a speech delay

Speech and Language Delay

Last Updated October 2023 | This article was created by familydoctor.org editorial staff and reviewed by Kyle Bradford Jones, MD, FAAFP

Table of Contents

Every child develops at his or her own pace. But if your child doesn’t talk as much as most children of the same age, the problem may be speech delay.

What is a speech and language delay?

A speech and language delay is when a child isn’t developing speech and language at an expected rate. It’s a common developmental problem that affects as many as 10% of preschool children.

Symptoms of a speech and language delay

Your child may have a speech delay if they aren’t able to do these things:

• Say simple words (such as “mama” or “dada”) either clearly or unclearly by 12 to 15 months of age
• Understand simple words (such as “no” or “stop”) by 18 months of age
• Talk in short sentences by 3 years of age
• Tell a simple story at 4 to 5 years of age

What causes a speech and language delay?

The most common causes of speech delay include:

• Hearing loss
• Slow development
• Intellectual disability

Other developmental or genetic disorders include:

• Psychosocial deprivation (the child doesn’t spend enough time talking with adults)
• Being a twin
• Autism (a developmental disorder)
• Elective mutism (the child just doesn’t want to talk)
• Cerebral palsy (a movement disorder caused by brain damage)

Living in a bilingual home also may affect a child’s language and speech. The child’s brain has to work harder to interpret and use 2 languages. So, it may take longer for these children to start using one or both languages they’re learning. It’s not unusual for a bilingual child to use one language for a while.

How is a speech and language delay diagnosed?

Your doctor can help you recognize a speech and language delay. They will ask you what you have heard and can listen to your child’s speech and check your child’s mental development.

Your doctor may refer you to other specialists to determine why your child isn’t speaking. For example, if your doctor thinks your child may have trouble hearing, they may refer your child to an audiologist for a hearing test. This is a licensed health care professional who treats hearing problems.

Can a speech and language delay be prevented or avoided?

Depending on the cause of your child’s speech delay, you may not be able to prevent or avoid it.

Speech and language delay treatment

Your child may not need treatment. Some children just take more time to start talking. But if your child needs treatment, the type will depend on the cause of the speech delay. Your doctor will tell you the cause of your child’s issue and talk to you about treatment options. Your doctor may refer you to a speech and language pathologist. This person can show you how to help your child talk more and speak better, and also can teach your child how to listen or how to lip read.

Teaching young babies and children a version of sign language also can help them with their language development. Contrary to what some might think, using sign language with babies and young children does not delay their language development.

Other specialists your doctor may recommend you see include a psychologist (a specialist in behavior problems), an occupational therapist (for help with daily activities), or a social worker (who can help with family problems). Your doctor may also suggest early intervention programs in your area. Many are associated with your local school district

Living with a speech and language delay

If your child’s speech is delayed due to a hearing loss, hearing aids or cochlear implants may help your child hear speech. Once your child has access to sound (and speech), they may be able to develop language and even catch up to their hearing peers.

If your child hears and understands language, you can encourage them to speak by talking as much as you can around them. Describe what you’re doing as you do everyday activities. Keep talking. If your child speaks, confirm what they are saying. Always provide positive feedback.

Speech and language delays can be frustrating for parents and children. Children who can’t express their thoughts and emotions are more likely to act out. They anger easily. They may use unexpected behavior to get your attention. Try to remember your child does want to communicate with you. Read to your child and talk as much as you can. Encourage your child to speak. When they try to speak, praise their efforts.

Questions to ask your doctor

• Why is my child not talking yet?
• Should I talk to my child more to help them figure out how to talk?
• Is it normal for my child to not be speaking yet?
• My child seems to have trouble understanding what I’m saying. Is it possible they have hearing loss?
• Does my child have a developmental disability?
• What can I do to help my child speak or understand better?
• Do you have any materials I can read about speech and language delay?
• Will my child be able to attend school?
• Is there an early intervention program available in my area and would it be helpful?

National Institutes of Health, MedlinePlus: Speech and Language Problems in Children

Child-Psych.org: Will teaching my baby to sign delay his speech?

Last Updated: August 3, 2022

This article was contributed by: familydoctor.org editorial staff

Copyright © American Academy of Family Physicians

This information provides a general overview and may not apply to everyone. Talk to your family doctor to find out if this information applies to you and to get more information on this subject.

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When Your Child's Speech Delay Is a Red Flag

Verywell / Michela Buttignol

There is a wide range of normal language development in toddlers and two-year-olds . Children hit milestones at different times, and many factors can influence how much or how clearly a child speaks.

For instance, children who live in a bilingual home may take a little longer to become fluent in either language (but in the long run may have significantly better verbal skills than their peers). Toddlers in a family with older siblings sometimes speak later because brothers and sisters "talk for them." Research also shows that girls speak earlier than boys.

Sometimes, though, speaking late or speech that is unclear can signal a developmental delay or a physical problem. In those cases, your child may benefit from speech therapy . The first step is to determine whether your child's speech is really off target for his age. Check with your child's pediatrician anytime you have a question or concern.

Speech Milestones

Around the first birthday, baby babble starts to change. As little ones try harder to imitate the sounds around them, the noises they make start to take the shape of actual words. In subsequent months, they begin to string words together into toddler sentences.

After the second birthday, there is usually an explosion in vocabulary and the use of more complex sentences. Use this list of milestones and signs of possible delay when considering whether your little one's speech is progressing normally.

12 to 18 Months

At this age, toddlers have a wide range of speech sounds. You’ll probably be able to recognize at least one or two common words, such as "baba" (bottle) or "mama." Nouns that are, in a child's view, essential to daily life are usually the first words that they master.

Aside from those key words, your child’s speech at 12 months will mostly be limited to babbling sounds. Over the following six months, though, you should start to see your child begin to develop more advanced communication, such as:

• Trying to copy your words
• Imitating the back and forth of real conversation
• Inflecting speech to ask a question (saying "Ju?" when requesting juice) or make a demand (shouting "Ju!" when insisting on juice)
• Spontaneously using words, rather than just responding to sounds you make
• Using a combination of gestures and vocalized sounds to communicate

While paying attention to the words or sounds your child is making is important, also consider whether or not your toddler can follow simple directions that involve one step (for example, "pick up the block").

18 to 24 Months

There continues to be a wide range of normal in verbal skills during this developmental period. Your child’s personality and circumstances can play a role in how many words you hear and how often. On average, though, by the time your child reaches age two, you can expect the following milestones:

• Increasingly adding words to their vocabulary
• Forming two-word phrases—although they won’t be grammatically correct (“no go,” “book read”)
• Using words to identify pictures in a book or surroundings
• Naming body parts and animals and sometimes making animal sounds (“moo” for cow)

It's still important to notice how well your child is able to comprehend what you say. Do they respond to you when you ask questions? Can they follow simple two-step commands by age two?

2 to 3 Years

Between two and three years old is usually when parents see an explosion in children's speech and verbal skills. It's often said that a child's vocabulary grows to 200 or more words during this time. Some of the milestones to look for this year include:  

• Saying more words and picking up new words regularly
• Combining three or more words into sentences (which may still be grammatically awkward)
• Beginning to identify colors, shapes, and concepts, such as more or less and big versus little
• Singing nursery rhymes and songs or repeating stories from books you've read often together
• Beginning to express feelings with words ("I hungry," "Sam sad")

The total number of words your child learns during this time is less important than a consistent increase in the number of words they start to use week by week.

At this age, it's still common for people outside your immediate family or caregiver to be unable to understand your child as well as you can. In the coming year, your child’s speech should become clearer and clearer. If you are concerned about your child's speech, talk to your pediatrician about causes of speech delays and ways you can support language development at home.

Barbu S, Nardy A, Chevrot JP, et al. Sex differences in language across early childhood: Family socioeconomic status does not impact boys and girls equally . Front Psychol. 2015;6:1874. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01874

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Important milestones: Your child by one year .

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Important milestones: Your child by eighteen months .

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Important milestones: Your child by two years .

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Concerned about your child’s development? .

Bowers JM, Perez-Pouchoulen M, Edwards NS, McCarthy MM. Foxp2 mediates sex differences in ultrasonic vocalization by rat pups and directs order of maternal retrieval . J Neurosci. 2013;33(8):3276-83. doi:10.1523/jneurosci.0425-12.2013

By Maureen Ryan Maureen Ryan is a freelance writer, editor, and teaching consultant specializing in health, parenting, and education.

Language and Speech Disorders in Children

Helping children learn language, what to do if there are concerns.

• Detecting problems

Children are born ready to learn a language, but they need to learn the language or languages that their family and environment use. Learning a language takes time, and children vary in how quickly they master milestones in language and speech development. Typically developing children may have trouble with some sounds, words, and sentences while they are learning. However, most children can use language easily around 5 years of age.

Parents and caregivers are the most important teachers during a child’s early years. Children learn language by listening to others speak and by practicing. Even young babies notice when others repeat and respond to the noises and sounds they make. Children’s language and brain skills get stronger if they hear many different words. Parents can help their child learn in many different ways, such as

• Responding to the first sounds, gurgles, and gestures a baby makes.
• Repeating what the child says and adding to it.
• Talking about the things that a child sees.
• Asking questions and listening to the answers.
• Looking at or reading books.
• Telling stories.
• Singing songs and sharing rhymes.

This can happen both during playtime and during daily routines.

Parents can also observe the following:

• How their child hears and talks and compare it with typical milestones for communication skills external icon .
• How their child reacts to sounds and have their hearing tested if they have concerns .

Learn more about language milestones .  Watch milestones in action.

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Some languages are visual rather than spoken. American Sign Language uses visual signals, including gestures, facial expressions, and body movement to communicate.

Some children struggle with understanding and speaking and they need help. They may not master the language milestones at the same time as other children, and it may be a sign of a language or speech delay or disorder.

Language development has different parts, and children might have problems with one or more of the following:

• Not hearing the words (hearing loss).
• Not understanding the meaning of the words.
• Not knowing the words to use.
• Not knowing how to put words together.
• Knowing the words to use but not being able to express them.

Language and speech disorders can exist together or by themselves. Examples of problems with language and speech development include the following:

• Difficulty with forming specific words or sounds correctly.
• Difficulty with making words or sentences flow smoothly, like stuttering or stammering.
• Language delay – the ability to understand and speak develops more slowly than is typical
• Aphasia (difficulty understanding or speaking parts of language due to a brain injury or how the brain works).
• Auditory processing disorder (difficulty understanding the meaning of the sounds that the ear sends to the brain)

Learn more about language disorders external icon .

Language or speech disorders can occur with other learning disorders that affect reading and writing. Children with language disorders may feel frustrated that they cannot understand others or make themselves understood, and they may act out, act helpless, or withdraw. Language or speech disorders can also be present with emotional or behavioral disorders, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or anxiety . Children with developmental disabilities including autism spectrum disorder may also have difficulties with speech and language. The combination of challenges can make it particularly hard for a child to succeed in school. Properly diagnosing a child’s disorder is crucial so that each child can get the right kind of help.

Detecting problems with language or speech

If a child has a problem with language or speech development, talk to a healthcare provider about an evaluation. An important first step is to find out if the child may have a hearing loss. Hearing loss may be difficult to notice particularly if a child has hearing loss only in one ear or has partial hearing loss, which means they can hear some sounds but not others. Learn more about hearing loss, screening, evaluation, and treatment .

A language development specialist like a speech-language pathologist external icon will conduct a careful assessment to determine what type of problem with language or speech the child may have.

Overall, learning more than one language does not cause language disorders, but children may not follow exactly the same developmental milestones as those who learn only one language. Developing the ability to understand and speak in two languages depends on how much practice the child has using both languages, and the kind of practice. If a child who is learning more than one language has difficulty with language development, careful assessment by a specialist who understands development of skills in more than one language may be needed.

Treatment for language or speech disorders and delays

Children with language problems often need extra help and special instruction. Speech-language pathologists can work directly with children and their parents, caregivers, and teachers.

Having a language or speech delay or disorder can qualify a child for early intervention external icon (for children up to 3 years of age) and special education services (for children aged 3 years and older). Schools can do their own testing for language or speech disorders to see if a child needs intervention. An evaluation by a healthcare professional is needed if there are other concerns about the child’s hearing, behavior, or emotions. Parents, healthcare providers, and the school can work together to find the right referrals and treatment.

What every parent should know

Children with specific learning disabilities, including language or speech disorders, are eligible for special education services or accommodations at school under the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) external icon and Section 504 external icon , an anti-discrimination law.

Get help from your state’s Parent Training and Information Center external icon

The role of healthcare providers

Healthcare providers can play an important part in collaborating with schools to help a child with speech or language disorders and delay or other disabilities get the special services they need. The American Academy of Pediatrics has created a report that describes the roles that healthcare providers can have in helping children with disabilities external icon , including language or speech disorders.

More information

CDC Information on Hearing Loss

National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders external icon

Birth to 5: Watch me thrive external icon

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association external icon

Exit Notification / Disclaimer Policy

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cannot attest to the accuracy of a non-federal website.
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• You will be subject to the destination website's privacy policy when you follow the link.
• CDC is not responsible for Section 508 compliance (accessibility) on other federal or private website.

What Does a Speech Delay Mean for Your Child?

The main thing to know is this: The onset of speech is highly variable.

What Does a Speech Delay Mean?

Are you anxiously awaiting your baby's first words and phrases? Are you comparing your child to other little ones you know and fretting if yours seems slow to speak?

Getty Images

I often meet with parents who worry that their children have a speech delay, and who wonder if this means that their child is on the autism spectrum . Learning some basic facts about speech development and speech delays may help ease your mind about your own child's progress.

It can be harder to parent a child with delayed speech than a more verbal child. Little ones who are frustrated by their inability to express themselves have more temper tantrums and more easily become upset than other children. But the main thing to know about speech delays is this: The onset of speech is highly variable. Some kids speak early, some late, and most fall in the middle.

How Pediatricians Diagnose Speech Delays

At well visits, your child's doctor will assess his or her progress toward various developmental milestones , including ones related to language. The doctor will also ask you questions about your child's social skills, thinking skills, and coordination.

Out of all the delays that a child may experience, delayed speech is the most common, and the delay usually means nothing serious.

There are certain language milestones that most kids reach at certain ages. By 2 months, most babies coo or gurgle. By 6 months, most respond to hearing their own name and "answer" to sounds by making sounds.

By 12 months, babies typically try saying words, and by 24 months, most toddlers form two-to-four word sentences.

The younger little ones are, the more likely they are to have some form of speech delay. Such delays are common in children younger than 2. What I want to see is a child making progress. If they are gaining new speech skills over time, then the speech delay probably isn't a real red flag. I know that it can be hard for parents to wait patiently, but patience is often all that is needed.

Getting Help When It's Needed

As I mentioned, the vast majority of kids with delayed speech have no serious underlying problem. Basically, when these kids are ready to speak, they will. This is true whether the child is 18 months old and has not said any words yet or is 3 years old and is not articulate enough to be understood.

At the same time, 1 in 12 children in the United States does have an actual disorder that affects the ability to speak or swallow, according to the National Institutes of Health, and less than half of those children are getting treatment. The first three years of life are vital for a child's language development, so we pediatricians make every effort to flag any treatable speech delay issues early. That way, we can direct parents toward appropriate sources of help.

