Campus

IU Bloomington

Installation Date

11/8/2019

Marker Text

An Indiana University student protest led to a landmark First Amendment case. In response to the National Guard’s killing of four students demonstrating against the Vietnam War at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, a group of protesters gathering at Bryan Hall on May 13 demanding to see President Joseph L. Sutton. Student Greg Hess shouted, “We will take the fucking street later…,” resulting in his arrest for violating the Indiana disorderly conduct statute. Represented by law professor F. Thomas Schornhorst, Hess was convicted in local court, and the Indiana Supreme Court upheld the ruling. Believing a First Amendment issue was at stake, Schornhorst and fellow law professor Patrick Baude appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1973, the Court overturned Hess’s conviction, finding the arrest to have been an unconstitutional infringement on his First Amendment rights. The Court’s decision remains an important case for its protection of speech that does not incite immediate unlawful action.

Read more here and here.