In Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343, 123 S.Ct. 1536, 155 L.Ed.2d 535 (2003), the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of a Virginia statute making it a criminal offense to burn a cross with intent to intimidate. 538 U.S. at 347-48, 123 S.Ct. 1536. The Court invalidated the statute on First Amendment grounds, id. at 367, 123 S.Ct. 1536, but the justices were divided on the rationale. The case produced five opinions: a plurality opinion by Justice O'Connor (joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice Stevens- who also wrote a brief concurrence-and Justice Breyer); an opinion by Justice Scalia concurring in part and dissenting in part (joined in part by Justice Thomas); an opinion by Justice Souter concurring in part and dissenting in part (joined by Justices Kennedy and Ginsburg); and a dissent by Justice Thomas. Most of the debate among the justices concerned the question of whether the statute impermissibly discriminated on the basis of content or viewpoint and the validity of a particular provision in the statute making the burning of a cross prima facie evidence of the defendant's intent to intimidate. The plurality offered a new definition of true threats, part of which we have quoted above. The entire passage is as follows: "True threats" encompass those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals. ... The speaker need not actually intend to carry out the threat. Rather, a prohibition on true threats "protect[s] individuals from the fear of violence" and "from the disruption that fear engenders," in addition to protecting people "from the possibility that the threatened violence will occur." Intimidation in the constitutionally proscribable sense of the word is a type of true threat, where a speaker directs a threat to a person or group of persons with the intent of placing the victim in fear of bodily harm or death. Id. at 359-60, 123 S.Ct. 1536.