Supreme Court strengthens First Amendment protections for online threats.

The Supreme Court has raised the bar for prosecuting threats under the First Amendment, ruling that prosecutors must demonstrate that a defendant who made a threat acted recklessly to establish that the speech is a "true threat" and thus no longer covered by the First Amendment. The case arose from hundreds of Facebook messages Billy Counterman sent to singer-songwriter Coles Whalen between 2014 and 2016. Counterman was convicted of a crime after sending numerous threatening messages to Whalen, but the Supreme Court wiped away a Colorado Court of Appeals' ruling that upheld the conviction and sent the case back for further proceedings consistent with its opinion.