In the predawn hours of June 21, 1990, petitioner and several other teenagers allegedly assembled a crudelymade cross by taping together broken chair legs. They then allegedly burned the cross inside the fenced yard of a black family that lived across the street from the house where petitioner was staying. Although this conduct could have been punished under any of a number of laws, one of the two provisions under which respondent city of St. Paul chose to charge petitioner (then a juvenile) was the St. Paul BiasMotivated Crime Ordinance, St. Paul, Minn. Legis. Code 292.02 (1990), which provides:

Whoever places on public or private property a symbol, object, appellation, characterization or graffiti, including, but not limited to, a burning cross or Nazi swastika, which one knows or has reasonable grounds to know arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender commits disorderly conduct and shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.

Petitioner moved to dismiss this count on the ground that the St. Paul ordinance was substantially overbroad and impermissibly contentbased and therefore facially invalid under the First Amendment. The trial court granted this motion, but the Minnesota Supreme Court reversed. That court rejected petitioner's overbreadth claim because, as construed in prior Minnesota cases, see, e.g., In re Welfare of S. L. J., 263 N. W. 2d 412 (Minn. 1978), the modifying phrase arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others limited the reach of the ordinance to conduct that amounts to fighting words, i.e., conduct that itself inflicts injury or tends to incite immediate violence . . ., In re Welfare of R. A. V., 464 N. W. 2d 507, 510 (Minn. 1991) (citing Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U. S. 568, 572 (1942)), and therefore the ordinance reached only expression that the first amendment does not protect. 464 N. W. 2d, at 511. The court also concluded that the ordinance was not impermissibly contentbased because, in its view, the ordinance is a narrowly tailored means toward accomplish ing the compelling governmental interest in protecting the community against biasmotivated threats to public safety and order. Ibid. We granted certiorari, 501 U. S. ___ (1991).
I
In construing the St. Paul ordinance, we are bound by the construction given to it by the Minnesota court. Posadas de Puerto Rico Associates v. Tourism Co. of Puerto Rico, 478 U. S. 328, 339 (1986); New York v. Ferber, 458 U. S. 747, 769, n. 24 (1982); Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U. S. 1, 4 (1949). Accordingly, we accept the Minnesota Supreme Court's authoritative statement that the ordinance reaches only those expressions that constitute fighting words within the meaning of Chaplinsky. 464 N. W. 2d, at 510511. Petitioner and his amici urge us to modify the scope of the Chaplinsky formulation, thereby invalidating the ordinance as substantially overbroad, Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U. S. 601, 610 (1973). We find it unneces sary to consider this issue. Assuming, arguendo, that all of the expression reached by the ordinance is proscribable under the fighting words doctrine, we nonetheless conclude that the ordinance is facially unconstitutional in that it prohibits otherwise permitted speech solely on the basis of the subjects the speech addresses.

The First Amendment generally prevents government from proscribing speech, see, e.g., Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296, 309311 (1940), or even expressive conduct, see, e.g., Texas v. Johnson, 491 U. S. 397, 406 (1989), because of disapproval of the ideas expressed. Content based regulations are presumptively invalid. Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. Members of N. Y. State Crime Victims Bd., 502 U. S. ___, ___ (1991) (slip op., at 89); id., at ___ (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 34); Consolidated Edison Co. of N. Y. v. Public Serv. Comm'n of N. Y., 447 U. S. 530, 536 (1980); Police Dept. of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U. S. 92, 95 (1972). From 1791 to the present, however, our society, like other free but civilized societies, has permitted restrictions upon the content of speech in a few limited areas, which are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality. Chaplinsky, supra, at 572. We have recognized that the freedom of speech referred to by the First Amendment does not include a freedom to disregard these traditional limitations. See, e.g., Roth v. United States, 354 U. S. 476 (1957) (obscenity); Beauharnais v. Illinois, 343 U. S. 250 (1952) (defamation); Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, supra, (fighting words); see generally Simon & Schuster, supra, at ___ (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 4). Our decisions since the 1960's have narrowed the scope of the traditional categorical exceptions for defamation, see New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254 (1964); Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U. S. 323 (1974); see generally Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U. S. 1, 1317 (1990), and for obscenity, see Miller v. California, 413 U. S. 15 (1973), but a limited categorical approach has remained an important part of our First Amendment jurisprudence.

