What happened to Dillon Shane Webb is a good example of how messy the line between “offensive” and “illegal” speech can get in real life.

At a basic level, the First Amendment protects a wide range of expression—including speech that people find crude, vulgar, or offensive. Courts have repeatedly ruled that offensiveness alone isn’t enough to make speech illegal. For something like a bumper sticker to cross the line, it would usually have to fall into a narrow category such as true threats, incitement, or legally defined obscenity (which has a very specific and strict test).