Trust your child's doctor and follow his or her advice.

Most counties offer free or low-cost assessment and treatment for young children with speech delays that warrant care. Parents can also contact private speech pathologists for assistance. Ask your child's doctor for a referral.

The Relationship Between Speech Delay and Autism, As Well As Other Disorders

Most speech delays simply reflect the fact that children reach milestones at different ages. Most speech delays are not tied to autism and are no cause for concern. In fact, 95% of kids with a speech delay do not have autism . On the other hand, 100% of children diagnosed with autism do have delayed speech .

Conditions besides autism also cause speech delays or difficulties. Children learn to speak by hearing speech, so impaired hearing or deafness can affect a child's language development. A hearing test is an important first step in figuring out the root causes of a speech delay.

Some children are born with a slight defect in their mouths, a short frenulum. The frenulum is a membrane connecting the tongue to the palate. A child with a short frenulum may have trouble speaking clearly. This defect is easily fixed, with a minor surgery that can be performed on a child of any age.

Another rather rare cause of speech delay is selective mutism. This means a child chooses not to speak, often in certain specific settings. For instance, a child may speak at home, but not at school or elsewhere. In some cases, a child will only speak with one person or one parent. Selective mutism is not simply a matter of shyness. It appears to be rooted in anxiety, and it's treatable.

It's worth noting, as well, that children living in homes where two or more languages are spoken may develop speech later than kids hearing only one language. That isn't a problem. I encourage parents who speak two languages to speak to their children in those languages. Being multilingual will be an advantage for the children later.

How to Support Your Child's Learning to Speak

The best way to encourage your children to speak is to talk to them, starting the day they are born. Talk to your baby every day, many times a day. Read to your baby and toddler.

You are never wasting your time doing this. The more words your child hears within the first two years, the larger the vocabulary he or she will develop. Solid research shows the great value of parents speaking and reading to very young children.

Today, we face an epidemic of people not speaking to one another because we overuse our phones. Be aware of this. Don't let your phone use cut deeply into the time you speak, read and play with your child.

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Patient information: See related handout on speech and language delay in children .

Author disclosure: No relevant financial relationships.

Childhood speech and language concerns are commonly encountered in the primary care setting. Family physicians are integral in the identification and initial evaluation of children with speech and language delays. Parental concerns and observations and milestone assessment aid in the identification of speech and language abnormalities. Concerning presentations at 24 months or older include speaking fewer than 50 words, incomprehensible speech, and notable speech and language deficits on age-specific testing. Validated screening tools that rely on parental reporting can serve as practical adjuncts during clinic evaluation. Early referral for additional evaluation can mitigate the development of long-term communication disorders and adverse effects on social and academic development. All children who have concerns for speech and language delays should be referred to speech language pathology and audiology for diagnostic and management purposes. Parents and caretakers may also self-refer to early intervention programs for evaluation and management of speech and language concerns in children younger than three years.

Speech is the verbal production of language. Language is the processing of a communication system. Receptive language includes an individual's comprehension abilities. Expressive language includes conveying ideas in spoken, written, or visual forms. 1

Speech delays stem from difficulty with speech or language processing or both. Speech and language delays usually result in the ultimate achievement of normal skills but at a slower rate than expected. 2 Family physicians play an important role in prompt identification of speech and language delays to mitigate the development of communication disorders, which hinder a child's development with long-lasting adverse social and academic impacts.

Speech and Language Development

Distinct milestones mark development by age ( Table 1 ) . 3 , 4 Early speech includes sounds, such as cooing and babbling, and later incorporates word combinations that lead to full sentences. Language development begins with basic comprehension that builds to advanced language skills, including the expression of complex thoughts. Evidence suggests that critical language development occurs in the first six months of life 5 and that early childhood language exposure significantly influences a child's language mastery. 3

Parents and caregivers significantly influence children's speech and language development by engaging them and promoting social interactions. Family physicians should encourage parents and caregivers to speak to babies and children often, with simplified sentences and clear pronunciation of words. Reading and play are rich opportunities for speech and language promotion that can be integrated into daily routines, helping children build vocabulary and comprehension skills. 6 – 9 The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends limiting children's screen time in favor of activities focused on social interactions 10 ; screen time has been associated with developmental delays. 11 , 12

Epidemiology

In the United States, up to 1 in 8 children between two and five years of age has a speech or language delay. 5 Preschool children with identified speech and language delays that continue into elementary school have a higher risk of additional learning disabilities compared with children with only transient speech and language delays. 13 , 14 School-aged children with speech and language delays have up to a fivefold higher risk of poor reading skills that can affect the child into adulthood. 14 , 15 Adults with a history of childhood speech or language delay are more likely to work lower-skilled jobs and experience unemployment. 14 , 15 Additionally, these childhood speech and language delays are associated with behavior and psychosocial impairments that can persist into adulthood. 14 , 15

Risk Factors

In 2010, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association published a large study of nearly 5,000 children with a multivariate analysis to identify risk factors consistently associated with established outcome predictors of speech and language impairment, such as parental concerns, use of speech-language pathology services, and low receptive scores. 12 The most important risk factors for speech and language impairment were being male, ongoing hearing problems, and birth weight 2,500 g or less ( Table 2 ) . 12

Several other factors have not been reliably associated with speech and language delays. Although heterogeneously impacted, children negatively affected by social determinants of health or adverse childhood or family experiences should be considered at-risk of speech and language delay. 8 , 12 Later birth order is not associated with speech and language delays. 12 Multilingual environments, as well as regional, social, and cultural variations, can affect initial speech and language development, most often with an ultimate return to a normal development pattern after the early childhood years. 16

Children simultaneously learning two or more languages spend less time with each language, and multilingual children tend to perform lower on standardized language tests compared with similarly aged monolingual children. 16 Nonetheless, bilingual status is not associated with increased risk of speech and language delays, and the language used to screen for delays does not affect their identification. 12 , 16

Screening and Surveillance

In the primary care setting, speech and language delay may be identified through milestone surveillance and the use of formal screening tools to assess milestone progression. Screening is the use of validated, standardized tools at specific ages to identify developmental delays. 5 Surveillance, the process of recognizing at-risk children, comprises eliciting caregiver concerns, reviewing developmental history, identifying risk factors, and observing the child during the visit. 3

The American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines recommend surveillance at every well-child visit, with particular attention before elementary school entry at four to five years of age. 3 In February 2022, the American Academy of Pediatrics, using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance, released updated milestones ( Table 1 3 , 4 ) and related parent-oriented materials to facilitate milestone surveillance. 4 These evidence-based milestones reflect skills that most children (at least 75%) should achieve at the specified age. 4 The CDC's comprehensive list of milestones, Milestone Tracker app, and additional free resources can be accessed at https://www.cdc.gov/ActEarly/Materials . American Family Physician published an editorial about the CDC's revised milestones. 17 Children with parental, caretaker, or physician concerns based on surveillance should undergo developmental screenings. 3

The American Academy of Family Physicians currently supports the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force 2015 recommendation, which states that there is insufficient evidence to recommend for or against universally screening asymptomatic children five years or younger for speech and language deficits with a validated tool. 5 , 18 The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force concluded that no screening tool is superior for identification of milestone delays at any age, based on a systematic review. 5 , 15

Multiple screening tools are available for milestone assessments. Screening tools that rely on parental report are common in the primary care setting because of ease of completion and no need for trained examiners. 15 The Ages and Stages Questionnaire evaluates communication, gross motor, fine motor, problem-solving, and personal-social domains for children up to five-and-half years of age ( https://agesandstages.com/ ), whereas the Survey of Well-Being of Young Children combines assessments of developmental milestones, childhood behavioral symptoms, and family context from infancy to five years of age ( https://pediatrics.tuftsmedicalcenter.org/the-survey-of-wellbeing-of-young-children/overview ). Other tools relying on parental report focus predominantly on language and speech concerns (e.g., the Communicative Development Inventories [ https://mb-cdi.stanford.edu/ ] and the Language Development Survey [ https://aseba.org/research/the-language-development-survey-lds/ ]). Screening tools requiring trained examiners, such as the Screening Kit of Language Development, are not practical for use in primary care and do not identify speech and language issues more effectively than less complicated screening methods. 15

Initial Evaluation

The differential diagnosis for speech and language delays is broad. These delays can be classified as secondary to other conditions or as primary conditions without apparent underlying causes. 2 , 19 Table 3 outlines common primary and secondary causes of speech and language delays. 2 , 20 – 25 Many neurodevelopmental disorders cause secondary speech and language delays. Associated disorders can predominantly affect development of speech, language, or both.

Family physicians can elicit clues from the child's history provided by parents or caretakers to augment milestone surveillance and to identify speech and language delays and associated causes ( Table 4 ) . 1 , 2 , 22 Any abnormal surveillance warrants additional evaluation with a validated screening tool. Pertinent physical examination elements include the HEENT (head, eyes, ears, nose, and throat) examination, with particular attention to the ears and mouth for structural abnormalities, such as cleft palate, and a neurologic examination to assess for motor dysfunction. 22

Referral Recommendations

Specialist consultation is appropriate for children with screening abnormalities, parent concerns, or physician concerns, 3 , 19 , 22 beginning with speech-language pathology and audiology evaluations. Watchful waiting is not recommended for late talkers, such as children with a vocabulary of fewer than 50 words at 24 months or older or without word combinations or children not meeting screening test thresholds. 3 , 26 Delays in care may result in long-lasting adverse effects on communication development. 26 One study focusing on children with speech and language delays persisting into school age noted an association between long-standing speech and language abnormalities and social and attention deficits. 14 The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association recommends early identification and treatment of speech and language delays to minimize these adverse effects on social development and school performance. 22

Immediate referral should be considered for expressive or receptive language concerns or deficits noted after two years of age, speech and language milestone regression, and speech that remains incomprehensible after two years of age. 19 , 22 , 26 Referral criteria are the same for monolingual and bilingual children. Speech and language interventions are most effective when introduced in all spoken languages, which may require the assistance of interpreters. 21

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends universal hearing screening after birth; at four, five, six, eight, and 10 years; and between 11 and 14 years, 15 and 17 years, and 18 and 21 years. 27 If testing has not recently been performed in a child with a suspected speech or language delay, an audiologist should evaluate for underlying hearing loss. 27 When speech and language delays are suspected to be secondary to neurodevelopmental disorders, physicians can also consult behavioral health specialists, including pediatric psychologists and psychiatrists, for further evaluation and management. Specialists in pediatric neurology and developmental pediatrics are helpful for diagnosis and treatment, although local availability may be limited. Figure 1 outlines an approach to the initial evaluation and management of a child with speech and language concerns.

Early Intervention

Early intervention programs are government-funded multi-disciplinary programs designated to support families with young children and infants with developmental delays. These self-referral programs offer speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy services to children younger than three years. Services are free of charge or priced according to income. Parents and guardians of children younger than three years can directly contact state-run early intervention programs through information found on the CDC website ( https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/parents/state-text.html ). Parents and guardians of children three years or older can contact any local public elementary school to request school system evaluation for special education services, regardless of whether the child is enrolled at that facility. Parents may find additional information on the associated CDC website ( https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/concerned.html/#childthree ).

This article updates previous articles on this topic by McLaughlin 1 and Leung and Kao . 28

Data Sources: PubMed and Cochrane databases were searched using terms speech, language, and developmental delay. The search included randomized controlled trials, meta-analyses, clinical trials, and clinical reviews. Additionally, an Essential Evidence Plus summary report on this topic was used to assist in the literature review. Search dates: February 2023 and June 21, 2023.

The opinions and assertions contained herein are the private views of the authors and are not to be construed as official or as reflecting the views of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

McLaughlin MR. Speech and language delay in children. Am Fam Physician. 2011;83(10):1183-1188.

Neurodevelopmental disorders. In: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders . 5th ed. American Psychiatric Association; 2013: 31–96.

Lipkin PH, Macias MM; Council on Children With Disabilities, Section on Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. Promoting optimal development: identifying infants and young children with developmental disorders through developmental surveillance and screening. Pediatrics. 2020;145(1):e20193449.

Zubler JM, Wiggins LD, Macias MM, et al. Evidence-informed milestones for developmental surveillance tools. Pediatrics. 2022;149(3):e2021052138.

Siu AL. Screening for speech and language delay and disorders in children aged 5 years or younger: US Preventive Services Task Force recommendation statement. Pediatrics. 2015;136(2):e474-e481.

Yeung HH, Werker JF. Learning words' sounds before learning how words sound. Cognition. 2009;113(2):234-243.

Kuhl PK. Learning and representation in speech and language. Curr Opin Neurobiol. 1994;4(6):812-822.

Feldman HM. How young children learn language and speech. Pediatr Rev. 2019;40(8):398-411.

Weisleder A, Fernald A. Talking to children matters. Psychol Sci. 2013;24(11):2143-2152.

Council on Communications Media. Media and young minds. Pediatrics. 2016;138(5):e20162591.

• Madigan S, Browne D, Racine N, et al. Association between screen time and children's performance on a developmental screening test [published correction appears in JAMA Pediatr . 2019;173(5):501–502]. JAMA Pediatr. 2019;173(3):244-250.

Harrison LJ, McLeod S. Risk and protective factors associated with speech and language impairment in a nationally representative sample of 4- to 5-year-old children. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2010;53(2):508-529.

Matte-Landry A, Boivin M, Tanguay-Garneau L, et al. Children with persistent versus transient early language delay. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2020;63(11):3760-3774.

Snowling MJ, Bishop DVM, Stothard SE, et al. Psychosocial outcomes at 15 years of children with a preschool history of speech-language impairment. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2006;47(8):759-765.

Wallace IF, Berkman ND, Watson LR, et al. Screening for speech and language delay in children 5 years old and younger: a systematic review. Pediatrics. 2015;136(2):e448-e462.

Peña ED, Gillam RB, Bedore LM, et al. Risk for poor performance on a language screening measure for bilingual preschoolers and kindergarteners. Am J Speech Lang Pathol. 2011;20(4):302-314.

Zubler J, Whitaker T. CDC's revised developmental milestone checklists [editorial]. Am Fam Physician. 2022;106(4):370-371.

American Academy of Family Physicians. Speech and language delay. Accessed June 20, 2023. https://www.aafp.org/family-physician/patient-care/clinical-recommendations/all-clinical-recommendations/speech-language-delay.html

Jullien S. Screening for language and speech delay in children under five years. BMC Pediatr. 2021;21(suppl 1):362.

• Reilly S, McKean C, Morgan A, et al. Identifying and managing common childhood language and speech impairments [published correction appears in BMJ . 2015;350:h2851]. BMJ. 2015;350:h2318.

Law J, Dennis JA, Charlton JJV. Speech and language therapy interventions for children with primary speech and/or language disorders. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2017(1):CD012490.

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Speech-language pathology medical review guidelines; 2015. Accessed April 27, 2023. https://www.asha.org/siteassets/uploadedfiles/slp-medical-review-guidelines.pdf

O'Hare A, Bremner L. Management of developmental speech and language disorders: part 1. Arch Dis Child. 2016;101(3):272-277.

