A 16-year-old California boy dumped by his high school girlfriend didn’t violate a state obscenity law by using four-letter words in anguished text messages to his ex, an appellate court ruled this week.

The boy, identified by his initials in the ruling, was convicted by a juvenile court judge in Chico, California, of sending threatening or obscene telephone communications, based on two profanity-laced text messages he sent the girl shortly after the breakup last year.

“Fuck u u stupid fuckin girl!,” read one of texts, in part.

One of the girl’s friends told police about the texts, leading to the boy’s arrest. He was held four days in juvenile hall.

When the teenager appealed, state Attorney General Edmund Brown argued that the conviction should stand. On Tuesday, the Third Appellate District Court overturned the conviction (.pdf), finding that the text messages’ language was not “offensive to prevailing notions of modesty or decency.”

“[T]he words … are generally eschewed in polite settings, which is why in court the parties and witnesses generally referred to the ‘F word’ or ‘B word’ or ‘C word,’” wrote Associate Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, for the unanimous three-judge panel.

“But each has acquired secondary meanings through modern usage,” the judge wrote. “In particular, the evidence was uncontradicted that these words are in common use at the high school, the venue in which the relationship existed, and in which [the defendant's] pointed communications about his feelings were sent.”

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