The 14th Amendment. Equal protection is what those laws are based on. Notice that I specified in "many settings." One would not be legally allowed to spew their hate for "deranged trannys," or advocate for machine gunning immigrants at their office job, for example.
As for this site, that's up to the owners and mods to decide. The First Amendment does not guarantee one's right to say whatever they want on a private forum, as those of us centrists or slightly left of center, who have received the most nit picky of violation points are aware of.
Originally Posted by 1pittsburgh
No, one most certainly can spew hate for whoever or whatever they want at an office job. The Constitution guarantees that right and keeps the government out of such matters. If you do so, your employer likely will fire you for it, but that isn’t the same as “modifying the Constitution”. The same rules were applicable prior to the ratification of the 14th. Are you telling me that behavior such as overt discrimination and segregation ended in 1866? There has been no applicable modification of the Constitution since then, and even that modification only outlawed (very theoretically, not so much in practice) acts of overt discrimination. It certainly did not modify or constrain the right to free speech.
An example: If I say “I can’t stand people who are purple with pink polka dots. Purple people with pink polka dots are all lazy, shiftless criminals.” (Using hypothetical race that doesn’t actually exist to avoid being quoted out of context), that is perfectly legal. It might get one ostracized from many societal groups. It might get one fired from a job and make finding future employment difficult. What it will not do is land one in prison or in legal trouble.
Now saying “I hate purple people with pink polka dots. Let’s get together and kill all the purple people! Anyone with me, meet me at 7PM here tomorrow and bring lots of guns and ammo,” will likely land one in legal trouble for inciting violence. Giving offense is perfectly legal; threatening or inciting violence is not. That is true now, and always has been, both before and after ratification of the 14th.
The 14th really only did two things, both aimed at constraining government actions, not individual ones. It made laws that overtly discriminate against one race illegal (again this was largely circumvented for many decades), and it incorporated the protections of the Bill of Rights into state law. Prior to the 14th, the protections in the BOR technically applies only to Congress “Congress shall pass no law…”. The 14th was what legally gave the same protections under state law.