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The case of Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire was decided in 1942 by a vote of 9 to 0. In the course of distributing pamphlets for the Jehovah's Witnesses, a member of that religious group named Chaplinsky attracted a hostile crowd. A city marshal intervened and Chaplinsky called him a "racketeer" and a "Fascist." He was accused and convicted of violating a state law requiring that "No person shall address any offensive, derisive or annoying word to any other person who is lawfully in any street or other public place…." The Supreme Court upheld the conviction. Justice Murphy, who wrote the opinion, stated that there were certain categories of speech that were not protected by the First Amendment. These included "fighting words," described as "those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace."

Some advocates of campus speech codes have relied on the fighting words exception to First Amendment protection in their justification of campus restrictions. The Stanford University code, for example, uses language that invokes the fighting words doctrine. Critics contend that the scope of the fighting words exception has been much reduced by later court cases such as Gooding v. Wilson (1972). They also point out that while some restrictions based on the fighting words exception may be constitutional, the restrictions in most campus speech codes are limited to fighting words on certain subjects such as race and sex. This raises the possibility that these restrictions are unconstitutional because they are content based or viewpoint based.

Another exception to First amendment protection relies on the concept of "group libel." The case of Beauharnais v. Illinois was decided in 1952. Beauharnais was convicted under a state law that made it a crime to distribute any publication that "portrays depravity, criminality, unchastity, or lack of virtue of a class of citizens, of any race, color, creed or religion which said publication or exhibition exposes the citizens of any race, color, creed or religion to contempt, derision, or obloquy…." Beauharnais was president of the White Circle League of America. The leaflet he distributed stated that "If persuasion and the need to prevent the white race from becoming mongrelized by the negro will not unite us, then the aggressions . . . rapes, robberies, knives, guns and marijuana of the negro, surely will."

The Supreme Court upheld the conviction. Justice Frankfurter, who wrote the opinion, stated that "No one will gainsay that it is libelous falsely to charge another with being a rapist, robber, carrier of knives and guns, and user of marijuana…. But if an utterance directed at an individual may be the object of criminal sanctions, we cannot deny to a State power to punish the same utterance directed at a defined group, unless we can say that this is a wilful and purposeless restriction unrelated to the peace and well-being of the State." After reviewing the history of racial tension and conflict in Illinois, he concluded that "we would deny experience to say that the Illinois legislature was without reason in seeking ways to curb false or malicious defamation of racial and religious groups, made in public places and by means calculated to have a powerful emotional impact on those to whom it was presented."

Some advocates of campus speech codes have attempted to revive the concept of group libel as a legal basis. Critics again reply that later decisions such as New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964) have undermined the conclusion in Beauharnais.