These Hostile Facebook Posts Ignited A Fight That's Going To The Supreme Court

APThe Supreme Court is going to hear a free speech case next week that will determine whether a then-27-year-old's violent, rap-inspired Facebook posts should have landed him behind bars.

The court will hear arguments next Monday in the case of Anthony Douglas Elonis, who was convicted of violating a federal law that bars making interstate threats to harm people.

Elonis' string of damning Facebook rants came after his wife of seven years left him and took their two kids with her in May 2010, according to the petition asking the Supreme Court to hear the case.

Elonis made questionable Facebook posts about his former employer (an amusement park that fired him), followed by posts about his estranged wife, and then a post in which he appeared to threaten elementary school kids. That last post prompted the FBI to start monitoring him, which in turn inspired a derogatory post from Elonis about the 'Little Agent Lady' who came to his door.

Post by Anthony Douglas Elonis.

Elonis argues that his posts - many of which were in rap form - weren't actually meant to threaten their subjects, and that he had a First Amendment right to make these statements. He has support from a number of free speech groups, including the ACLU.

'The inherently impersonal nature of online communication makes such messages inherently susceptible to misinterpretation,' his lawyers wrote in his petition.

The subjects of Elonis' Facebook communications obviously interpreted his posts as threats, and it's not hard to see why.

In one Facebook comment, Elonis suggested that his son 'dress up as matricide' for Halloween. His wife obtained a Protection from Abuse order, prompting him to post a longer rant about her that was basically a word-for-word adaption of sketch by a comedy group they'd seen together, according to his petition.

'Did you know that it's illegal for me to say I want to kill my wife?' he wrote. ' It's illegal. It's indirect criminal contempt ... I also found out it's incredibly illegal, extremely illegal, to go on Facebook and say something like the best place to fire a mortar launcher at her house would be the cornfield behind it ...'

His post about the FBI agent is more graphic. In it, he noted that it 'it took all the strength I had not to turn the b**** ghost. Pull my knife, flick my wrist, and slit her throat.'

Like a lot of rap lyrics, Elonis' have a violent undertone. His words got him 44 months in prison and three years of supervised release.

In the past, violent rap lyrics have even been used to secure murder convictions. Here are the rap lyrics that helped convict a guy of attempted murder