Utah Once Banned Public Swearing — Then Courts Said 'Hell No'

The story of Utah's public swearing law is really the story of how the First Amendment gradually chipped away at morality-based speech restrictions across America. Utah's original 1973 disorderly conduct statute, § 76-9-102, did include 'abusive or obscene language' in a public place as a criminal offense — reflecting the conservative cultural norms of the era, particularly in a state shaped by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The provision had real bite: in 1988, a Logan City man named Ralph Lowell Huber was convicted under a parallel city ordinance after cursing at police officers who pulled him over. Utah's Court of Appeals unanimously reversed the conviction, ruling the ordinance unconstitutionally overbroad under both the U.S. and Utah constitutions. The court held that the First Amendment does not permit punishing mere offensive language unless it constitutes 'fighting words' — a narrow category of face-to-face insults likely to provoke an immediate violent reaction. Following that ruling and related Utah Supreme Court guidance, the state legislature in 1999 passed H.B. 217, formally deleting the 'abusive or obscene language' clause from § 76-9-102. Today, the claim that it's broadly illegal to swear in public in Utah is false — but it has a real historical basis, and some municipal-level restrictions on profanity that causes a breach of the peace technically remain on the books. The claim circulates widely on 'weird laws' listicle sites, which typically fail to note that the provision was repealed over 25 years ago.