March 16, 2015 1:27PM # Why We Filed a Brief Defending Offensive Speech By [Ilya Shapiro](https://www.cato.org/people/ilya-shapiro) --- SHARE Here’s Boston College law professor Kent Greenfield, writing at *[The Atlantic](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/the-limits-of-free-speech/387718/)* about the racist-chant scandal at the University of Oklahoma: > We are told the First Amendment protects the odious because we cannot trust the government to make choices about content on our behalf. That protections of speech will inevitably be overinclusive. But that this is a cost we must bear. If we start punishing speech, advocates argue, then we will slide down the slippery slope to tyranny. > > > If that is what the First Amendment means, then we have a problem greater than bigoted frat boys. The problem would be the First Amendment. [Cato’s brief](https://www.cato.org/publications/legal-briefs/walker-v-texas-division-sons-confederate-veterans) in *Walker v. Texas Division* (the Confederate flag license-plate case) pokes plenty of fun at government censors who would protect us from “offensive” speech, but this is no laughing matter. H/​t Trevor Burrus ##### Related Tags [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).