In the case of Ulysses Tory et al. v. Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., 2004, the Supreme Court ruled on a dispute between lawyer Johnnie Cochran and his former client, Ulysses Tory. The court had to decide whether an injunction prohibiting Mr.Tory from making defamatory statements about Mr.Cochran was constitutional or if it violated First Amendment rights to free speech. Tory had been picketing outside Cochran's office for years following a legal disagreement, making false claims about him publicly. In response, Cochran sued for defamation and won; as part of this victory he obtained an injunction that permanently banned Tory from speaking out against him in any public forum. The Supreme Court unanimously decided that while courts can issue such orders when they relate directly to the specifics of a given case (e.g., preventing further libel), this particular order was too broad because it prohibited all negative comments by Tory about Cochran regardless of their truthfulness or relevance to their prior legal dispute - thus infringing upon his First Amendment rights.

In the dissenting opinion for Ulysses Tory, et al. v. Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr., Justice Stevens argued that the permanent injunction issued against Tory was overly broad and violated his First Amendment rights to free speech. He contended that while courts have authority to issue injunctions preventing specific false statements from being repeated, they do not have the power to completely ban a person from making any future comments about another individual or subject matter indefinitely - as it happened in this case with Mr.Tory being prohibited from speaking publicly about Mr.Cochran forever. This blanket prohibition on speech is an unconstitutional prior restraint according to Justice Stevens' view of First Amendment jurisprudence.