the country, including free speech advocates and academics who said the law violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

But an effort to repeal the statute is “on life support,” said Sen. John Kissel, REnfield, who asked the committee to raise the bill.

The law, passed in 1917, says that “any person who, by his advertisement, ridicules or holds up to contempt any person or class of persons, on account of the creed, religion, color, denomination, nationality or race of such person or class of persons, shall be guilty of a class D misdemeanor.”

In written testimony, the state’s Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities urged against repealing the law.

“This statute aims to combat the bias and harassment that individuals may face on the basis of race or religion,” the CHRO wrote. “At a time when hate and bias incidents are on the rise, it is crucial that the state not remove these types of prohibitions that aim to deter or punish this unacceptable behavior.”

Kissel, the ranking Senate Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said he personally believes the law is unconstitutional, but that in the absence of strong feedback from constituents, repealing it seems unlikely to move forward.

Committee co-chairman Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, said he needs to hear more from those who want to repeal it before weighing in the bill.

Two others have submitted written testimony against the bill: Amy Ewing, of Stamford, and Patrick McCann, chairman of the Secular Coalition for Connecticut, both wrote that they are “concerned that there are antiquated thought crimes in our general statutes.”

The law “creates a special class of individuals that are exempt from ridicule and scrutiny. This is a clear danger to fundamental principles of democracy,” they wrote.

“One person’s ridicule might be another person’s satire. It just seems dangerous if you start regulating speech like that,” Ewing said in an interview.

Speech that incites violence is already illegal and repealing the “ridicule” law won’t change that, she said, adding, “unpleasant speech is protected by the Constitution.”

At a public hearing Friday, the only speaker who addressed it, after testifying on another piece of legislation, said she didn’t know where she stood on repealing the law.

“Without any kind of people here testifying, it’s hard for me to go and say we’ve really got to move on this bill,” Kissel said.

The law is one of only a few such state laws in the country, the Associated Press reported.

“It is so clearly unconstitutional under the First Amendment that it's hard to believe that it's still on the books,” William Dunlap, a professor at the Quinnipiac University School of Law, told the AP. “It punishes speech based on the content of the speech, and that it is one of the key concepts of the First Amendment — that the government cannot punish speech based on its content.”

Prosecutors have charged people with violating the statute 42 times since 2012, and nine people have been convicted, according to the state Judicial Branch. The most recent conviction came in September, when Martin Ginejt of Norwalk pleaded guilty to ridicule and to a misdemeanor charge of threatening.

Among those charged in 2019 were two UConn students, Jarred Mitchell Karal and Ryan Gilman Mucaj, whose use of a racial slur on campus ignited protests on campus in October.

That attracted criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union, among others. National legal director David Cole said in a statement at the time that “although the conduct reported in this incident is reprehensible, it is not criminal.”

“The First Amendment protects even offensive and hateful speech, so long as it does not rise to the level of incitement to violence, criminal harassment, or true threats,” he said.

Attorney Alan Dershowitz, who defended President Donald Trump in his impeachment trial, called the statute “absurd” in an article on the Gatestone Institute website in November. “All who care about civil liberties, regardless of race, should now join with the racist students in opposing their criminal prosecution and demanding that the Connecticut statute be struck down as unconstitutional,” he said.