We have sometimes said that these categories of expres sion are not within the area of constitutionally protected speech, Roth, supra, at 483; Beauharnais, supra, at 266; Chaplinsky, supra, at 571572, or that the protection of the First Amendment does not extend to them, Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of United States, Inc., 466 U. S. 485, 504 (1984); Sable Communications of Cal., Inc. v. FCC, 492 U. S. 115, 124 (1989). Such statements must be taken in context, however, and are no more literally true than is the occasionally repeated shorthand characterizing obscenity as not being speech at all, Sunstein, Pornography and the First Amendment, 1986 Duke L. J. 589, 615, n. 146. What they mean is that these areas of speech can, consistently with the First Amendment, be regulated because of their constitutionally proscribable content (obscenity, defamation, etc.)not that they are categories of speech entirely invisible to the Constitution, so that they may be made the vehicles for content discrimination unrelated to their distinctively proscribable content. Thus, the government may proscribe libel; but it may not make the further content discrimination of proscribing only libel critical of the government. We recently acknowledged this distinction in Ferber, 458 U. S., at 763, where, in upholding New York's child pornography law, we expressly recognized that there was no question here of censoring a particular literary theme . . . . See also id., at 775 (O'Connor, J., concurring) (As drafted, New York's statute does not attempt to suppress the communication of particular ideas).

Our cases surely do not establish the proposition that the First Amendment imposes no obstacle whatsoever to regulation of particular instances of such proscribable expression, so that the government may regulate [them] freely, post, at 4 (White, J., concurring in judgment). That would mean that a city council could enact an ordinance prohibiting only those legally obscene works that contain criticism of the city government or, indeed, that do not include endorsement of the city government. Such a simplistic, allornothingatall approach to First Amend ment protection is at odds with common sense and with our jurisprudence as well. It is not true that fighting words have at most a de minimis expressive content, ibid., or that their content is in all respects worthless and unde serving of constitutional protection, post, at 6; sometimes they are quite expressive indeed. We have not said that they constitute no part of the expression of ideas, but only that they constitute no essential part of any exposition of ideas. Chaplinsky, 315 U. S., at 572 (emphasis added).

The proposition that a particular instance of speech can be proscribable on the basis of one feature (e.g., obscenity) but not on the basis of another (e.g., opposition to the city government) is commonplace, and has found application in many contexts. We have long held, for example, that nonverbal expressive activity can be banned because of the action it entails, but not because of the ideas it express esso that burning a flag in violation of an ordinance against outdoor fires could be punishable, whereas burning a flag in violation of an ordinance against dishonoring the flag is not. See Johnson, 491 U. S., at 406407. See also Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., 501 U. S. ___, ______ (1991) (plurality) (slip op., at 46); id., at ______ (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 56); id., at ______ (Souter, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 12); United States v. O'Brien, 391 U. S. 367, 376377 (1968). Similarly, we have upheld reasonable time, place, or manner restrictions, but only if they are justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech. Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U. S. 781, 791 (1989) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Clark v. Community for Creative NonViolence, 468 U. S. 288, 298 (1984) (noting that the O'Brien test differs little from the standard applied to time, place, or manner restrictions). And just as the power to proscribe particular speech on the basis of a noncontent element (e.g., noise) does not entail the power to proscribe the same speech on the basis of a content element; so also, the power to proscribe it on the basis of one content element (e.g., obscenity) does not entail the power to proscribe it on the basis of other content elements.

In other words, the exclusion of fighting words from the scope of the First Amendment simply means that, for purposes of that Amendment, the unprotected features of the words are, despite their verbal character, essentially a nonspeech element of communication. Fighting words are thus analogous to a noisy sound truck: Each is, as Justice Frankfurter recognized, a mode of speech, Niemotko v. Maryland, 340 U. S. 268, 282 (1951) (Frankfurter, J., concurring in result); both can be used to convey an idea; but neither has, in and of itself, a claim upon the First Amendment. As with the sound truck, however, so also with fighting words: The government may not regulate use based on hostilityor favoritismtowards the underlying message expressed. Compare Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U. S. 474 (1988) (upholding, against facial challenge, a content neutral ban on targeted residential picketing) with Carey v. Brown, 447 U. S. 455 (1980) (invalidating a ban on residen tial picketing that exempted labor picketing).

The concurrences describe us as setting forth a new First Amendment principle that prohibition of constitutionally proscribable speech cannot be underinclusiv[e], post, at 6 (White, J., concurring in judgment)a First Amendment absolutism whereby within a particular `proscribable' category of expression, . . . a government must either pro scribe all speech or no speech at all, post, at 4 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment). That easy target is of the concurrences' own invention. In our view, the First Amendment imposes not an underinclusiveness limitation but a content discrimination limitation upon a State's prohibition of proscribable speech. There is no problem whatever, for example, with a State's prohibiting obscenity (and other forms of proscribable expression) only in certain media or markets, for although that prohibition would be underinclusive, it would not discriminate on the basis of content. See, e.g., Sable Communications, 492 U. S., at 124126 (upholding 47 U. S. C. 223(b)(1) (1988), which prohibits obscene telephone communications).

