The Rocky Mountain News reports:
Denver police Sgt. Michael Karasek will be disciplined for threatening to arrest a woman [Shasta Bates] for displaying on her truck a [“Fuck Bush” bumper sticker] . . . .
Bates, three UPS employees and a Rocky Mountain News reporter who happened to be there all say that the officer threatened to arrest the woman if she didn’t remove the bumper sticker from her truck.
It turns out that there’s no applicable state law prohibiting profanity on bumper stickers. Even if there was such a law, though, it would be unconstitutional. In 1971, the Supreme Court held in Cohen v. California that public profanity — at least not addressed to a particular listener or viewer — was constitutionally protected; that case involved a “Fuck the Draft” jacket, but a bumper sticker is the same. And in fact the Georgia Supreme Court and, I’m told, an Arkansas court, have specifically applied Cohen to bumper stickers.
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