Walters C, Sevcik RA, Romski M. Spoken vocabulary outcomes of toddlers with developmental delay after parent-implemented augmented language intervention. Am J Speech Lang Pathol. 2021;30(3):1023-1037.

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Audiology information series. Accessed April 27, 2023. https://www.asha.org/siteassets/ais/ais-hearing-loss-development-effects.pdf

Capone Singleton N. Late talkers: why the wait-and-see approach is outdated. Pediatr Clin North Am. 2018;65(1):13-29.

Hagan JF, Shaw JS, Duncan PM, eds. Bright Futures: Guidelines for Health Supervision of Infants, Children, and Adolescents . 4th ed. American Academy of Pediatrics; 2017.

Leung AK, Kao CP. Evaluation and management of the child with speech delay. Am Fam Physician. 1999;59(11):3121-3128.

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Ages & Stages

Language Delays in Toddlers: Information for Parents

Your baby is able to communicate with you long before they speak a single word! A baby's cry, smile, and responses to you help you to understand their needs. Learn how children communicate and what to do when there are concerns about delays in development.

Milestones during the first 2 years

Children develop at different rates, but they usually are able to do certain things at certain ages. Following are general developmental milestones . Keep in mind that they are only guidelines. If you have any questions about your baby's development, ask your child's doctor—the sooner the better. Even when there are delays, early intervention can make a significant difference.

By 1 year most babies will

Look for and be able to find where a sound is coming from.

Respond to their name most of the time when you call it.

Wave goodbye .

Look where you point when you say, "Look at the _________."

Babble with intonation (voice rises and falls as if they are speaking in sentences).

Take turns " talking " with you—listen and pay attention to you when you speak and then resume babbling when you stop.

Say "da-da" to dad and "ma-ma" to mom.

Say at least 1 word.

Point to items they want that are out of reach or make sounds while pointing.

Between 1 and 2 years most toddlers will

Follow simple commands, first when the adult speaks and gestures, and then later with words alone.

Get objects from another room when asked.

Point to a few body parts when asked.

Point to interesting objects or events to get you to look at them too.

Bring things to you to show you.

Point to objects so you will name them.

Name a few common objects and pictures when asked.

Enjoy pretending (for example, pretend cooking). They will use gestures and words with you or with a favorite stuffed animal or doll.

Learn about 1 new word per week between 11/2 and 2 years.

By 2 years of age most toddlers will

Point to many body parts and common objects.

Point to some pictures in books.

Follow 1-step commands without a gesture like "Put your cup on the table."

Be able to say about 50 to 100 words.

Say several 2-word phrases like "Daddy go," "Doll mine," and "All gone."

Perhaps say a few 3-word sentences like "I want juice" or "You go bye-bye."

Be understood by others (or by adults) about half of the time.

When milestones are delayed

If your child's development seems delayed or shows any of the behaviors in the following list, tell your child's doctor. Sometimes language delays occur along with these behaviors. Also, tell your child's doctor if your baby stops talking or doing things that he or she used to do.

Doesn't cuddle like other babies

Doesn't return a happy smile back to you

Doesn't seem to notice if you are in the room

Doesn't seem to notice certain noises (for example, seems to hear a car horn or a cat's meow but not when you call his or her name)

Acts as if he or she is in his or her own world

Prefers to play alone; seems to "tune others out"

Doesn't seem interested in or play with toys but likes to play with objects in the house

Has intense interest in objects young children are not usually interested in (for example, would rather carry around a flashlight or ballpoint pen than a stuffed animal or favorite blanket)

Can say the ABCs, numbers, or words to TV jingles but can't use words to ask for things he or she wants

Doesn't seem to be afraid of anything

Doesn't seem to feel pain in a typical fashion

Uses words or phrases that are unusual for the situation or repeats scripts from TV

Delays in language

Delays in language are the most common types of developmental delay. One out of 5 children will learn to talk or use words later than other children their age. Some children will also show behavioral problems because they are frustrated when they can't express what they need or want.

Simple speech delays are sometimes temporary. They may resolve on their own or with a little extra help from family. It's important to encourage your child to "talk" to you with gestures or sounds and for you to spend lots of time playing with, reading to, and talking with your infant or toddler. In some cases, your child will need more help from a trained professional, a speech and language therapist, to learn to communicate.

Sometimes delays may be a warning sign of a more serious problem that could include hearing loss , developmental delay in other areas, or even an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Language delays in early childhood also could be a sign of a learning problem that may not be diagnosed until the school years. It's important to have your child evaluated if you are concerned about your child's language development.

What your child's doctor might do

Sometimes more information is needed about your child before your child's doctor can address your concerns. The doctor may

Ask you some questions or ask you to fill out a questionnaire.

Interact with your child in various ways to learn more about his or her development.

Order a hearing test and refer you to a speech and language therapist for testing. The therapist will evaluate your child's speech ( expressive language ) and ability to understand speech and gestures ( receptive language ).

Refer your child for evaluation through an early intervention program.

What to expect after the doctor's visit

If your child's doctor tells you not to worry (that your child will "catch up in time") but you are still concerned, it's OK to get a second opinion. You can ask your child's doctor for a referral to a developmental specialist or a speech and language therapist. You may also contact an early intervention program for an evaluation if your child is younger than 3 years, or your local school district if he or she is 3 or older.If what your child says ( expressive language ) is the only delay, you may be given suggestions to help your child at home. Formal speech therapy may also be recommended.

If both what your child understands ( receptive language ) and what he or she says are delayed and a hearing test is normal, your child will need further evaluation. This will determine whether the delays are caused by a true communication dis order, generalized developmental delays, an ASD, or another developmental problem.

When an ASD is the reason for language delays, your child will also have difficulty interacting with other people and may show some or all of the concerning behaviors listed previously. If there is concern your child might have an ASD, your child will usually be referred to a specialist or a team of specialists for evaluation and treatment of an ASD or a related disorder. The specialist(s) may then recommend speech therapy and may suggest other ways to improve social skills, behavior, and the desire to communicate.

Programs that help children and families

If your child has delays or suspected delays, your child's doctor will probably refer you to an early intervention program in your area. The staff there might do additional evaluations and reassure you that your child's development is normal or tell you that your child would benefit from some type of intervention. Your child does not need to have a diagnosis of a developmental problem to receive services through this program.

If your child is younger than 3 years , the referral may be to an early intervention program in your area. Early intervention programs are sometimes called "Part C" or "Birth to Three" programs. Early intervention is a federal- and state-funded program that helps children and their families. You may also contact the early intervention program yourself.

If your child qualifies for services , a team of specialists will work with you to develop an Individual Family Service Plan (IFSP) . This plan becomes a guide for the services your child will receive until 3 years of age. It may include parent training and support, direct therapy, and special equipment. Other services may be offered if they benefit your child and family. If your child needs help after 3 years of age, the early intervention staff will transition your child to services through your local school district.

If your child is 3 years or older , the referral may be to your local public school. You may also contact the local public school directly. If your child is eligible, the school district staff will, with your input, develop an Individual Education Plan (IEP) . This plan may provide some of the same services as the early intervention program but focus on school services for your child. The level of services also may be different. If your child continues to need special education and services, the IEP will be reviewed and revised from time to time.

As a parent, follow your instincts. If you continue to have concerns about your child's development, ask for a reevaluation or referral for additional formal testing.

Listing of resources does not imply an endorsement by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The AAP is not responsible for the content of the resources mentioned on this page. Web site addresses are as current as possible, but may change at any time.

More information

• Ask the Pediatrician:  My baby is turning a year old this month. Should she be talking by now?​
• How to Raise Concerns About a Child's Speech and Language Development
• Language Development: 8 to 12 Months
• Language Development: 1 Year Olds
• Language Development: 2 Year Olds
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• Learn the Signs. Act Early.

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How can I tell if my child has a speech or language delay? 

Published on: June 13, 2023 Last updated: June 22, 2023

A CHOC expert gives language developmental milestones, warning signs of speech delays and when to call the doctor.

Link: https://health.choc.org/how-can-i-tell-if-my-child-has-a-speech-or-language-delay/

Kids and speech problems  

Young children often struggle with pronouncing words correctly as they learn language skills. There’s a wide range of what’s considered normal when it comes your child’s early language skills.  

However, if you think your child is having trouble communicating, don’t ignore your concerns. It’s important for children to develop an early understanding and expression of language so that their other developmental skills — like play and social interaction skills — aren’t delayed. 

Here, Melissa Gran, speech and language pathologist at CHOC , offers guidance speech and language developmental milestones, and teaches parents how to spot warning signs of speech or language delays. 

How to encourage language development in young children  

“Language learning can easily be incorporated into daily activities. Children are constantly learning language receptively and expressively in all environments,” says Melissa. “It is so important to talk to your children throughout the day, such as when getting them dressed, mealtime and bath time.” 

Other ways that parents can encourage language development for their kids include:  

• Narrate routines and describe actions during daily tasks. 
• Sing songs and recite rhymes together. 
• Read together, tell stories and ask questions. 
• Play “I Spy” and naming games to expand vocabulary. 
• Talk about the world around them, like nature and the people they see.  
• Use picture books and flashcards to introduce new words. 
• Encourage storytelling and pretend play for language expression. 
• Play word games like “Simon says” or “Rhyming words.” 
• Use educational apps or online resources wisely. 

Speech and language developmental milestones for kids 

Knowing what is considered “normal” or not in speech and language development can help you determine if your child is developing on schedule, says Melissa.  

The following milestones provide a framework for tracking a child’s language development and ensuring they are reaching appropriate milestones for their age. 

Signs of developmental delays in speech and language for kids   

Recognizing the signs of speech or language delays in children is important for early intervention and support. 

Here are some general signs that may indicate that your child has a speech and language delay: 

• Lack of babbling (around 6-9 months). 
• Limited vocabulary (by 18 months). 
• Difficulty combining words (around age 2). 
• Lack of response to verbal cues. 
• Limited social interaction. 
• Pronunciation difficulties. 
• Trouble understanding stories or instructions. 

It’s important to discuss any concerns with your pediatrician at every routine well-check visit . 

What to do if you think your child has a speech or language disorder 

Again, make sure to always talk to your child’s doctor about any developmental concerns at every well-check visit. 

First, your child’s hearing should be checked. This is to make sure that he or she isn’t simply hearing words and sounds incorrectly. 

If hearing loss is ruled out, your child’s doctor may refer you to a speech-language pathologist. This is a speech expert who evaluates and treats children who are having problems with speech-language and communication. 

The diagnosing process involves initial screening, case history, observation, formal assessment, language sample analysis and additional evaluations if necessary. 

Learn more about motor speech disorders   

When to seek speech or language therapy 

There are many reasons a child should be referred for speech or language therapy . Many families are surprised to find out their child needs speech or language therapy , as they often chalk up their child’s speech-related problems to not listening or just a cute “quirk.” 

It is also common for parents to be so focused on a child’s other medical conditions or therapy needs that they overlook those that require speech and language therapy. 

Remember that you are an expert on your child, says Melissa. Use these speech and language developmental milestones for guidance but reach out to your pediatrician with any questions and concerns.  

By addressing any potential delays early on, you’ll set your child up for getting the help they need to develop their communication skills successfully.  

Learn more about speech and language pathology at CHOC

Speech and language pathology is specialized therapy that helps children develop or improve their speech, language, memory and attention, feeding and swallowing.

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April 1, 2024

Does My Child Have a Speech Delay?

It’s hard to know whether a toddler needs help with early speech. Here are some tips and guidelines

By Yolanda F. Holt

The Good Brigade/Getty Images

This piece is part of Scientific American's column The Science of Parenting. To learn more, go here .

My son Grayson was about two and a half years old when his preschool teacher called me. A child development specialist had visited his classroom and had some concerns about his development.

As a speech-language pathologist , I had been carefully monitoring my twins’ development since they were born, so I was surprised to receive the call. Even so, I was terrified that I had missed some critical issue in his development. I wondered: What if the specialist misdiagnosed my child? I couldn’t decide which scenario was worse: if I had missed something myself, or if my child was about to be misidentified. As those thoughts raced through my head, I asked to have the specialist call me immediately. I listened as she described Grayson’s typically developing motor and social/emotional abilities. Then she described his speech as mostly not intelligible.

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The specialist was telling me she thought my son had a developmental delay in his speech and language.

My experience is not unique. Every day in the U.S., some parent will field this sort of unsettling phone call about their child.

As a speech-language pathologist, I understand the duty to connect with parents to share professional concerns. As a parent, I understand how scary and confusing these calls can be. My son was two and a half! How many children that age engage in intelligible conversations with a stranger? Fortunately for all of us there are some benchmarks we can use to help us understand typical speech and language development and where our children’s skills fall.

Hearing : In the U.S. and other industrialized nations, audiologists test hospital-delivered newborns before the babies go home. While the child is sleeping, the audiologist places a small probe (sort of like an earbud) in the baby’s ear. The probe sends a signal into the ear. That signal causes organs in the ear to vibrate and send the signal back to the device. This hearing test is safe, short and causes no discomfort to a sleeping newborn. If they fail, a second test is completed with the audiologist sometime later. If additional testing reveals a hearing difficulty the child will receive early interventions. These can include family training, baby hearing aids or perhaps a cochlear implant. Parent counseling is also a part of this process. Speech and hearing professionals will work with the family to ensure the child never misses out on early language development because of a hearing difficulty.

Listening : Between birth and 18 months, children listen to the sounds of the language(s) spoken around them and learn the rules to combine those sounds to make words. They learn where to add stress or pauses, or to get louder in case you weren’t listening. There are universal linguistic rules , including the general order of speech sound acquisition, word acquisition and sentence development that are relatively consistent across languages. If an infant does not respond to environmental sounds or the voice of the caregiver, or a 4–10-month-old baby does not coo, babble and make many different sounds, or a 12-month-old is not attempting to say words “mama, dada, bubu, uh-oh,” you should consider a hearing evaluation .

What’s interesting is that children in multilingual households (even children with developmental disorders) don’t mix up the rules for different languages. For example a child learning both Mandarin (a tone-based language where rises and falls in pitch change word meaning) and English (which has different rules to change word meaning) doesn’t apply the English rules to Mandarin. So the final pitch rise typically produced to indicate an English question—“Can I go?”—won’t be used to distinguish questions from statements in Mandarin.

Telling : Children learning multiple languages may demonstrate a longer learning period (they have more to learn) than monolingual language-learners. However, the quality and quantity of language output for typically developing mono- and multilingual children should be roughly equivalent. Parents who grew up in households where multiple languages were spoken may be familiar with this construct. If, however you are new to this experience you may find your multilingual child spends more time using one language over the other; or speaks to one caregiver exclusively in one language; or responds in English to questions posed in another language. All these behaviors are typical. Parents of mono- and multilingual children should reach out for help if their child (a) doesn’t respond in the expected manner in any language; (b) has trouble following simple instructions; or (c) does not name, tell, comment, request using from one to four words by the age of three.

Children learn to talk through practice, even if we sometimes don’t understand it. Based on what parents report to researchers , strangers typically understand about 25 percent of the words spoken by a one-year-old. For typically developing children speech intelligibility increases at a rate of around 25 percent each year so by age four most children should be understood by most people nearly 100 percent of the time. At two and a half, a child would be roughly 50 percent understandable to unfamiliar listeners.