Even the prohibition against content discrimination that we assert the First Amendment requires is not absolute. It applies differently in the context of proscribable speech than in the area of fully protected speech. The rationale of the general prohibition, after all, is that content discrimina tion rais[es] the specter that the Government may effec tively drive certain ideas or viewpoints from the market place, Simon & Schuster, 502 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9); Leathers v. Medlock, 499 U. S. ___, ___ (1991); FCC v. League of Women Voters of California, 468 U. S. 364, 383384 (1984); Consolidated Edison Co., 447 U. S., at 536; Police Dept. of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U. S., at 9598. But content discrimination among various instances of a class of proscribable speech often does not pose this threat.

When the basis for the content discrimination consists entirely of the very reason the entire class of speech at issue is proscribable, no significant danger of idea or viewpoint discrimination exists. Such a reason, having been adjudged neutral enough to support exclusion of the entire class of speech from First Amendment protection, is also neutral enough to form the basis of distinction within the class. To illustrate: A State might choose to prohibit only that obscenity which is the most patently offensive in its pruriencei.e., that which involves the most lascivious displays of sexual activity. But it may not prohibit, for example, only that obscenity which includes offensive political messages. See Kucharek v. Hanaway, 902 F. 2d 513, 517 (CA7 1990), cert. denied, 498 U. S. ___ (1991). And the Federal Government can criminalize only those threats of violence that are directed against the President, see 18 U. S. C. 871since the reasons why threats of violence are outside the First Amendment (protecting individuals from the fear of violence, from the disruption that fear engenders, and from the possibility that the threatened violence will occur) have special force when applied to the person of the President. See Watts v. United States, 394 U. S. 705, 707 (1969) (upholding the facial validity of 871 because of the overwhelmin[g] interest in protecting the safety of [the] Chief Executive and in allowing him to perform his duties without interference from threats of physical violence). But the Federal Government may not criminalize only those threats against the President that mention his policy on aid to inner cities. And to take a final example (one mentioned by Justice Stevens, post, at 67), a State may choose to regulate price advertising in one industry but not in others, because the risk of fraud (one of the characteristics of commercial speech that justifies depriving it of full First Amendment protection, see Virginia Pharmacy Bd. v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U. S. 748, 771772 (1976)) is in its view greater there. Cf. Morales v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 504 U. S. ___ (1992) (state regulation of airline advertising); Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Assn., 436 U. S. 447 (1978) (state regulation of lawyer advertising). But a State may not prohibit only that commercial advertis ing that depicts men in a demeaning fashion, see, e.g., L. A. Times, Aug. 8, 1989, section 4, p. 6, col. 1.

Another valid basis for according differential treatment to even a content-defined subclass of proscribable speech is that the subclass happens to be associated with particular secondary effects of the speech, so that the regulation is justified without reference to the content of the . . . speech, Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U. S. 41, 48 (1986) (quoting, with emphasis, Virginia Pharmacy Bd., supra, at 771); see also Young v. American Mini Theatres, Inc., 427 U. S. 50, 71, n. 34 (1976) (plurality); id., at 8082 (Powell, J., concurring); Barnes, 501 U. S., at ______ (Souter, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 37). A State could, for example, permit all obscene live perfor mances except those involving minors. Moreover, since words can in some circumstances violate laws directed not against speech but against conduct (a law against treason, for example, is violated by telling the enemy the nation's defense secrets), a particular contentbased subcategory of a proscribable class of speech can be swept up incidentally within the reach of a statute directed at conduct rather than speech. See id., at ___ (plurality) (slip op., at 4); id., at ___ (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 56); id., at ___ (Souter, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 12); FTC v. Superior Court Trial Lawyers Assn., 493 U. S. 411, 425432 (1990); O'Brien, 391 U. S., at 376377. Thus, for example, sexually derogatory fighting words, among other words, may produce a violation of Title VII's general prohibition against sexual discrimination in employment practices, 42 U. S. C. 2000e2; 29 CFR 1604.11 (1991). See also 18 U. S. C. 242; 42 U. S. C. 1981, 1982. Where the government does not target conduct on the basis of its expressive content, acts are not shielded from regulation merely because they express a discriminatory idea or philosophy.

