The Harm in Hate Speech Laws - by Venkatesh V Ranjan
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The Harm in Hate Speech Laws<br>Why “group libel” cannot justify a hate speech exception to the First Amendment.
Venkatesh V Ranjan<br>Sep 11, 2025
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1. The Only Good Indians
Whenever “Indians” is trending on the site formerly known as Twitter, I – an Indian immigrant to the US – just cannot stop myself from having a look. Like one’s tongue to a loose tooth, my thumb(cursor) will reach for the ‘trend’ and tap(click) on it. With a strange mixture of dread and anticipation and morbid curiosity, I will scroll down the ‘Top’ posts, sorted by engagement. And it is always as pleasant an experience as fondling a loose tooth with one’s tongue.<br>Going by the majority of “Top” posts, there seems to be an open season on Indians broadly and Indian-origin immigrants specifically.<br>Just a sample from the last few days (and these are by no means the worst of the lot): ”Literally every product that comes from these companies has become worse since indians took over.”(quoting a post mentioning the many US companies with Indian-origin CEOs, 5.8k likes), “Indians are not loyal, are scammers, and are destroying America and jobs for Americans through fraud. It’s time to end all Indian Visas and deport all Indians in the US.”(posted with a defaced Indian flag, 5.1k likes), “America does not need more visas for people from India. Perhaps no form of legal immigration has so displaced American workers as those from India. Enough already. We’re full. Let’s finally put our own people first.” (Charlie Kirk1, quoting a Laura Ingraham post on a possible trade deal with India, 40k likes).<br>It is not just internet influencers; it’s also the people in power with positions of responsibility, who should know better (in terms of actual data and policy intricacies). For example, the governor of Florida has chimed in recently, criticizing the H-1B visa program, of which Indian nationals are the largest recipients, by targeting Indians (“most of them are from one country, India, there's a cottage industry about how all those people make money off this system”) and accusing "Big Tech" of undercutting American workers. This sentiment has been echoed and amplified by others with a bully pulpit: the current vice-President has explicitly questioned the loyalties of Indian-origin CEOs in Silicon Valley and framed high-skilled immigration from India as a threat to the American middle class. In both instances, complex economic and immigration policies are reduced to a simplistic and hostile "Americans vs Indians" narrative.<br>Why am I mentioning all of this? Because when I say I understand Jeremy Waldron’s point in his book The Harm in Hate Speech that “hate speech” — alleged or professed — is something which violates a person’s dignity and assurance, I really do. I understand it viscerally, not just vicariously.<br>I also agree with his definitions of dignity (a person’s basic social standing as an equal member of society) and assurance (a person’s ability to go about their lives without facing hostility or exclusion). Waldron gives me the explicit vocabulary to describe how I feel when I read explicit online threats by random weirdos and veiled targeting by public figures and powerful officials directed at Indians.<br>However, while ensuring dignity and assurance for members of a society (irrespective of their group identity) are worthwhile social goals as Waldron defines them, these are too nebulous to be legal goals. In this essay, I will make the case that “group libel” is not a legally sound basis for hate speech laws.
2. “Offense”, “Hate”, and “Group Libel”
I chose to focus on Waldron’s book because it represents the most sophisticated and intellectually rigorous modern defense of hate speech regulations. Published in 2012, The Harm in Hate Speech is arguably the most significant contemporary text on the topic, and it has drawn extensive praise for its rigor and sharp criticism for its conclusions. Waldron explicitly seeks to provide the "best case" for these laws, moving beyond what he calls "knee-jerk, impulsive, and thoughtless" arguments to build a nuanced theory based on protecting civic dignity as a public good.
source<br>The book's primary influence has been to shift the intellectual justification for hate speech regulation away from preventing "offense" to preventing “hate” by applying standards of dignity and assurance. Waldron is credited with clearly defining the terms of debate even by his critics. He makes it clear that he wants to distinguish between “offensive” speech and “hate” speech. In the first chapter itself (‘Approaching Hate Speech’), he writes: “I accept the point, which many critics make, that offense is not something the law should seek to protect people against.” However, I believe that the machinery of the state, once empowered to regulate speech, is incapable of maintaining such a fine distinction.<br>In the rest of this essay, I...