Understanding : At two and a half, a child can understand between 100 to 500 words, but may only use 50 to 150 words . The child will arrange those words to communicate many ideas such as “all gone,” “dada go night-night” and other routine phrases. Over time and with practice the toddler’s receptive (listening) and expressive (telling) vocabulary increases exponentially. By age three vocabulary may grow to 1,000 words, and by age five the young pre-reader may have a vocabulary of around 10,000 words. Child speech and language development are roughly the same regardless of languages used, family income or family structure.

In our case Grayson’s speech was just below the developmental target for his age. As the specialist observed, he said lots of words; she just didn’t understand most of them. She made the responsible decision to call us and share her concerns. Although we were quite surprised, we listened to her concerns and discussed them as a family. We chose not to pursue early intervention. Instead, we continued to read and talk to Grayson and his twin every day. By age three, both twins were well above the developmental milestones expected for their age.

Our choice not to pursue therapy was based on several factors. As a speech pathologist, I had the training to provide support at home. As a result of frequent chronic ear infections, Grayson had ear tubes placed at 18 months. His ear infections could have negatively affected his language development, but still Grayson was not three months behind the milestones. Without this knowledge and the intervention we could provide at home, we would have accepted the referral.

In thinking about a child’s speech and language development, parents need to remember that hearing is foundational for both. Children develop language only by interacting with other people. For more information, the CDC provides a helpful checklist to assist parents in deciding when to ask their pediatrician for a speech and language referral. In general, if children are three months behind in one or more areas, a request for referral, to a speech language pathologist or child development specialist, is probably a good idea. Talk to your pediatrician. As parents we all want to provide the greatest opportunity for our children’s success. Creating a language-rich environment by talking with, reading with and listening to your child is one of the best ways to do that.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American .

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Speech and Language Developmental Milestones

On this page:

How do speech and language develop?

What are the milestones for speech and language development, what is the difference between a speech disorder and a language disorder, what should i do if my child’s speech or language appears to be delayed, what research is being conducted on developmental speech and language problems.

• Your baby's hearing and communicative development checklist

Where can I find additional information about speech and language developmental milestones?

The first 3 years of life, when the brain is developing and maturing, is the most intensive period for acquiring speech and language skills. These skills develop best in a world that is rich with sounds, sights, and consistent exposure to the speech and language of others.

There appear to be critical periods for speech and language development in infants and young children when the brain is best able to absorb language. If these critical periods are allowed to pass without exposure to language, it will be more difficult to learn.

The first signs of communication occur when an infant learns that a cry will bring food, comfort, and companionship. Newborns also begin to recognize important sounds in their environment, such as the voice of their mother or primary caretaker. As they grow, babies begin to sort out the speech sounds that compose the words of their language. By 6 months of age, most babies recognize the basic sounds of their native language.

Children vary in their development of speech and language skills. However, they follow a natural progression or timetable for mastering the skills of language. A checklist of milestones for the normal development of speech and language skills in children from birth to 5 years of age is included below. These milestones help doctors and other health professionals determine if a child is on track or if he or she may need extra help. Sometimes a delay may be caused by hearing loss, while other times it may be due to a speech or language disorder.

Children who have trouble understanding what others say (receptive language) or difficulty sharing their thoughts (expressive language) may have a language disorder. Developmental language disorder  (DLD) is a language disorder that delays the mastery of language skills. Some children with DLD may not begin to talk until their third or fourth year.

Children who have trouble producing speech sounds correctly or who hesitate or stutter when talking may have a speech disorder. Apraxia of speech is a speech disorder that makes it difficult to put sounds and syllables together in the correct order to form words.

Talk to your child’s doctor if you have any concerns. Your doctor may refer you to a speech-language pathologist, who is a health professional trained to evaluate and treat people with speech or language disorders. The speech-language pathologist will talk to you about your child’s communication and general development. He or she will also use special spoken tests to evaluate your child. A hearing test is often included in the evaluation because a hearing problem can affect speech and language development. Depending on the result of the evaluation, the speech-language pathologist may suggest activities you can do at home to stimulate your child’s development. They might also recommend group or individual therapy or suggest further evaluation by an audiologist (a health care professional trained to identify and measure hearing loss), or a developmental psychologist (a health care professional with special expertise in the psychological development of infants and children).

The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) sponsors a broad range of research to better understand the development of speech and language disorders, improve diagnostic capabilities, and fine-tune more effective treatments. An ongoing area of study is the search for better ways to diagnose and differentiate among the various types of speech delay. A large study following approximately 4,000 children is gathering data as the children grow to establish reliable signs and symptoms for specific speech disorders, which can then be used to develop accurate diagnostic tests. Additional genetic studies are looking for matches between different genetic variations and specific speech deficits.

Researchers sponsored by the NIDCD have discovered one genetic variant, in particular, that is linked to developmental language disorder (DLD), a disorder that delays children’s use of words and slows their mastery of language skills throughout their school years. The finding is the first to tie the presence of a distinct genetic mutation to any kind of inherited language impairment. Further research is exploring the role this genetic variant may also play in dyslexia, autism, and speech-sound disorders.

A long-term study looking at how deafness impacts the brain is exploring how the brain “rewires” itself to accommodate deafness. So far, the research has shown that adults who are deaf react faster and more accurately than hearing adults when they observe objects in motion. This ongoing research continues to explore the concept of “brain plasticity”—the ways in which the brain is influenced by health conditions or life experiences—and how it can be used to develop learning strategies that encourage healthy language and speech development in early childhood.

A recent workshop convened by the NIDCD drew together a group of experts to explore issues related to a subgroup of children with autism spectrum disorders who do not have functional verbal language by the age of 5. Because these children are so different from one another, with no set of defining characteristics or patterns of cognitive strengths or weaknesses, development of standard assessment tests or effective treatments has been difficult. The workshop featured a series of presentations to familiarize participants with the challenges facing these children and helped them to identify a number of research gaps and opportunities that could be addressed in future research studies.

What are voice, speech, and language?

Voice, speech, and language are the tools we use to communicate with each other.

Voice is the sound we make as air from our lungs is pushed between vocal folds in our larynx, causing them to vibrate.

Speech is talking, which is one way to express language. It involves the precisely coordinated muscle actions of the tongue, lips, jaw, and vocal tract to produce the recognizable sounds that make up language.

Language is a set of shared rules that allow people to express their ideas in a meaningful way. Language may be expressed verbally or by writing, signing, or making other gestures, such as eye blinking or mouth movements.

Your baby’s hearing and communicative development checklist

Birth to 3 months, 4 to 6 months, 7 months to 1 year, 1 to 2 years, 2 to 3 years, 3 to 4 years, 4 to 5 years.

This checklist is based upon How Does Your Child Hear and Talk ?, courtesy of the American Speech–Language–Hearing Association.

The NIDCD maintains a directory of organizations that provide information on the normal and disordered processes of hearing, balance, taste, smell, voice, speech, and language.

Use the following keywords to help you find organizations that can answer questions and provide information on speech and language development:

• Early identification of hearing loss in children
• Speech-language pathologists

For more information, contact us at:

NIDCD Information Clearinghouse 1 Communication Avenue Bethesda, MD 20892-3456 Toll-free voice: (800) 241-1044 Toll-free TTY: (800) 241-1055 Email: [email protected]

NIH Publication No. 00-4781 September 2010

*Note: PDF files require a viewer such as the free Adobe Reader .

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Warning signs of a speech delay in toddlers

You've heard that toddlers talk nonstop, but yours isn't a chatterbox quite yet. Here's what you need to know about delayed speech in young children.

Signs of a speech delay

What causes a speech delay or disorder.

Children learn language at different rates, but most follow a general timeline . It's common for toddlers to run into roadblocks on the way to nonstop talking, but it can be hard to know what's a bump in the road versus signs of a true speech delay or disorder.

If your child falls behind most of their peers in terms of speech skills, they may be diagnosed with a speech delay. This is actually fairly common among young kids – about 1 in 5 kids experiences a speech delay.

Experts estimate Opens a new window 13.5 percent of 18- to 23-month-old toddlers are " late talkers ." Even more older toddlers (30- to 36-months) are late talkers – 16 to 17.5 percent.

So what should you do if you think your child is behind? Talk to your pediatrician about getting a referral for an early intervention program or a speech-language pathologist. It's important to recognize and treat delays as early as possible so your child can develop critical language and cognitive skills.

If you're concerned about a speech delay, here are some signs to look for between the ages of 1 and 4.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Opens a new window and other experts recommend talking to your child's doctor if they show any of these signs:

By 12 months:

• Doesn't say "mama" or "dada"
• Doesn't use gestures such as waving , shaking their head, or pointing
• Doesn't understand and respond to words such as "no," "bye-bye," and their name
• Isn't pointing out things of interest such as a bird or airplane overhead
• Doesn't say at least one word
• Doesn't babble as if talking

By 18 months:

• Doesn't point to at least one body part when asked
• Isn't somehow communicating to you when they need help with something or pointing to what they want
• Doesn't bring you things when you ask for them

By 24 months:

• Can't follow simple, one-step directions
• Doesn't know at least 50 words
• Doesn't pretend with their toys (like brushing their doll's hair or making car noises with a toy car)
• Can't speak two-word sentences
• Can only imitate the actions or words of others, rather than generate their own speech

By 30 months:

• Doesn't use any simple sentences of two to four words
• Can't use any pronouns
• Doesn't ask simple questions
• Can't be understood by anyone in their family
• Isn't putting together short phrases
• Can't tell a simple story
• Has little interest in being read to or looking at books
• Doesn't know the function of common household objects (like a toothbrush or fork)
• Hasn't mastered most single consonants
• Can't answer "why" questions
• Doesn't understand the concept of "same" and "different"
• Doesn't understand spatial terms like "on," "next to," or "under"

As a general rule, trust your instincts. If something seems wrong to you, ask your child's pediatrician about it. After all, you know your child best.

It's not always clear what causes a speech delay. Sometimes kids just need extra time and help building their skills. A delay means your child is still going through the typical language development process, just more slowly than their peers.

Plenty of things, including being born prematurely , can affect when your child starts hitting speech milestones. Preemies usually catch up with other children on milestones around the age of 2.

Speech delays can also be caused by conditions like hearing loss (which may be caused by repeated ear infections ), cerebral palsy, and developmental disabilities like autism .

If your child isn't going through the typical milestones of language development and isn't catching up at their own rate, they may have a speech disorder rather than a delay. This means they may need intervention and the help of a speech-language pathologist.

If your child has a speech delay or disorder, it doesn't mean you did anything wrong. But it does mean you can help your child improve in simple ways, like reading , talking , and playing with them even more than you already have been.

Was this article helpful?

What to do when your toddler isn't talking

Signs of autism in babies and toddlers

Warning signs of a social / cognitive delay

Warning signs of a hearing problem in children 12 to 36 months old

BabyCenter's editorial team is committed to providing the most helpful and trustworthy pregnancy and parenting information in the world. When creating and updating content, we rely on credible sources: respected health organizations, professional groups of doctors and other experts, and published studies in peer-reviewed journals. We believe you should always know the source of the information you're seeing. Learn more about our editorial and medical review policies .

American Academy of Family Physicians. 2022. Speech and Language Delay. https://familydoctor.org/condition/speech-and-language-delay/ Opens a new window [Accessed August 2023]

American Academy of Pediatrics. 2012. Milestones During the First 2 Years. https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/toddler/Pages/Milestones-During-The-First-2-Years.aspx Opens a new window [Accessed August 2023]

American Academy of Pediatrics. 2019. Developmental Milestones: 3 to 4 Year Olds. https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/preschool/Pages/Developmental-Milestones-3-to-4-Year-Olds.aspx Opens a new window [Accessed August 2023]

American Academy of Pediatrics. 2021. Language Delays in Toddlers: Information for Parents. https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/toddler/Pages/Language-Delay.aspx Opens a new window [Accessed August 2023]

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Undated. Three to Four Years. https://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/34/ Opens a new window [Accessed August 2023]

Connecticut Children's. 2016. Your Child's Development: 2.5 Years (30 Months). https://www.connecticutchildrens.org/health-library/en/parents/development-30mos/ Opens a new window [Accessed August 2023]

Johns Hopkins Medicine. Undated. Stuttering in Children. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/stuttering#:~:text=Developmental%20stuttering Opens a new window [Accessed August 2023]

Nemours Foundation. 2022. Delayed Speech or Language Development. https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/not-talk.html Opens a new window [Accessed August 2023]

Stanford Medicine Children's Health. Undated. Age-Appropriate Speech and Language Milestones. https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=age-appropriate-speech-and-language-milestones-90-P02170 Opens a new window [Accessed August 2023]

Horwitz S., et al. 2002. Language delay in a community cohort of young children. Journal of American Adolescent Psychiatry 42(8):932-40. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12874495/ Opens a new window [Accessed August 2023]

Sarah Bradley is a freelance health and parenting writer from Connecticut, where she lives with a lot of boys (a husband, three sons, and a golden retriever). When she isn't writing, Bradley is usually homeschooling, binge-watching TV shows, and taking care of her many houseplants. She might also be baking a cake.

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4 Causes of Speech Delays in Children

One out of five children develops speech and language at a pace that’s slower than their peers. Sometimes children overcome the delay by the time they enter kindergarten. However, a speech delay can also signal an underlying problem that needs specialized intervention.

Seeking help as early as possible goes a long way toward improving your child’s skills and supporting their ability to succeed. If you have any concerns or questions about your child’s speech development, don’t wait to meet with the caring team at THINK Neurology for Kids .

Speech delays explained

A speech delay is typically called a speech-language delay because the two go hand-in-hand. However, they represent different skills, and a child may be delayed in one or both:

Speech refers to talking and the ability to form sounds and words properly. Children with a speech delay may use words, but you have a hard time understanding them. They could also struggle to speak because they have a hard time forming words.

Language encompasses communication and comprehension. It refers to a child’s ability to convey information that others understand. Children with a language delay may speak clearly but only use a few words. They may also have a hard time understanding others.

Speech-language milestones

Children have a speech-language delay when they fall behind their developmental milestones. Your child may have a speech-language delay if they:

• Can’t use gestures to communicate by 12 months
• Prefer gestures over vocalizing by 18 months
• Have trouble imitating sounds by 18 months
• Can’t understand simple verbal requests by 18 months
• Imitate speech but can’t produce words or phrases by two years
• Can’t speak to communicate their needs by two years
• Can’t follow simple directions by two years
• Have an unusual tone of voice by two years

Parents and caregivers should be able to understand half of everything their child says at two years and at least 75% of their words by their third birthday. Nearly everyone should be able to understand what a child says by the time they’re four years old.

Top causes of speech-language delays

Some children with a speech-language delay have an underlying developmental or physical problem causing the delay. In others, we can’t identify a specific reason.  

Four of the most common causes of speech-language delays include:

Oral-motor problems

Speech delays often occur when there’s a problem in the areas of the brain that control the muscles responsible for speech. As a result, children may struggle to produce sounds because they can’t coordinate their lip, tongue, and jaw movement.

