The blurry line between the two categories of speech has the practical effect of requiring that the utilities either refrain from speech that is close to the line or seek advice from the Public Service Commission.
While there is an exception to this principle in the First Amendment overbreadth context because of our concern that people may refrain from speech out of fear of prosecution, there is no similar justification for establishment clause cases.
Mute can mean muffle, to refrain from speech, or someone who can't speak, depending on whether the word is used as a verb, adjective or noun.
Congress is free to condition tax exemptions — which can be worth millions of dollars — on an agreement by churches and charities to refrain from speech that otherwise would be constitutionally protected.
Speech: Refraining from unwholesome speech (e.g., false or harsh speech, slander, gossip, or meaningless chatter) and engaging only in wholesome speech that is gentle and courteous, and engenders harmony among people.
In the course of exempting religious, educational, and charitable organizations from federal income tax, section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code requires them to refrain from campaign speech and much speech to influence legislation.
Governments must also refrain from suppressing speech for supposedly provoking violence when it is really those who object to the speech who are violent.
This panel will address the tension if any between such mandatory disclosure regimes and manufacturers' First Amendment right to refrain from compelled speech.
But it goes beyond that reasonable provision to require almost all recipients of funds to "have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution" and to refrain from any speech the government deems "inconsistent with" that policy.
What I have tried to argue is that none of these common arguments alone gives us sufficient reason to refrain from blasphemous speech, merely because it is blasphemous, the way that I do feel I have more than sufficient reason to never use (and to try to never think) the n-word.