These bases for distinction refute the proposition that the selectivity of the restriction is even arguably `conditioned upon the sovereign's agreement with what a speaker may intend to say.' Metromedia, Inc. v. San Diego, 453 U. S. 490, 555 (1981) (Stevens, J., dissenting in part) (citation omitted). There may be other such bases as well. Indeed, to validate such selectivity (where totally proscribable speech is at issue) it may not even be necessary to identify any particular neutral basis, so long as the nature of the content discrimination is such that there is no realistic possibility that official suppression of ideas is afoot. (We cannot think of any First Amendment interest that would stand in the way of a State's prohibiting only those obscene motion pictures with blueeyed actresses.) Save for that limitation, the regulation of fighting words, like the regulation of noisy speech, may address some offensive instances and leave other, equally offensive, instances alone. See Posadas de Puerto Rico, 478 U. S., at 342343.
II
Applying these principles to the St. Paul ordinance, we conclude that, even as narrowly construed by the Minnesota Supreme Court, the ordinance is facially unconstitutional. Although the phrase in the ordinance, arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others, has been limited by the Minnesota Supreme Court's construction to reach only those symbols or displays that amount to fighting words, the remaining, unmodified terms make clear that the ordinance applies only to fighting words that insult, or provoke violence, on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender. Displays containing abusive invective, no matter how vicious or severe, are permissible unless they are addressed to one of the specified disfavored topics. Those who wish to use fighting words in connection with other ideasto express hostility, for example, on the basis of political affiliation, union membership, or homosexual ityare not covered. The First Amendment does not per mit St. Paul to impose special prohibitions on those speakers who express views on disfavored subjects. See Simon & Schuster, 502 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 89); Arkansas Writers' Project, Inc. v. Ragland, 481 U. S. 221, 229230 (1987).

In its practical operation, moreover, the ordinance goes even beyond mere content discrimination, to actual viewpoint discrimination. Displays containing some wordsodious racial epithets, for examplewould be prohibited to proponents of all views. But fighting words that do not themselves invoke race, color, creed, religion, or genderaspersions upon a person's mother, for exam plewould seemingly be usable ad libitum in the placards of those arguing in favor of racial, color, etc. tolerance and equality, but could not be used by that speaker's opponents. One could hold up a sign saying, for example, that all anti Catholic bigots are misbegotten; but not that all papists are, for that would insult and provoke violence on the basis of religion. St. Paul has no such authority to license one side of a debate to fight freestyle, while requiring the other to follow Marquis of Queensbury Rules.

What we have here, it must be emphasized, is not a prohibition of fighting words that are directed at certain persons or groups (which would be facially valid if it met the requirements of the Equal Protection Clause); but rather, a prohibition of fighting words that contain (as the Minnesota Supreme Court repeatedly emphasized) mes sages of biasmotivated hatred and in particular, as ap plied to this case, messages based on virulent notions of racial supremacy. 464 N. W. 2d, at 508, 511. One must wholeheartedly agree with the Minnesota Supreme Court that [i]t is the responsibility, even the obligation, of diverse communities to confront such notions in whatever form they appear, ibid., but the manner of that confrontation cannot consist of selective limitations upon speech. St. Paul's brief asserts that a general fighting words law would not meet the city's needs because only a contentspecific measure can communicate to minority groups that the group hatred aspect of such speech is not condoned by the majority. Brief for Respondent 25. The point of the First Amendment is that majority preferences must be expressed in some fashion other than silencing speech on the basis of its content.

Despite the fact that the Minnesota Supreme Court and St. Paul acknowledge that the ordinance is directed at expression of group hatred, Justice Stevens suggests that this fundamentally misreads the ordinance. Post, at 1819. It is directed, he claims, not to speech of a particu lar content, but to particular injur[ies] that are qualita tively different from other injuries. Post, at 9. This is wordplay. What makes the anger, fear, sense of dishonor, etc. produced by violation of this ordinance distinct from the anger, fear, sense of dishonor, etc. produced by other fighting words is nothing other than the fact that it is caused by a distinctive idea, conveyed by a distinctive message. The First Amendment cannot be evaded that easily. It is obvious that the symbols which will arouse anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender are those symbols that communicate a message of hostility based on one of these characteristics. St. Paul concedes in its brief that the ordinance applies only to racial, religious, or gender specific symbols such as a burning cross, Nazi swastika or other instrumentality of like import. Brief for Respon dent 8. Indeed, St. Paul argued in the Juvenile Court that [t]he burning of a cross does express a message and it is, in fact, the content of that message which the St. Paul Ordinance attempts to legislate. Memorandum from the Ramsey County Attorney to the Honorable Charles A. Flinn, Jr., dated July 13, 1990, in In re Welfare of R. A. V., No. 89D1231 (Ramsey Cty. Juvenile Ct.), p. 1, reprinted in App. to Brief for Petitioner C1.