When the brain doesn’t communicate with facial muscles, a condition called apraxia, children can’t move the muscles needed for speech. Another oral-motor disorder, dysarthria, occurs when the muscles controlling the face, lips, and tongue are too weak to work properly.

Speech delays frequently affect children with autism . One study found that half of the 3-4-year-olds diagnosed with autism couldn’t speak at a level typical for their age. Autism spectrum disorder also affects language development in other ways.

Children with autism have difficulty communicating nonverbally, so they may not point to express their needs by 12 months. 

Autism also causes another common problem for a speech-language delay: Others may not understand them because they keep repeating the same words, usually a phrase they heard in a TV show, video game, or movie.

Hearing problems or auditory processing disorder

Difficulty hearing significantly impacts your child’s ability to speak, use language, and understand others. Some children have a hearing problem called auditory processing disorder that prevents them from understanding what they hear.

Intellectual disability

Children with an intellectual disability often have widespread developmental delays affecting their speech and language and their learning, social, emotional, and physical development. 

These kids may have trouble producing or pronouncing words that others can understand. They may also struggle to put sentences together or to understand language.

The most important thing to remember about a speech-language delay is that an early diagnosis and treatment make a big difference. With intensive intervention, we can target each child’s unique speech challenge and help them improve.

If you’re concerned about your child’s speech or language, call THINK Neurology for Kids or book an appointment online today.

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Home » Communication Skills » Speech Delay vs Autism: What’s the Difference?

Speech Delay vs Autism: What’s the Difference?

By   Leanne Sherred, MS, CCC-SLP

December 7, 2023

You may have noticed that your child isn’t speaking as fluently as other kids their age. Maybe they haven’t even said their first words yet. Your mind keeps thinking of two things: speech delay vs autism. Are they the same thing? Is speech delay one of the earliest signs?

Well, not necessarily. While speech delays, language delays, and learning differences are often a hallmark of ASD, a speech delay alone does not mean a child has autism. So, what are the main differences between speech delay and autism? Let’s start with the basics.

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Assistive Communication Devices for Children with Autism

What is a Speech Delay?

Speech and language delays are common among young children. A child may have a speech or language delay if they are not meeting appropriate developmental milestones typical for their age.

While speech and language delays are often confused and used interchangeably, there are distinguishing characteristics.

Speech refers to how children:

• articulate, and
• manipulate the sounds used in words.

For example, poor pronunciation of hard-to-say sounds like /s/ and /z/ can make it difficult for them to be understood.

Speech delays can be developmental, meaning your child is following typical speech patterns but at a slower rate than their peers. They can also be due to a speech motor disorder that affects their ability to coordinate their lips, jaw, and tongue.

What is a Language Delay? 

A language delay doesn’t necessarily affect “how” children say things but “what” they say. This is referred to as an expressive language disorder.

These children may be able to pronounce sounds and words perfectly but have trouble forming them into coherent phrases to communicate their ideas. Additionally, a receptive language delay can affect how children process information.

They often struggle with:

• comprehending what people are trying to say, 
• learning new vocabulary, and
• deriving meaning from verbal and written communication.

Is Speech Delay a Sign of Autism?

While speech delay can be a characteristic associated with autism spectrum disorder, it does not necessarily indicate autism on its own. There are various reasons for speech delays, which can be caused by factors such as hearing impairments, developmental issues, or environmental factors.

If you’re worried about your child’s speech or behavior, it’s essential to know that a speech delay doesn’t automatically mean autism. Talking to a healthcare professional or developmental specialist for a thorough evaluation and guidance is recommended.

Speech Delay vs. Autism: Is There a Difference?

Typical childhood development follows similar stages before a child’s first words are spoken. Children start experimenting with their voices in their toddler years by babbling and cooing.

They use nonverbal language to communicate their needs and establish strong social connections, such as making eye contact, pointing, and gesturing. Over time, they learn sounds and use them to form their first words.

Eventually, as they associate communication with positive results (i.e., getting what they want), they start to string words together in phrases and acquire more complex linguistic abilities.

A speech or language-delayed child typically follows the same developmental patterns as their peers but is slower to reach these milestones. However, social responses, like hugs and smiles, still strongly motivate them.

They desire to build strong social bonds with their parents and peers, respond positively to attention, and are inclined to mimic the actions of people around them.

In addition to speech and language delays, children with autism may experience additional challenges related to their communication, socialization, and behavior. These can disrupt their ability to build meaningful social connections and relationships with people. 

Here are some key differences between speech delay and autism spectrum disorder:

Autism and Other Communication Issues

How can you tell the difference between autism vs. late talker? Well, some communication-related challenges may be signs of autism, including:

•     Being non-responsive to their name
•     Trouble getting your child’s attention
•     Slower development of gestures to communicate their needs
•     Babbling in his/her first year and then stopping
•     Repetitive usage of a single word or phrase
•     Using a robotic-sounding speaking voice

If you notice your child struggling with any of these symptoms, it’s best to talk to a professional for a proper diagnosis.

Autism and Social Challenges

Some children with autism have difficulty relating to – and associating with – other people. Signs can include:

•     A general lack of social awareness
•     Being unresponsive to social cues, like waving “hi”
•     Inability to focus on the same object with someone else (called joint attention)
•     Difficulty with social skills , such as sharing, taking turns, and maintaining friendships
•     Avoiding eye contact
•     Limited or restricted interests in particular toys or activities
•     Decreased interest in engaging in play routines with others

Autism and Behavioral Challenges

A child’s inability to adequately express themselves can lead to a wide range of possible behavioral issues, including:

•      Repetitive behaviors or hand and body movements, like rocking his/her head back and forth or lining up their toys
•     Aversion to being touched or held
•     Getting easily upset for unknown reasons
•     Strong attachment to certain objects, like toys or a television show
•     Having trouble staying still
•     Being easily upset or distressed when there is a sudden change to their daily routine

When Should You Seek Professional Evaluation?

For children who aren’t developing critical speech skills or lagging behind their peers, it’s important to seek a professional evaluation from a doctor or speech-language pathologist. This is crucial, no matter if the child is dealing with speech delay or autism symptoms.

A developmental screening and evaluation can help you determine whether your child is speech-delayed, has ASD, or both. Understanding your child’s conditions and risk factors can bring you peace of mind and help you make the most informed treatment decision.

Until recently, ASD was rarely diagnosed before 3-4 years old. However, current research supports lowering the age of identification, mostly due to the effectiveness of early intervention.

Around the age of 18 months to two years, speech and language delays become most noticeable. While parents may be able to spot many important signs at home, this is generally the most ideal time to have your child professionally evaluated.

There are several tools and methods your doctor or speech-language pathologist will use to determine if a child’s speech delay is caused by autism or is unrelated.

These often include:

• testing and examining their social skills (i.e., eye contact, emotional cues, name recognition)
• physical responses (i.e., ability to point, using objects to play), 
• language comprehension (i.e., identifying objects and understanding basic directions).

Improving Autistic Children’s Communication with Speech Delay Treatment

It’s important to remember that no two children are the same. Communication issues, just like autism symptoms, can vary dramatically from person to person.

Speech-language pathologists and other care providers, such as teachers, counselors, and psychologists, play a key role in a child’s treatment plan. Speech therapists are experts at diagnosing and treating communication-related challenges that present with autism.

They help develop an individualized treatment plan specialized to each child’s specific needs that can improve their verbal and nonverbal communication. They help individuals express themselves, improve their personal and social relationships, and better function in day-to-day activities.

Even if your autistic child is nonverbal or was diagnosed later in life, it’s important not to lose hope. This doesn’t mean they won’t be able to become a literate and articulate adult.

Studies have shown that autistic children aged four and five with severe language delays went from being nonverbal to acquiring language skills with proper treatment. Your child is destined for great things – they may need more help getting there.

With that said, here are some communication skills that can be improved with intervention from a speech therapist. They work closely with children, their families/caregivers, and other providers to help improve many aspects of their communication, as listed below.

Verbal Communication

Speech therapists can help autistic children better articulate and verbalize sounds and words. This can give children the strategies and mechanisms to express their thoughts, ideas, and feelings. 

Social Pragmatics

Social pragmatic skills involve how and when children use communication in social settings. 

For example, while a child with autism may know how to say “hello,” they may not understand that this word is used as a greeting. Speech therapists can help children learn the appropriate social context to use certain words and phrases. 

Body Language

Facial expressions, hand movements, and gestures are some of the most expressive parts of language. Unfortunately, some children with autism may have trouble interpreting their meaning.

A speech therapist can help match emotions with proper facial expressions and recognize subtle signals indicating whether a person is happy, sad, or angry.

Prosody is the volume and intonation of our voices in conversation. When we talk, the sound of our voice naturally goes up and down.

Some children with autism have flat prosody , which can make their voices sound robotic and emotionless. A speech therapist can help children modulate the tone and volume of their voice when they speak.

Some kids with autism may frequently make grammar mistakes or refer to themselves in the third person. A speech therapist can help address these common issues and promote correct word tenses.

Social Skills

A lack of social cues and awareness can be one of the most obvious telltale signs of autism in young children. Speech therapists can help children recognize and build social communication skills.

Conversational Skills

While many children with autism can make simple and short statements, they may struggle to carry a conversation. This includes:

• responding to their conversational partner,
• not interrupting,
• initiating dialogue, and
• engaging in the natural back-and-forth of discourse.

Speech therapists can help children with their conversation skills so they can implement these practices in everyday situations.

Is It Speech Delay or Autism?

Although speech delay can go hand-in-hand with autism spectrum disorder, it is not always the case. There are crucial differences between speech delay vs. autism that can give you a better understanding of these two conditions.

A speech delay alone does not mean a child has autism, and by working with experts and doing the right research, you can ensure your child gets the best support.

Q: Is speech delay always a sign of autism?

A: No, speech delay can occur independently of autism. However, it can be an early indicator in some cases.

Q: What are common reasons for speech delays in a 3-year-old not diagnosed with autism?

A: Speech delays can be caused by various factors such as hearing problems, language disorders, or environmental influences. It’s crucial to explore these possibilities with the guidance of a pediatrician or speech therapist.

Q: Can speech therapy help children with autism?

A: Yes, speech therapy is beneficial for children with autism. It can address communication challenges and improve their ability to express themselves.

Q: Does early intervention work for speech delay?

A: Early intervention can significantly improve speech and language development, improving a child’s overall well-being and quality of life.

Q: What are the behavioral challenges of autism?

A: Autism often presents various behavioral challenges, with common ones including repetitive movements, aversion to touch, sensitivity to unknown triggers, strong attachments to specific objects, difficulty staying still, and heightened distress in response to sudden changes in routine.

References:

Autism: Impairments in Social Interaction https://www.kennedykrieger.org/stories/interactive-autism-network-ian/impairments_in_social_interaction  

Differentiating ASD from DLD in Toddlers https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2940236/  

Speech and language delay in children https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21568252/

Speech and Language Developmental Milestones https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/speech-and-language  

Understanding Challenging Behaviors in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Multi-Component, Interdisciplinary Model https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9324526/  

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Justices Seem Ready to Limit the 2020 Election Case Against Trump

Such a ruling in the case, on whether the former president is immune from prosecution, would probably send it back to a lower court and could delay any trial until after the November election.

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Charlie Savage and Alan Feuer

Charlie Savage reported from Washington, and Alan Feuer from New York.

Here are four takeaways from the Supreme Court hearing on Trump’s claim to immunity.

The Supreme Court heard arguments on Thursday about Donald J. Trump’s claim that the federal charges accusing him of plotting to overturn the 2020 election must be thrown out because he is immune from being prosecuted for any official act he took as president.

Here are some takeaways.

Several justices seemed to want to define some level of official act as immune.

Although Mr. Trump’s claim of near-absolute immunity was seen as a long shot intended primarily to slow the proceedings, several members of the Republican-appointed majority seemed to indicate that some immunity was needed. Some of them expressed worry about the long-term consequences of leaving future former presidents open to prosecution for their official actions.

Among others, Justice Brett Kavanaugh compared the threat of prosecution for official acts to how a series of presidents were “hampered” by independent counsel investigations, criticizing a 1984 ruling that upheld a now-defunct law creating such prosecutors as one of the Supreme Court’s biggest mistakes. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. criticized an appeals court ruling rejecting immunity for Mr. Trump, saying he was concerned that it “did not get into a focused consideration of what acts we are talking about or what documents are talking about.”

“It’s a serious constitutional question whether a statute can be applied to the president’s official acts. So wouldn’t you always interpret the statute not to apply to the president, even under your formulation, unless Congress had spoken with some clarity?” “I don’t think across the board that as serious constitutional question exists on applying any criminal statute to the president.” “The problem is the vague statute — obstruction and 371, conspiracy to defraud the United States can be used against a lot of presidential activities historically with a creative prosecutor who wants to go after a president.” “I think that the question about the risk is very serious. And obviously it is a question that this court has to evaluate. For the executive branch, our view is that there is a balanced protection that better serves the interests of the Constitution that incorporates both accountability and protection for the president.”

The Democrat-appointed justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — asked questions indicating greater concern about opening the door for presidents to commit official crimes with impunity.

“This is what you’re asking us to say, which is that a president is entitled not to make a mistake — but more than that, a president is entitled for total personal gain to use the trappings of his office. That’s what you’re trying to get us to hold — without facing criminal liability.” “Your honor, I would say three things in response to that. First, the doctrine that immunity does not turn on the allegedly improper motivation or purpose is something that this court has reaffirmed in at least nine or 10 —” “That’s absolute immunity. But qualified immunity does say that whatever act you take has to be within what a reasonable person would do. I’m having a hard time thinking that creating false documents, that submitting false documents, that ordering the assassination of a rival, that accepting a bribe, and countless other laws that could be broken for personal gain, that anyone would say that it would be reasonable for a president or any public official to do that.”

The arguments signaled further delay and complications for a Trump trial.

If the Supreme Court does place limits on the ability of prosecutors to charge Mr. Trump over his official actions, it could alter the shape of his trial.

A decision to send all or part of the case back to the lower courts could further slow progress toward a trial, increasing the odds that it does not start before Election Day.

Of the matters listed in the indictment, some — like working with private lawyers to gin up slates of fraudulent electors — seem like the private actions of a candidate. Others — like pressuring the Justice Department and Vice President Mike Pence to do things — seem more like official acts he took in his role as president.

At one point, Justice Amy Coney Barrett suggested that prosecutors could simply drop Mr. Trump’s arguably official actions from their case and proceed to a swift trial focused only on his private actions. And D. John Sauer, the lawyer for Mr. Trump, told the court that no evidence of Mr. Trump’s official actions should be allowed into the trial.

But Michael R. Dreeben, a Justice Department lawyer arguing on behalf of the special counsel’s office, said the indictment laid out an “integrated conspiracy” in which Mr. Trump took the official actions to bolster the chances that his other efforts to overturn the election would succeed.

He argued that even if the court holds that Mr. Trump has immunity from liability for his official actions, prosecutors should still be allowed to present evidence about them to the jury because the actions are relevant to assessing his larger knowledge and intentions — just as speech that is protected by the First Amendment can still be used as evidence in a conspiracy case.

The hearing revolved around two very different ways of looking at the issue.

