Noah Feldman, Columnist

You Have the Right to Give Someone the Finger

At least in Pennsylvania, where a court ruled the gesture isn't obscene.

November 2, 2016 at 7:28 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Flip that bird.
Photographer: Karim Sahib/AFP/Getty Images)

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Is the middle-finger gesture obscene? Not in Pennsylvania, according to a state appellate decision filed this week reversing a man’s conviction for giving his ex-wife the finger. Decided in the shadow of the First Amendment, the decision raises the ever-intriguing question of what counts as obscenity. It also calls into question the old idea that obscene speech is exempt from the constitutional rules governing freedom of speech.

The case, which I read about on the invaluable appellate law blog How Appealing, involves facts that would be funny if they weren’t tragic in the everyday sense of the term. Jason Waugaman was dropping off his children, 6 and 7, at the apartment building of his ex-wife, Kacie Boeshore. She came down to meet them in the parking lot; Waugaman was kissing the kids goodbye.