The content-based discrimination reflected in the St. Paul ordinance comes within neither any of the specific excep tions to the First Amendment prohibition we discussed earlier, nor within a more general exception for content discrimination that does not threaten censorship of ideas. It assuredly does not fall within the exception for content discrimination based on the very reasons why the particular class of speech at issue (here, fighting words) is proscri bable. As explained earlier, see supra, at 8, the reason why fighting words are categorically excluded from the protec tion of the First Amendment is not that their content communicates any particular idea, but that their content embodies a particularly intolerable (and socially unneces sary) mode of expressing whatever idea the speaker wishes to convey. St. Paul has not singled out an especially offensive mode of expressionit has not, for example, selected for prohibition only those fighting words that communicate ideas in a threatening (as opposed to a merely obnoxious) manner. Rather, it has proscribed fighting words of whatever manner that communicate messages of racial, gender, or religious intolerance. Selectivity of this sort creates the possibility that the city is seeking to handicap the expression of particular ideas. That possibil ity would alone be enough to render the ordinance presump tively invalid, but St. Paul's comments and concessions in this case elevate the possibility to a certainty.

St. Paul argues that the ordinance comes within another of the specific exceptions we mentioned, the one that allows content discrimination aimed only at the secondary effects of the speech, see Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U. S. 41 (1986). According to St. Paul, the ordinance is intended, not to impact on [sic] the right of free expression of the accused, but rather to protect against the victimiza tion of a person or persons who are particularly vulnerable because of their membership in a group that historically has been discriminated against. Brief for Respondent 28. Even assuming that an ordinance that completely pro scribes, rather than merely regulates, a specified category of speech can ever be considered to be directed only to the secondary effects of such speech, it is clear that the St. Paul ordinance is not directed to secondary effects within the meaning of Renton. As we said in Boos v. Barry, 485 U. S. 312 (1988), [l]isteners' reactions to speech are not the type of `secondary effects' we referred to in Renton. Id., at 321. The emotive impact of speech on its audience is not a `secondary effect.' Ibid. See also id., at 334 (opinion of Brennan, J.).

It hardly needs discussion that the ordinance does not fall within some more general exception permitting all selectiv ity that for any reason is beyond the suspicion of official suppression of ideas. The statements of St. Paul in this very case afford ample basis for, if not full confirmation of, that suspicion.

Finally, St. Paul and its amici defend the conclusion of the Minnesota Supreme Court that, even if the ordinance regulates expression based on hostility towards its protected ideological content, this discrimination is nonetheless justified because it is narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests. Specifically, they assert that the ordinance helps to ensure the basic human rights of members of groups that have historically been subjected to discrimina tion, including the right of such group members to live in peace where they wish. We do not doubt that these interests are compelling, and that the ordinance can be said to promote them. But the danger of censorship presented by a facially contentbased statute, Leathers v. Medlock, 499 U. S. ___, ___ (1991) (slip op., at 8), requires that that weapon be employed only where it is necessary to serve the asserted [compelling] interest, Burson v. Freeman, 504 U. S. ___, ___ (1992) (plurality) (slip op., at 8) (emphasis added); Perry Education Assn. v. Perry Local Educators' Assn., 460 U. S. 37, 45 (1983). The existence of adequate contentneutral alternatives thus undercut[s] significantly any defense of such a statute, Boos v. Barry, supra, at 329, casting considerable doubt on the government's protesta tions that the asserted justification is in fact an accurate description of the purpose and effect of the law, Burson, supra, at ___ (Kennedy, J., concurring) (slip op., at 2). See Boos, supra, at 324329; cf. Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co. v. Minnesota Comm'r of Revenue, 460 U. S. 575, 586587 (1983). The dispositive question in this case, therefore, is whether content discrimination is reasonably necessary to achieve St. Paul's compelling interests; it plainly is not. An ordinance not limited to the favored topics, for example, would have precisely the same beneficial effect. In fact the only interest distinctively served by the content limitation is that of displaying the city council's special hostility towards the particular biases thus singled out. That is precisely what the First Amendment forbids. The politi cians of St. Paul are entitled to express that hostilitybut not through the means of imposing unique limitations upon speakers who (however benightedly) disagree.

Let there be no mistake about our belief that burning a cross in someone's front yard is reprehensible. But St. Paul has sufficient means at its disposal to prevent such behav ior without adding the First Amendment to the fire. The judgment of the Minnesota Supreme Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.