Looming over the hearing was a sweeping moral question: What effect might executive immunity have on the future of American politics?

Not surprisingly, the two sides saw things very differently.

Mr. Sauer claimed that without immunity, all presidents would be paralyzed by the knowledge that once they were out of office, they could face an onslaught of charges from their rivals based on the tough calls they had to make while in power. He pictured a dystopian world of ceaseless tit-for-tat political prosecutions that would destroy the “presidency as we know it.”

If a president can be charged, put on trial and imprisoned for his most controversial decisions as soon as he leaves office, that looming threat will distort the president’s decision-making precisely when bold and fearless action is most needed. Every current president will face de facto blackmail and extortion by his political rivals while he is still in office. The implications of the court’s decision here extend far beyond the facts of this case. Could President George W. Bush have been sent to prison for obstructing an official proceeding or allegedly lying to Congress to induce war in Iraq? Could President Obama be charged with murder for killing U.S. citizens abroad by drone strike? Could President Biden someday be charged with unlawfully inducing immigrants to enter the country illegally for his border policies? The answer to all these questions is no.

Envisioning the opposite scenario, Mr. Dreeben worried that any form of blanket immunity would place presidents entirely outside of the rule of law and encourage them to commit crimes, including “bribery, treason, sedition, even murder,” with impunity.

“The framers knew too well the dangers of a king who could do no wrong,” he said.

This court has never recognized absolute criminal immunity for any public official. Petitioner, however, claims that a former president has permanent criminal immunity for his official acts unless he was first impeached and convicted. His novel theory would immunize former presidents for criminal liability; for bribery, treason, sedition, murder and here, conspiring to use fraud to overturn the results of an election and perpetuate himself in power. Such presidential immunity has no foundation in the Constitution. The framers knew too well the dangers of a king who could do no wrong.

Both sides found advocates for their positions on the court.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. clearly seemed worried that without some form of criminal immunity, former presidents would be vulnerable to partisan warfare as their successors used the courts to go after them once they were out of office. And that, he added, could lead to endless cycles of retribution that would be a risk to “stable, democratic society.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson appeared more concerned that if presidents were in fact shielded by immunity, they would be unbounded by the law and could turn the Oval Office into what she described as “the seat of criminality.”

If someone with those kinds of powers, the most powerful person in the world with the greatest amount of authority, could go into office knowing that there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes, I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into the seat of criminal activity in this country? If the potential for criminal liability is taken off the table, wouldn’t there be a significant risk that future presidents would be emboldened to commit crimes with abandon while they’re in office? It’s right now the fact that we’re having this debate, because O.L.C. has said that presidents might be prosecuted. Presidents from the beginning of time have understood that that’s a possibility. That might be what has kept this office from turning into the kind of crime center that I’m envisioning. But once we say no criminal liability, Mr. President, you can do whatever you want, I’m worried that we would have a worse problem than the problem of the president feeling constrained to follow the law while he’s in office.

What happens next?

There did not seem to be a lot of urgency among the justices — especially the conservative ones — to ensure that the immunity question was resolved quickly. That left open the possibility that Mr. Trump could avoid being tried on charges of plotting to overturn the last election until well after voters went to the polls to decide whether to choose him as president in this election.

And if he is elected, any trial could be put off while he is in office, or he could order the charges against him dropped.

It could take some time for the court to do its own analysis of what presidential acts should qualify for the protections of immunity. And even if the justices determine that at least some of the allegations against Mr. Trump are fair game for prosecution, if they do not issue a ruling until late June or early July, it could be difficult to hold a trial before November.

That would become all but impossible if the court took a different route and sent the analysis back to the trial judge, Tanya S. Chutkan. If Judge Chutkan were ordered to hold further hearings on which of the indictment’s numerous allegations were official acts of Mr. Trump’s presidency and which were private acts he took as a candidate for office, the process could take months and last well into 2025.

Aishvarya Kavi

Reporting from Washington

A spectacle outside the Supreme Court for Trump’s defenders and detractors.

Just as the Supreme Court began considering on Thursday morning whether former President Donald J. Trump was entitled to absolute immunity, rap music started blaring outside the court.

The lyrics, laced with expletives, denounced Mr. Trump, and several dozen demonstrators began chanting, “Trump is not above the law!”

Mr. Trump was not in Washington on Thursday morning — in fact, he was in another courtroom , in New York. But the spectacle that pierced the relative tranquillity outside the court was typical of events that involve him: demonstrations, homemade signs, police, news media, and lots and lots of curious onlookers.

One man, Stephen Parlato, a retired mental health counselor from Boulder, Colo., held a roughly 6-foot-long sign with a blown-up photo of Mr. Trump scowling that read, “Toxic loser.” The back of the sign featured the famous painting by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge of dogs playing poker, adorned with the words, “Faith erodes … in a court with no binding ethics code.” He made the sign at FedEx, he said.

The Supreme Court’s decision to even hear the case, which has delayed Mr. Trump’s election interference trial , was “absurd,” he said.

“I’m a child of the late ’60s and early ’70s and the Vietnam War,” said Mr. Parlato, dressed in a leather jacket and cowboy hat. “I remember protesting that while in high school. But this is very different. I’m here because I’m terrified of the possibility of a second Trump presidency.”

Inside the court, Jack Smith sat to the far right of the lawyer arguing on behalf of his team of prosecutors, Michael R. Dreeben, a leading expert in criminal law who has worked for another special counsel who investigated Mr. Trump, Robert S. Mueller III.

Among those in attendance were Jane Sullivan Roberts, who is married to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and Ashley Estes Kavanaugh, who is married to Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

In an orderly line outside along the side of the court, people were calmly waiting to listen to the arguments from the court’s public gallery. More than 100 people, many of them supporters of Mr. Trump, were in line as of 8:30 a.m. Reagan Pendarvis, 19, who had been waiting there since the middle of the night, said the first person in line had gotten there more than a day before the arguments began.

Mr. Pendarvis, a sophomore at the University of California, San Diego who is living in Washington for the spring semester, was wearing a black suit and bright red bow tie. He said he had been struggling to keep warm since he took his place in line.

Mr. Pendarvis, a supporter of Mr. Trump, said he thought that the cases brought against the former president were an uneven application of the law.

“I think a lot of the cases, especially that happen for Donald Trump, don’t really happen for Democrats on the other side,” he said. “That’s just my take on it.”

David Bolls, 42, and his brother, Jonathan, 43, both of Springfield, Va., also in line for the arguments, also contended that the prosecutions against Mr. Trump were an abuse of judicial power.

“For me, I want to see an even application of justice,” David Bolls said.

For others in line, the Supreme Court’s deliberations were not the main draw. Ellen Murphy, a longtime Washington resident, was trying to sell buttons she designs, though she acknowledged that it was unlikely she would be allowed in with all of her merchandise.

Dozens of the buttons, which said, “Immunize democracy now” and “Trump is toast” over a toaster with two slices of bread, were pinned to a green apron she was wearing.

“We lose our democracy,” Ms. Murphy said, “if the president can do whatever he wants just because he’s president.”

Eileen Sullivan contributed reporting.

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Adam Liptak

What’s next: Much will turn on how quickly the court acts.

The justices heard arguments in the immunity case at a special session, the day after what had been the last scheduled argument of its term. Arguments heard in late April almost always yield decisions near the end of the court’s term, in late June or early July.

But a ruling in early summer, even if it categorically rejected Mr. Trump’s position, would make it hard to complete his trial before the election. Should Mr. Trump win at the polls, there is every reason to think he would scuttle the prosecution.

In cases that directly affected elections — in which the mechanisms of voting were at issue — the court has sometimes acted with unusual speed.

In 2000, in Bush v. Gore, the court issued its decision handing the presidency to George W. Bush the day after the justices heard arguments.

In a recent case concerning Mr. Trump’s eligibility to appear on Colorado’s primary ballot, the justices moved more slowly, but still at a relatively brisk pace. The court granted Mr. Trump’s petition seeking review just two days after he filed it , scheduled arguments for about a month later and issued its decision in his favor about a month after that.

In United States v. Nixon, the 1974 decision that ordered President Richard M. Nixon to comply with a subpoena for audiotapes of conversations with aides in the White House, the court also moved quickly , granting the special prosecutor’s request to bypass the appeals court a week after it was filed.

The court heard arguments about five weeks later — compared with some eight weeks in Mr. Trump’s immunity case. It issued its decision 16 days after the argument , and the trial was not delayed.

Abbie VanSickle

The oral argument lasted nearly three hours, as the justices tangled with a lawyer for the former president and a Justice Department lawyer. A majority of the justices appeared skeptical of the idea of sweeping presidential immunity. However, several of them suggested an interest in drawing out what actions may be immune and what may not — a move that could delay the former president’s trial if the Supreme Court asks a lower court to revisit the issues.

Many of the justices seemed to be considering the idea that presidents should enjoy some form of protection against criminal prosecution. The devil, however, will be in the details: How should that protection extend?

And that question will have profound relevance not only for future presidents, but much more immediately for Donald Trump. The court could decide to draw those rules itself in a broad way for history. Or it could send this case back to a lower court to set the rules of what form immunity could take. If the case is sent back for further proceedings, it could have a dramatic effect on the timing of Trump’s trial, pushing it well past the election in November.

Looking back, one of the main points of discussion turned on the question of which situation would be worse: a world in which presidents, shorn of any legal protections against prosecution, were ceaselessly pursued in the courts by their rivals in a never-ending cycle of political retribution, or allowing presidents to be unbounded by criminal law and permitted to do whatever they wanted with impunity.

Charlie Savage

Sauer, Trump’s attorney, declines to offer a rebuttal. The argument is over.

If the court finds that there is some immunity for official actions, one of the most important questions will be whether prosecutors can still present evidence to the jury of Trump’s official actions (like pressuring the Justice Department and Vice President Mike Pence to do certain things) as evidence that helps illuminate Trump’s knowledge and intent for his private acts as a candidate. Dreeben says the jury needs to understand the whole “integrated conspiracy” but prosecutors would accept a jury instruction in which the judge would say they cannot impose liability for the official actions but may consider them as evidence of his knowledge and intent for the other actions. That’s how courts handle protected speech that is evidence to a larger conspiracy, he notes.

Justice Barrett picks up the question of timing again. She suggests that if prosecutors want to take Trump quickly to trial, they could simply drop those parts of the indictment that seem to be his official acts as president and proceed with only those parts of the indictment that reflect Trump’s private actions taken as a candidate for office. Dreeben is not wild about that idea.

Dreeben suggests that allegations in the “private acts bucket,” as Justice Jackson just called it, would include things like the scheme to create fake electors and the way in which Trump fomented a mob of his supporters to violently attack the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Justice Barrett seems to signal that she is less likely to find that presidents have blanket immunity for their official acts. When Dreeben says the system needs to balance the effective functioning of the presidency and accountability for a former president under the rule of law, and the existing system does that pretty well or maybe needs a few ancillary rules but that is different from the “radical proposal” put forward by Trump’s legal team, she says: “I agree.”

Dreeben, in a balancing act that seems to acknowledge that the court is looking for some form of criminal immunity for presidents, says he is trying to do two things at once, neither of them easy. He wants to design a system to find some rules that preserve the “effective functioning of the presidency” but that still allows for “accountability” if presidents violated the law.

Kavanaugh asks Dreeben about Obama’s drone strike that killed an American citizen suspected of terrorism, Anwar al-Awlaki, which Trump’s lawyer invoked in his opening. Dreeben notes that the Office of Legal Counsel analyzed the question and found that the murder statute did not apply to presidents when they were acting under public authority, so authorizing the strike was lawful. This is the way the system can function, he said — the Justice Department analyzes laws carefully and with established principles.

Justice Kavanaugh signals that he is likely to find that presidents must have immunity for their official actions. He talks about how the threat of prosecution by independent counsels (under a law that lapsed in 1999) hampered Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton, and says a 1984 ruling upholding that structure as constitutional was one of the Supreme Court’s biggest mistakes. (Notably, Kavanaugh was a prosecutor on the staff of independent counsel Ken Starr during his investigation into President Bill Clinton, before becoming a White House lawyer under President George W. Bush.)

Dreeben tries to push back on Kavanaugh’s argument by saying that even after Watergate, even after all of the independent counsel investigations mentioned above, the legal system has survived without “having gone off on a runaway train” of actual criminal prosecutions against former presidents.

The Supreme Court rejected Bill Clinton’s claim of immunity.

In Clinton v. Jones in 1997, the Supreme Court unanimously allowed a sexual harassment suit against President Bill Clinton to proceed while he was in office, discounting concerns that it would distract him from his official responsibilities. Both of his appointees, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, voted against him.

“The president is subject to judicial process in appropriate circumstances,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the court, adding, “We have never suggested that the president, or any other official, has an immunity that extends beyond the scope of any action taken in an official capacity.”

The case was in one sense harder than the one against Mr. Trump, as it involved a sitting president. In another sense, though, it was easier, as it concerned an episode said to have taken place before Mr. Clinton took office (Paula Jones, an Arkansas state employee, said Mr. Clinton had made lewd advances in a hotel room when he was governor of the state).

The case is best remembered for a prediction in Justice Stevens’s majority opinion that “it appears to us highly unlikely to occupy any substantial amount of petitioner’s time.” In fact, it led to Mr. Clinton’s impeachment.

In the same paragraph, Justice Stevens made a second prediction.

“In the more than 200-year history of the Republic, only three sitting presidents have been subjected to suits for their private actions,” he wrote. “If the past is any indicator, it seems unlikely that a deluge of such litigation will ever engulf the presidency.”

Suits against Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman were dismissed, and one against President John F. Kennedy involving a car accident during his 1960 campaign was settled. The case against Mr. Clinton added a fourth.

Justice Stevens, who died in 2019, failed to anticipate the enormous volume of civil and criminal litigation in which Mr. Trump and his businesses have been named as defendants.

We are now over the two-hour mark of the Supreme Court’s arguments in the Trump immunity case. The Justice Department lawyer has continued to face skeptical questions from many of the court’s conservatives, several of whom appear particularly focused on how to draw the line between a president’s core powers and non-core powers. In other words, what actions by a president might be shielded from prosecution and what would not. The questioning suggests that some of the justices may favor a ruling that could lead to more lower-court proceedings, perhaps delaying the trial.

The Supreme Court’s relatively new process (coming out of Covid) of letting each justice ask questions at the end in order of seniority has an interesting consequence, as seen here. Dreeben kept wanting to say these things about government legal memos and to go into the details about the actions Trump is accused of taking, but the Republican-appointed justices kept cutting him off. It’s the turn of Kagan, a Democratic appointee, to ask any final questions she wants, and she is letting him talk on and on.

Much of the discussion this morning has swirled around the question of whether, without immunity, presidents will be hounded by their rivals with malicious charges after leaving office. Alito and other conservatives on the court seem concerned that the Trump prosecutions will open the door to endless attacks against future presidents.

The other main topic of discussion has been whether presidents enjoy some form of immunity for carrying out their official duties and, if so, how those official actions are defined. That’s an important question for the Trump election case because Trump has claimed he was acting in his role as president when, by his own account, he sought to root out fraud in the 2020 vote count. It’s also important for a different reason: the justices could send the official acts question back to a lower court to sort out, and that process could take a long time, delaying the case's trial until after this year’s election.

