Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me make full disclosure at the outset. I also appeared before the Supreme Court in the trilogy of cases that was referenced earlier by Kathleen Mahoney.
I think it's important that we appreciate the basic principles and propositions that were set forth and that can frame our understanding here. The court said, number one, that hate speech constitutes an assault on the very values that underlie free speech to begin with; number two, that hate speech should be seen as not just a speech issue, but an equality rights issue, as a discriminatory practice; number three, that it was a minority rights issue, the right of minorities to protect against group-vilifying speech; number four, that it was a harms-based issue, and they referred to the harms-based rationale; finally, number five, that it was an implementation of our international law undertakings in that regard.
So I think we need to frame it in terms of these basic principles and propositions, and I'd like to give Ms. Mahoney an opportunity to expand upon that, which she was about to begin, and that was why hate speech is a discriminatory practice and an equality rights issue.