In the case of Butterworth v. Smith, 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Paul Robert Smith who challenged a Florida statute that prohibited grand jury witnesses from disclosing their testimony after the term of the grand jury had ended. The court held that this prohibition violated Smith's First Amendment rights to free speech as it was not narrowly tailored to serve a state interest and did not provide an adequate justification for its infringement on freedom of speech. This decision upheld that any restrictions on such disclosures must be limited to instances where there is a clear and present danger or serious harm occurring due to said disclosure.

In the dissenting opinion for Butterworth v. Smith, Justice Scalia argued that Florida's law prohibiting grand jury witnesses from disclosing their testimony did not violate the First Amendment. He contended that this restriction was a historical and accepted practice designed to protect both the integrity of ongoing investigations and those who may be falsely accused or exonerated by grand juries. The majority's decision, he believed, failed to adequately consider these interests and instead focused too heavily on free speech rights without recognizing legitimate constraints on them in certain contexts such as this one. Furthermore, he criticized the majority for creating an unnecessary constitutional issue where none existed before since there were other non-constitutional grounds upon which they could have decided this case.