Justice Alito suggests that there is a risk to our stable democracy if presidents who lose close elections would not be allowed to retire in peace but could face prosecution. He has essentially flipped the situation under consideration upside down: that Trump is being prosecuted for having used fraud to remain in power after losing a close election.

A part of this exchange between Justice Alito and the Justice Department's lawyer, Dreeben, gets at a pressure point in American-style democracy and the rule of law. One of the safeguards against illegitimate prosecutions of ex-presidents, Dreeben says, is that if the Justice Department has advised the president that doing something would be lawful, the department could not later turn around and prosecute the now-former president for relying on that advice and doing that thing.

Alito points out that this creates an incentive for presidents to appoint attorneys general who will just tell them that anything they want to do would be legal. Indeed — that is a critique of the Office of Legal Counsel system, in which politically appointed lawyers decide what the law means for the executive branch.

An example: During the George W. Bush administration, memos about post-9/11 surveillance and torture were written by a politically appointed lawyer with idiosyncratically broad views of a president’s supposed power, as commander in chief, to authorize violations of surveillance and torture laws. The Justice Department later withdrew those memos as espousing a false view of the law, but held that officials who had taken action based on those memos could not be charged with crimes.

Justice Alito suggests there are not enough legal safeguards in place to protect presidents against malicious prosecution if they don’t have some form of immunity. He tells Dreeben that the grand jury process isn’t much of a protection because prosecutors, as the saying goes, can indict a ham sandwich. When Dreeben tries to argue that prosecutors sometimes don’t indict people who don’t deserve it, Alito dismissively says, “Every once in a while there’s an eclipse too.”

If you are just joining in, the justices are questioning the Justice Department lawyer, Michael Dreeben, about the government’s argument that former President Trump is not absolutely immune from prosecution on charges that he plotted to subvert the 2020 election. Dreeben has faced skeptical questions from several of the conservative justices, including both Justices Alito and Kavanaugh, who have suggested that the fraud conspiracy statute being used against the former president is vague. That statute is central to the government’s case against Trump.

Justice Alito now joins Justice Kavanaugh in suggesting that the fraud conspiracy statute is very vague and broadly drawn. That is bad news for the indictment brought against Trump by Jack Smith, the special counsel.

The scope and viability of this fraud statute, which is absolutely central to the Trump indictment, wasn’t on the menu of issues seemingly at play in this hearing. Kavanaugh and Alito appear to have gone out of their way to question its use in the Trump case.

Justice Sotomayor points out that under the Trump team’s theory that a criminal statute has to clearly state that it applies to the presidency for it to cover a president’s official actions, there would essentially be no accountability at all. Because only a tiny handful of laws mention the president, that means a president could act contrary to them without violating them. As a result, the Senate could not even impeach a president for violating criminal statutes, she says — because he would not be violating those laws if they don’t apply to the president.

Dreeben is under heavy fire from the court’s conservatives.

The precedent most helpful to Trump: Nixon v. Fitzgerald.

In 1982, in Nixon v. Fitzgerald , the Supreme Court ruled that former President Richard M. Nixon had absolute immunity from civil lawsuits — ones brought by private litigants seeking money — for conduct “within the ‘outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility.”

The ruling is helpful to former President Donald J. Trump, establishing as it does that immunity can be expansive, lives on after a president leaves office and extends to the very limits of what may be said to be official conduct.

But the decision also falls well short of dictating the outcome in the case that is being argued on Thursday, which concerns a criminal prosecution, not a civil suit.

The 1982 case arose from a lawsuit brought by an Air Force analyst, A. Ernest Fitzgerald, who said he was fired in 1970 in retaliation for his criticism of cost overruns. By the time the Supreme Court acted, Nixon had been out of office for several years.

“In view of the special nature of the president’s constitutional office and functions,” Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote for the majority 5-to-4 decision, “we think it appropriate to recognize absolute presidential immunity from damages liability” for Nixon’s official conduct, broadly defined.

But the decision drew a sharp line between civil suits, which it said can be abusive and harassing, and criminal prosecutions like the one Mr. Trump is facing.

“In view of the visibility of his office and the effect of his actions on countless people, the president would be an easily identifiable target for suits for civil damages,” Justice Powell wrote, adding, “The court has recognized before that there is a lesser public interest in actions for civil damages than, for example, in criminal prosecutions.”

Chief Justice Warren E. Burger underscored the point in a concurring opinion. “The immunity is limited to civil damages claims,” he wrote.

Even in the context of civil suits, Nixon v. Fitzgerald conferred immunity only on conduct within the “outer perimeter” of a president’s official duties. Jack Smith, the special counsel, has said that Mr. Trump’s efforts to subvert democracy are well outside that line.

The Justice Department has already granted sitting presidents immunity while they are in office.

Former President Donald J. Trump’s claim that former presidents must enjoy “complete immunity” from prosecution for any crimes they committed in office would significantly expand the temporary immunity that sitting presidents already have.

Nothing in the Constitution or federal statutes says that presidents are shielded from being prosecuted while in office, and no court has ever ruled that way. But political appointees in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, whose interpretations are binding on the executive branch, have declared that the Constitution implicitly establishes such immunity.

This argument boils down to practicalities of governance: The stigma of being indicted and the burden of a trial would unduly interfere with a president’s ability to carry out his duties, Robert G. Dixon Jr. , then the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, wrote in a memo in September 1973 . This would prevent the executive branch “from accomplishing its constitutional functions” in a way that cannot “be justified by an overriding need,” he added.

Mr. Dixon, an appointee of President Richard M. Nixon, wrote his memo against the backdrop of the Watergate scandal, when Mr. Nixon faced a criminal investigation by a special counsel, Archibald Cox. The next month, Nixon’s solicitor general, Robert H. Bork , in a court brief , similarly argued for an “inference” that the Constitution makes sitting presidents immune from indictment and trial.

(That same month, Mr. Nixon had Mr. Cox fired in the so-called Saturday Night Massacre. Mr. Nixon’s attorney general and deputy attorney general resigned rather than carry out his orders to oust the prosecutor; Mr. Nixon then turned to Mr. Bork, the department’s No. 3, who proved willing to do it. Amid a political backlash, Mr. Nixon was forced to allow a new special counsel, Leon Jaworski , to resume the investigation.)

The question arose again a generation later, when President Bill Clinton faced an investigation by Kenneth Starr, an independent counsel, into the Whitewater land deal that morphed into an inquiry into his affair with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern. Randolph D. Moss , Mr. Clinton’s appointee to lead the Office of Legal Counsel, reviewed the Justice Department’s 1973 opinions and reaffirmed their conclusions .

Legal scholars, as well as staff for prosecutors investigating presidents, have disputed the legitimacy of that constitutional theory. In 1974, Mr. Jaworski received a memo from his staff saying he could, in fact, indict Mr. Nixon while he was in office, and he later made that case in a court brief .

And in a 56-page memo in 1998, Ronald Rotunda, a prominent conservative constitutional scholar whom Mr. Starr hired as a consultant on his legal team, rejected the view that presidents are immune from prosecution while in office. Mr. Starr later said that he had concluded that he could indict Mr. Clinton.

“It is proper, constitutional, and legal for a federal grand jury to indict a sitting president for serious criminal acts that are not part of, and are contrary to, the president’s official duties,” Mr. Rotunda wrote. “In this country, no one, even President Clinton, is above the law.”

Mr. Starr commissioned the Rotunda memo as he was drafting a potential indictment of Mr. Clinton, and Mr. Starr decided that he could charge the president while in office. In the end, however, both Mr. Jaworski and Mr. Starr decided to let congressional impeachment proceedings play out and did not try to bring indictments while Mr. Nixon and Mr. Clinton remained in office.

The question may never be definitively tested in the courts. In 1999, Congress allowed a law that created independent counsels like Mr. Starr — prosecutors who do not report to the attorney general — to expire, and the Justice Department issued regulations to allow for the appointment of semiautonomous special counsels for inquiries into potential high-level wrongdoing in the executive branch.

Special counsels are, however, bound by Justice Departments policies and practices — including the Office of Legal Counsel’s proclamation that sitting presidents are temporarily immune from criminal indictment or trial.

Alan Feuer and Charlie Savage

Is there such a thing as executive immunity?

There are no direct precedents on the broad question of whether presidents have criminal immunity for their official actions.

The Supreme Court has held that presidents are absolutely immune from civil lawsuits related to their official acts , in part to protect them against ceaseless harassment and judicial scrutiny of their day-to-day decisions. The court has also held that presidents can be sued over their personal actions .

The Supreme Court has further found that while presidents are sometimes immune from judicial subpoenas requesting internal executive branch information, that privilege is not absolute. Even presidents, the court has decided, can be forced to obey a subpoena in a criminal case if the need for information is great enough.

But until Mr. Trump wound up in court, the Supreme Court has never had a reason to decide whether former presidents are protected from being prosecuted for official actions. The Justice Department has long maintained that sitting presidents are temporarily immune from prosecution because criminal charges would distract them from their constitutional functions. But since Mr. Trump is not in office, that is not an issue.

The closest the country has come to the prosecution of a former president over official actions came in 1974, when Richard M. Nixon resigned to avoid being impeached over the Watergate scandal. But a pardon by his successor, President Gerald R. Ford, protected Nixon from indictment by the Watergate special prosecutor.

Mr. Smith’s team has argued that Ford’s pardon — and Nixon’s acceptance of it — demonstrates that both men understood that Nixon was not already immune. Mr. Trump’s team has sought to counter that point by arguing — inaccurately — that Nixon faced potential criminal charges only over private actions, like tax fraud. But the special prosecutor weighed charging Nixon with abusing his office to obstruct justice.

Mr. Trump’s team has argued that denying his claims risks unleashing a routine practice of prosecuting former presidents for partisan reasons. But Mr. Smith’s team has argued that if courts endorse Mr. Trump’s theory, then future presidents who are confident of surviving impeachment could, with impunity, commit any number of crimes in connection with their official actions.

“Such a result would severely undermine the compelling public interest in the rule of law and criminal accountability,” prosecutors wrote.

Hypothetical questions test the limits of Trump’s immunity claim.

An exchange during an appeals court argument in January about a hypothetical political assassination tested former President Donald J. Trump’s claim that he is absolutely immune from prosecution for his official conduct.

His lawyer, D. John Sauer, has urged the justices to consider only what he is actually accused of: plotting to subvert the 2020 election. But hypothetical questions are routine at the Supreme Court, and they have a way of illuminating the contours and implications of legal theories.

That is what happened in January, when Judge Florence Y. Pan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia had to press Mr. Sauer to get an answer to a hypothetical question: Are former presidents absolutely immune from prosecution, even for murders they ordered while in office?

“I asked you a yes-or-no question,” Judge Pan said. “Could a president who ordered SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival, who was not impeached, would he be subject to criminal prosecution?”

Mr. Sauer said his answer was a “qualified yes,” by which he meant no. He explained that prosecution would be permitted only if the president were first impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate.

Impeachments of presidents are rare: There have been four in the history of the Republic, two of them of Mr. Trump. The number of convictions, which require a two-thirds majority of the Senate: zero.

Mr. Sauer’s statement called to mind a 2019 federal appeals court argument over whether Mr. Trump could block state prosecutors from obtaining his tax and business records. He maintained that he was immune not only from prosecution but also from criminal investigation so long as he was president.

At that time, Judge Denny Chin of the Second Circuit pressed William S. Consovoy, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, asking about his client’s famous statement that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without losing political support.

“Local authorities couldn’t investigate?” Judge Chin asked, adding: “Nothing could be done? That’s your position?”

“That is correct,” said Mr. Consovoy. “That is correct.”

This headline followed: “If Trump Shoots Someone on 5th Ave., Does He Have Immunity? His Lawyer Says Yes.”

For his part, Mr. Sauer does not seem eager to revisit the question about assassinations. Indeed, in asking the Supreme Court to hear Mr. Trump’s appeal, Mr. Sauer urged the justices not to be distracted by “lurid hypotheticals” that “almost certainly never will occur.”

What counts as an official act as president?

Another issue that has come up in lower courts in this case was what counted as an official act for a president, as opposed to a private action that was not connected to his constitutional responsibilities.

If the justices want to dispose of the dispute without definitively ruling on whether presidents are immune from prosecution for official acts, they could do so by finding that the specific steps former President Donald J. Trump took to remain in office that are cited in the federal indictment were not official actions. If so, the broader immunity question would not matter, and the prosecution could proceed.

The acts by Mr. Trump cited in the indictment include using deceit to organize fake slates of electors and to try to get state officials to subvert legitimate election results; trying to get the Justice Department and Vice President Mike Pence to help fraudulently alter the results; directing his supporters to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; and exploiting the violence and chaos of their ensuing riot.

In its court filings, Mr. Trump’s team has sought to reframe those accusations not only as official actions, but innocuous or even admirable ones.

“All five types of conduct alleged in the indictment constitute official acts,” they wrote. “They all reflect President Trump’s efforts and duties, squarely as chief executive of the United States, to advocate for and defend the integrity of the federal election, in accord with his view that it was tainted by fraud and irregularity.”

Mr. Smith’s team has argued that they should be seen as the efforts of a person seeking office, not of an officeholder carrying out government responsibilities.

“Those alleged acts were carried out by and on behalf of the defendant in his capacity as a candidate, and the extensive involvement of private attorneys and campaign staff in procuring the fraudulent slates as alleged in the indictment underscores that those activities were not within the outer perimeter of the office of the presidency,” they wrote.

Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing Mr. Trump’s case in Federal District Court in Washington, issued her ruling rejecting Mr. Trump’s immunity claim without including any detailed analysis of whether his acts were “official.”

If the Supreme Court were to send the matter back to her to take a stab at answering that question before restarting the appeals process, Mr. Trump will, at a minimum, have used up additional valuable time that could help push any trial past the election.

Noah Weiland and Alan Feuer

Here are the lawyers arguing before the Supreme Court.

The two lawyers arguing before the Supreme Court on Thursday have each played a role in some of the defining legal battles stemming from Mr. Trump’s term in office.

Arguing the case for the special counsel Jack Smith will be Michael Dreeben, who worked for a different special counsel’s office that scrutinized Mr. Trump’s presidency: Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into links between Russia and associates of Mr. Trump. Mr. Dreeben, one of the nation’s leading criminal law experts, has made more than 100 oral arguments before the Supreme Court, including when he served as deputy solicitor general.

On Mr. Mueller’s team, he handled pretrial litigation, defending the scope of the investigation and preventing the office from losing cases on appeal. He also helped with a second part of Mr. Mueller’s investigation, examining whether Mr. Trump had tried to obstruct the inquiry in his dealings with associates involved in the case.

Mr. Dreeben, who was heavily involved in the writing of Mr. Mueller’s final report on his investigation, supported an interpretation of presidential power that emphasized limits on what a president could do while exercising his or her powers, according to “Where Law Ends,” a book written by Andrew Weissmann, another prosecutor on Mr. Mueller’s team.

