382
Opinion of the Court
The First Amendment generally prevents government from proscribing speech, see, e. g., Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296, 309-311 (1940), or even expressive conduct, see, e. g., Texas v. Johnson, 491 U. S. 397, 406 (1989), because of disapproval of the ideas expressed. Content-based regulations are presumptively invalid. Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. Members of N. Y. State Crime Victims Bd., 502 U. S. 105, 115 (1991); id., at 124 (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment); Consolidated Edison Co. of N. Y. v. Public Serv. Comm'n of N. Y., 447 U. S. 530, 536 (1980); Police Dept. of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U. S. 92, 95 (1972). From 1791 to the present, however, our society, like other free but civilized societies, has permitted restrictions upon the content of speech in a
just a technical "overbreadth" claim—i. e., a claim that the ordinance violated the rights of too many third parties—but included the contention that the ordinance was "overbroad" in the sense of restricting more speech than the Constitution permits, even in its application to him, because it is content based. An important component of petitioner's argument is, and has been all along, that narrowly construing the ordinance to cover only "fighting words" cannot cure this fundamental defect. Id., at 12, 14, 15- 16. In his briefs in this Court, petitioner argued that a narrowing construction was ineffective because (1) its boundaries were vague, Brief for Petitioner 26, and because (2) denominating particular expression a "fighting word" because of the impact of its ideological content upon the audience is inconsistent with the First Amendment, Reply Brief for Petitioner 5; id., at 13 ("[The ordinance] is overbroad, viewpoint discriminatory and vague as 'narrowly construed' ") (emphasis added). At oral argument, counsel for petitioner reiterated this second point: "It is . . . one of my positions, that in [punishing only some fighting words and not others], even though it is a subcategory, technically, of unprotected conduct, [the ordinance] still is picking out an opinion, a disfavored message, and making that clear through the State." Tr. of Oral Arg. 8. In resting our judgment upon this contention, we have not departed from our criteria of what is "fairly included" within the petition. See Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp. v. Arkansas Pub. Serv. Comm'n, 461 U. S. 375, 382, n. 6 (1983); Brown v. Socialist Workers '74 Campaign Comm., 459 U. S. 87, 94, n. 9 (1982); Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S. 104, 113, n. 9 (1982); see generally R. Stern, E. Gressman, & S. Shapiro, Supreme Court Practice 361 (6th ed. 1986).
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