79% of Americans Say the Country Has Gone Too Far Restricting Speech. They Don't Agree on What Counts.

There is no hate speech exception, and that is unusually settled

American law contains no general exception for hate speech. The Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to create one, in rulings protecting funeral protests, offensive trademarks, and symbolic displays, and those decisions drew support from justices across the ideological spectrum. Among constitutional questions, this is one of the more settled ones, which is why proposals to change it draw criticism from both parties.

What the law does reach is conduct: true threats, incitement to imminent lawless action, defamation, and workplace harassment. Each of those categories is defined by effect and immediacy rather than by viewpoint. That distinction, between regulating consequences and regulating ideas, does most of the work in this debate.

In the abstract, Americans are strongly speech-protective

An NPR/PBS News/Marist poll conducted in September 2025 found that nearly eight in ten Americans, 79%, believe the United States has gone too far in restricting freedom of speech, while 19% said the right has been expanded too much. Support was broad rather than partisan: 88% of Democrats, 86% of independents, and 64% of Republicans agreed.

The same survey found 62% think the Supreme Court should be the branch responsible for defining which speech is too extreme, compared with 26% for Congress and 11% for the President. That is a notable answer in itself, since it points toward courts rather than legislatures as the venue people trust with the line-drawing.

In the specifics, the numbers move

Support looks different when the question names a category of content. Pew Research found the share of U.S. adults saying the federal government should take steps to restrict false information online rose from 39% in 2018 to 55% in 2023. A 2025 Pew survey found the partisan split on that question had widened, with 58% of Democrats and 43% of Republicans supporting federal action.

Age matters more than people expect, and not in the direction the stereotype suggests. A 2025 report from The Future of Free Speech found support among Americans aged 18 to 34 for allowing insults to the U.S. flag fell to 43%, down from 71% in 2021. Support for statements offensive to religious beliefs dropped 14 points over the same period. The United States posted the third-largest decline in free speech support among 33 countries surveyed.

Both sides reverse position depending on the speaker

Researchers who track this find the pattern is not one-sided. During campus protests, some conservatives who had spent years arguing universities were insufficiently protective of speech called for demonstrations to be halted. Some liberals who had supported expanded regulation of hate speech argued that administrative crackdowns violated protesters' rights.

That symmetry is worth sitting with, because it suggests the stated principle is less stable than either side believes. Surveys going back to 1939 have found only about half of Americans agreeing that anybody should be allowed to speak on any subject at any time.

Where the debate actually splits

The left generally argues that targeted abuse drives people out of public life, silencing more speech than restricting the abuser would; that other democracies restrict incitement to hatred without collapsing into censorship; and that platforms already moderate enormous volumes of content privately, so the real question is who writes the rules. The right generally argues that giving officials power to define hateful speech is the core danger, that definitions inevitably expand, and that enforcement passes to whoever holds power next.

The strongest version of each case concedes something. Restriction advocates concede that speech powers have historically been used against minorities and protest movements. Opponents concede that counter-speech is not equally available to everyone targeted.