The Supreme Court will hear a case Monday on whether threats made on Facebook constitute a criminal act or are protected under the First Amendment.

The case in question involves Pennsylvania man Anthony Elonis, who posted several graphic and violent rap lyrics on Facebook about killing his estranged wife, shooting a school class and attacking an FBI agent, NBC News reports.

"There's one way to love you but a thousand ways to kill you," one of the posts about Elonis' wife read. "I'm not going to rest until your body is a mess, soaked in blood and dying from all the little cuts.

Elonis claimed the series of posts were a joke, but his wife and a federal jury did not see it that way. The man from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania,was convicted of breaking a federal law that states it is illegal to threaten another person.

However, Elonis argued that the lyrics were simply a spontaneous, albeit crude, form of expression that should not be deemed threatening since he really didn't mean what was said.

The law in this case, which debates the limits of free speech protection over the Internet, says that the threat is determined not by the intention of the message, but whether Elonis' words on Facebook would make a reasonable person feel threatened.

While Elonis' case has brought widespread attention from free-speech advocates who argue that Facebook, Twitter and other social media comments can be easily misinterpreted as they are often hasty and impulsive. They add that these comments, often meant for only a small group to see, can be taken out of context when view by a larger audience.

"A statute that proscribes speech without regard to the speaker's intended meaning runs the risk of punishing protected First Amendment expression simply because it is crudely or zealously expressed," a brief from the American Liberties Union and other advocacy groups read.

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