Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Tuesday knocked public officials who have a background in law but still call to “criminalize free speech,” according to multiple reports.
“Every time I listen to a lawyer-trained representative saying we should criminalize free speech in some way, I think to myself, that law school failed,” Sotomayor said on a panel at New York Law School Tuesday morning.
“If any student who becomes a lawyer hasn’t been taught civics, then that law school has failed,” Sotomayor added. “Because it is for that system that you’re working as a lawyer.”
Sotomayor did not specify which “lawyer-trained representative” she heard calling to criminalize free speech.
But her remarks come as Attorney General Pam Bondi faces fierce blowback for suggesting on Monday that hate speech is not protected under the law.
“There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society…,” Bondi said in a Monday interview on “The Katie Miller Podcast,” referring to the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
“We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech,” Bondi said.
By Tuesday morning, shortly before Sotomayor’s remarks, Bondi sought to clarify her comments in a post on the social platform X.
“Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment. It’s a crime,” Bondi wrote in a lengthy post on X.
“For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations, and cheer on political violence. That era is over,” she continued, citing U.S. code.
