Polish President Karol Nawrocki says he will not accept hate speech legislation passed by parliament following a court ruling which deemed the measure to be unconstitutional.
“The constitutional court … sided with freedom of speech,” said Zbigniew Bogucki, who heads the Chancellery of the opposition Conservatives.
Following the verdict, Bogucki said that the President was now “obliged” to refuse to sign the legislation.
The court’s rulings are not recognised by the Polish Government, which claims the body is illegitimate. On September 29, it ruled the hate-speech legislation was “improper interference with the constitutionally protected freedom of expression”.
The centre-left government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk had the proposal passed by parliament in March.
The measure sought to catalogue hate crimes under four new categories: Age, gender, disability and sexual orientation.
Its purpose was to ensure that hate crimes based on these characteristics would be prosecuted by the public authorities without requiring a private indictment.
It was introduced after lobbying from LGBT activists and was seen as a move to soften their disappointment after the ruling coalition was unable to agree on legislation to introduce civil partnerships for same sex couples.
In its hate-speech ruling, the constitutional court stated the new discriminatory grounds were “imprecisely defined” and susceptible to “overly broad” and “mechanistic” criminalisation of speech. It added that the wording on these grounds made “the line between legal criticism, jokes, polemics, and crimes elusive”.
The ruling emphasised that the legislation constituted “inappropriate interference with the constitutionally protected freedom of expression”. It warned that its application may be “unpredictable” and susceptible to “arbitrary decisions by law enforcement agencies and courts”.
According to the court, the legislation could also have a negative effect on public debate.
“There is a risk of classifying critical comments, polemics or research concerning sexual identity, cultural norms, social movements or relevant legislation as a crime,” it stated.
While offensive statements are inadmissible [or not to be tolerated], restricting freedom of expression with insufficiently defined prohibited acts violates constitutional rights, judges ruled.
“In this case, the court found that while the inadmissibility of offensive statements in the public space towards any groups or public entities is unquestionable, restricting the freedom of expression by establishing types of prohibited acts with insufficiently defined characteristics violates the constitutional freedom of speech,” it ruled.
The judges also expressed concern that the proposed new law moved criminal law away from its intended role of being “the last resort used solely to combat the most serious forms of hatred or violence’ towards something that could instead be “a tool for censoring speech that was not intended to be discriminatory”.
The court argued that “criminal law should not be used to restrict pluralism of opinion by excluding controversial statements, which are the essence of democratic discourse. Nor should criminal law be used to protect against every form of criticism or social discomfort, but only in cases of actual violation of personal rights”.
The veto by Nawrocki is virtually certain to bury the proposed hate-speech legislation since the government does not have the required three-fifths qualified majority in parliament to overturn it. Both the opposition parties PiS and Confederation opposed to the measure.
