sedition
Sedition is language intended to incite insurrection against the governing authority.
The U.S. federal government criminalizes seditious conspiracy in 18 U.S.C. § 2384, which states, “[i]f two or more persons in [the U.S.], conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.”
While the United States still criminalizes sedition in 18 U.S.C. § 2384, the First Amendment’s free speech protections limit the extent to which states and the federal government can criminalize sedition. In Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969), the U.S. Supreme Court created a test requiring that speech be intended to incite imminent lawless action, and is likely to produce such violence in order to be considered seditious.
[Last reviewed in August of 2026 by the Wex Definitions Team]
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