It upheld an Illinois law making it illegal to publish or exhibit any writing or picture portraying the "depravity, criminality, unchastity, or lack of virtue of a class of citizens of any race, color, creed or religion".

It is most known for giving a legal basis to some degree that forms of hate speech that may be deemed to breach US libel law are not protected by the First Amendment.

The petitioner, Joseph Beauharnais, who served as the president of the White Circle League of America, a white supremacist group, had distributed a leaflet "setting forth a petition calling on the Mayor and City Council of Chicago 'to halt the further encroachment, harassment and invasion of white people, their property, neighborhoods and persons, by the Negro.'"

[1] In his opinion, Justice Frankfurter argued that the speech conducted by the defendant had breached libel and so was reasoned to be outside the protection of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

[2] Although Beauharnais has not been overturned, subsequent Supreme Court decisions such as New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), R.A.V.