After Mr. Mueller’s investigation concluded, Mr. Dreeben took a teaching position at Georgetown University’s law school and returned to private practice at O’Melveny, arguing in front of the Supreme Court on behalf of the city of Austin over a First Amendment dispute about the placement of digital billboards.

Opposing Mr. Dreeben in front of the Supreme Court will be D. John Sauer, a lawyer based in St. Louis who once served as the solicitor general of Missouri. Mr. Sauer joined Mr. Trump’s legal team late last year to handle appellate matters, including his challenge to a gag order imposed on him in the election case in Washington.

As Missouri’s solicitor general, Mr. Sauer took part in a last-ditch effort to keep Mr. Trump in power after his defeat in the 2020 election, filing a motion on behalf of his state and five others in support of an attempt by Texas to have the Supreme Court toss out the results of the vote count in several key swing states.

He also joined in an unsuccessful bid with Texas in asking the Supreme Court to stop the Biden administration from rescinding a Trump-era immigration program that forces certain asylum seekers arriving at the southwestern border to await approval in Mexico.

When he left the solicitor general’s office last January, Mr. Sauer, who once clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia, returned to his private firm, the James Otis Law Group. The firm is named after a prominent Revolutionary War-era lawyer who built a career out of challenging abuses by British colonial forces.

To justify his defense in the immunity case, Trump turns to a familiar tactic.

When the Supreme Court considers Donald J. Trump’s sweeping claims of executive immunity on Thursday, it will break new legal ground, mulling for the first time the question of whether a former president can avoid being prosecuted for things he did in office.

But in coming up with the argument, Mr. Trump used a tactic on which he has often leaned in his life as a businessman and politician: He flipped the facts on their head in an effort to create a different reality.

At the core of his immunity defense is a claim that seeks to upend the story told by federal prosecutors in an indictment charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 election. In that indictment, prosecutors described a criminal conspiracy by Mr. Trump to subvert the election results and stay in power.

In Mr. Trump’s telling, however, those same events are official acts that he undertook as president to safeguard the integrity of the race and cannot be subject to prosecution.

In many ways, Mr. Trump’s immunity claim is breathtaking. In one instance, his lawyers went so far as to say that a president could not be prosecuted even for using the military to assassinate a rival unless he was first impeached.

But the wholesale rewriting of the government’s accusations — which first appeared six months ago in Mr. Trump’s motion to dismiss the election interference case — may be the most audacious part of his defense. It was certainly a requisite step his lawyers had to take to advance the immunity argument.

Other courts have ruled that presidents enjoy limited immunity from civil lawsuits for things they did as part of the formal responsibilities of their job. To extend that legal concept to criminal charges, Mr. Trump’s lawyers needed to reframe all of the allegations lodged against him in the election interference case as official acts of his presidency rather than as the actions of a candidate misusing his power.

Mitch McConnell says Tucker Carlson and Trump's waffling delayed crucial Ukraine aid

WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday celebrated the impending passage of $60 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine ahead of a final vote, while lamenting the fact that it took months to secure enough Republican support to land it.

At a press conference, the Kentucky Republican pinpointed two men responsible for that delay: former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson and former President Donald Trump.

“The demonization of Ukraine began by Tucker Carlson, who in my opinion ended up where he should have been all along, which is interviewing Vladimir Putin ,” McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters. “And so he had an enormous audience, which convinced a lot of rank and file Republicans that maybe this was a mistake.”

“I think the former president had sort of mixed views on” Ukraine aid, he added, before alluding to the failed attempt to add border security provisions to the bill, “which requires you to deal with Democrats, and then a number of our members thought it wasn’t good enough .”

“And then our nominee for president didn’t seem to want us to do anything at all,” McConnell said. “That took months to work our way through it.”

The top Senate Republican has been an ardent supporter of Ukraine aid and battled a slew of conservative voices who have sought to block it. He called the expected passage of the bill “an important day for America, and a very important day of freedom-loving countries around the world.”

The Senate voted 80-19 on Tuesday to advance the legislation, setting up a final passage vote that’s expected later in the day, or could slip to Wednesday. President Joe Biden has vowed to sign it, and it could become law within days.

McConnell, who consistently bucked loud conservative voices in his party who opposed Ukraine funding, argued that the margin of support for the war-torn country is an indication the Republican Party is tracking back to its Reaganesque roots of defending the encroachment on democracy around the world.

McConnell said he remains committed to working to help regain a Republican Senate majority, despite his plans to step back from leadership at the end of the year. He said he believes the crop of candidates the Republicans have recruited are more inclined to back away from the party's recent isolationist tendencies.

“I think we’ve turned the corner on the isolationist movement,” McConnell said. “I’ve noticed how uncomfortable proponents of that are when you call them isolationist. So I think we’ve made some progress and I think it’s gonna have to continue because we got big, big problems: China, Russia, Iran. Going into World War II we just had Germany and Japan.”

The package’s difficulty in the House led to an extended period where Ukraine went without aid, primarily because of right-wing House Republicans who argued the money should not be spent abroad but instead should be spent here at home on border security. McConnell said part of the blame falls on the Biden administration for not recognizing the need earlier and reacting, but acknowledged Congress should’ve acted more quickly. 

“Acting quicker, partially because of the administration partially because of Congress, not approving this bill sooner, has not been helpful,” McConnell said.

The Kentucky Republican also defended House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., whose transformation from Ukraine aid skeptic to staunch supporter helped assure passage in the House. “More important than what I think about the speaker is what the former president thinks about the speaker,” McConnell said. “And he obviously made it clear that he was a fan of Speaker Johnson and suggested some of his critics to shut up. So I’ll just quote the former president.”

McConnell said he feels positive about the GOP’s Senate nominees so far in the battle for the majority this fall, when asked if he has the same “candidate quality” concerns of 2022.

“I feel pretty good about our nominees. I’m pretty confident we’re going to win West Virginia. That’s 50. You all can do the math. One more makes 51,” McConnell said. “And I hope to hand this job over to the majority leader.”

Sahil Kapur is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.

Ryan Nobles is a correspondent covering Capitol Hill.

Frank Thorp V is a producer and off-air reporter covering Congress for NBC News, managing coverage of the Senate.

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Scottie Scheffler finishes off another win at Hilton Head to extend dominant run

Scottie Scheffler holds the trophy after winning the weather delayed RBC Heritage golf tournament, Monday, April 22, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

Scottie Scheffler waves after winning the weather delayed RBC Heritage golf tournament, Monday, April 22, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

Scottie Scheffler waves after making a putt on the 16th hole during the completion of the weather delayed final round at the RBC Heritage golf tournament, Monday, April 22, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

Scottie Scheffler hits his tee shot on the 18th hole during the completion of the weather delayed final round at the RBC Heritage golf tournament, Monday, April 22, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

Sahith Theegala celebrates after a birdie on the 16th hole during the completion of the weather delayed final round at the RBC Heritage golf tournament, Monday, April 22, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

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HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. (AP) — A Masters green jacket wasn’t enough for Scottie Scheffler.

Scheffler was running on emotional fumes fresh off his four-shot victory at Augusta National, but full of purpose that more than made up for his lack of preparation for the RBC Heritage. The result not only was similar, it has come to be expected.

He rarely missed a shot. He gave little hope to those chasing him. And he walked away from Harbour Town on Monday morning with another victory that extended a dominance not seen since the peak years of Tiger Woods.

“I didn’t show up here just to have some sort of ceremony and have people tell me congratulations. I came here with a purpose,” Scheffler said after polishing off a 3-under 68 for a three-shot victory.

Victory was inevitable — Scheffler had a five-shot lead with three holes to play when the final round, delayed 2 1/2 hours because of storms Sunday afternoon, was suspended by darkness. It’s starting to feel that way whenever he plays.

Scheffler now has won four of his last five starts, the exception a runner-up finish in the Houston Open when he misread a 5-foot birdie putt that would have forced a playoff.

He considered this one of the tougher wins because it followed the Masters.

“Coming off the high last week to going into here, not really with a ton of energy, not really with a ton of prep work,” Scheffler said. “I think it’s underrated how difficult it is to do the stuff that Tiger was doing, and win like every single week. It takes a lot out of you emotionally and physically, especially major championships.”

Turns out he had plenty left in the tank.

Scheffler now has 40 consecutive rounds at par or better, a streak that began at East Lake in the Tour Championship last August. His position at No. 1 in the world is so great that he became the first player since Woods to crack the 15-point average mark.

“It’s very impressive,” Patrick Cantlay said. “He’s played great for a while now — a number of years — and it seems like he is playing the best golf of his life right now.”

The only competition Monday morning was for second place.

The storms brought cold weather and a strong wind. Scheffler missed the 18th green to the right, chipped safely to 18 feet and two-putted for bogey. That ended his streak of 68 consecutive holes with no worse than a par.

“I hit driver, 3-wood into there,” Scheffler said. “So I’m going to count that as a par for myself.”

Sahith Theegala birdied the 16th hole, saved par from a bunker on the par-3 17th and closed with a par for a 68 to finish alone in second, a difference of $666,667 than if he had finished in a three-way tie for second.

“Even though I finished second, I felt like I was never really in it to win there. Scottie was just so far ahead,” Theegala said.

Cantlay (68) and U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark, who finished his 65 on Sunday before the storms, tied for third.

Scheffler finished at 19-under 265 and earned $3.2 million. That brings his season total to nearly $18.7 million in just 10 tournaments.

The good news for the rest of the PGA Tour: Scheffler won’t show up again until the PGA Championship the third week in May. He headed back home to Dallas, where his wife his expecting their first child sometime next week.

Scheffler was staked to a one-shot lead starting the final round and chipped in for eagle on the second hole. Before long, he had a four-shot lead and never showed any signs of coming back.

“I got off to a good start yesterday and kind of just kept it going from there,” he said.

The week wasn’t the smoothest start for Scheffler, who was six shots behind after an opening round that included a shank from the bunker on the third hole for a double bogey. He didn’t drop another shot the rest of the week until it no longer mattered.

About the only thing that went wrong for Scheffler was the celebration. His caddie, Ted Scott, went for an elevated chest pump and Scheffler just laughed at him without moving.

About 400 spectators waiting along the 18th fairway were allowed to fill a corner of the grandstands as Scheffler approached. He turned and waved his cap toward them after tapping in his final stroke of another masterpiece.

Such is Scheffler’s dominance that his last seven victories have come against fields that had at least eight of the top 10 players in the world.

The last player to run off a stretch like this — four wins and a runner-up — was Woods at the end of 2007. Woods then won his first three PGA Tour starts (and one on the European Tour) to start 2008.

Scheffler now has 10 titles on the PGA Tour in a span of 51 tournaments dating to his first victory in the 2022 Phoenix Open.

“It does not get boring,” Scheffler said. “I think hitting a really well-struck golf shot close to the pin is like an addicting feeling.”

AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

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Tesla shares under pressure after carmaker announces price cuts

CEO Elon Musk postpones India trip ahead of results expected to show worst performance in seven years

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Shares in Tesla came under pressure on Monday after the electric carmaker announced a round of price cuts ahead of a difficult set of results for the company’s chief executive, Elon Musk.

Tesla stock fell as much as 5% in early trading before recovering slightly to a deficit of 3.4% in the wake of the price reductions around the globe, including slashing the cost of three of its leading electric vehicles (EVs) and its self-driving software.

Musk revealed at the weekend that he had postponed a trip to India , including a planned meeting with the prime minister, Narendra Modi, because of “very heavy obligations” at the company.

The CEO faces a key conference call with the investment community on Tuesday, when Tesla’s latest quarterly figures are expected to reveal its worst performance in seven years.

Tesla’s results come amid slowing global demand for EVs and pressure on prices from Chinese rivals. The company has already indicated a poor first quarter in terms of sales, after it revealed this month that deliveries missed market expectations by about 13% .

Tesla attempted to boost demand for its EVs late on Friday by cutting the prices of three of its five models in the US, then went on to cut prices around the world over the weekend, including in China, the Middle East, Africa and Europe.

It cut the US prices of the Model Y, Tesla’s most popular model and the top-selling EV, and also of the older and more expensive Models X and S. Those cuts reduced the starting price for a Model Y to $42,990 (£34,874), and to $72,990 for a Model S and $77,990 for a Model X. It also slashed the US price of its Full Self-Driving driver assistance software from $12,000 to $8,000.

It also emerged on Friday that Tesla was recalling all 3,878 Cybertrucks it has shipped since the vehicle was released in late 2023 because of a faulty accelerator pedal. A filing from the US safety regulator said owners had reported that the pedal pad could come loose and get lodged in the interior trim, causing the vehicle to accelerate unintentionally, increasing the risk of a crash.

Dan Ives, the managing director of the US financial services firm Wedbush Securities, said investors’ reaction to the price cuts on Monday showed they were worried “Tesla is panicking”, as well as reflecting concerns that the reductions would hit margins – a measure of profitability.

Tesla has already reacted to the slowdown by cutting more than 10% of its global workforce , equivalent to at least 14,000 roles.

Musk faces questions on Tuesday about growth in China, plans for a cheaper electric car known as the Model 2 and whether a reported switch in focus to self-driving robotaxis will affect the project. Shares in Tesla have declined more than 40% so far this year. Analysts at Wedbush wrote last week that Tuesday’s conference call represented a “moment of truth” for Musk and Tesla.

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“While we have seen much more tenuous times in the Tesla story going back to 2015, 2018, 2020 … this time is clearly a bit different as for the first time many longtime Tesla believers are giving up on the story and throwing in the white towel,” Wedbush wrote in a note to investors.

Reuters reported this month that Tesla had halted development of the Model 2, prompting Musk to post on X that “Reuters is lying”, without citing any inaccuracies.

Musk said this weekend he would reschedule the India trip to a later date this year. He had been due to visit on 21 April and 22 April, where he had been expected to announce an investment of $2bn-3bn in India, according to Reuters, with the spending plans focused on building a new plant.

Musk’s now-postponed visit to Delhi had also been expected to include meetings with executives at space industry startups. The billionaire is awaiting Indian government regulatory approvals to begin offering his Starlink satellite broadband service in the country.

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Free speech v hate speech: Victoria University postpones debate after student backlash

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By Bill Hickman of RNZ

Victoria University has postponed a planned debate on freedom of speech after concerns the event could become a platform for hate speech .

Last week, student magazine Salient criticised the lack of diversity of the five confirmed panellists – singling out the inclusion of the Free Speech Union’s Jonathan Ayling as a consistent supporter of harmful rhetoric.

Salient subeditor Henry Broadbent said the Free Speech Union’s support of anti-trans activists and the anti-co-governance campaign meant his inclusion compromised the safety of marginalised groups on the campus.

“The speech that [the Free Speech Union] are looking to defend is consistently speech that fits under the United Nations ’ definition of hate speech, and this is the concern that we have with the university. Why is it that you feel hate speech is a legitimate discourse that shouldn’t be suppressed?”

He said the presence of RNZ’s Corin Dann as moderator and the office of the vice-chancellor’s assurances that statements would be fact-checked during the debate, did little to persuade him that holding the event would not compromise the safety and wellbeing of marginalised groups attending the university.

“If something harmful or hateful is said – even if it’s fact-checked and shut down immediately afterwards – it can’t be unsaid, ever. This panel is going to be held in the hub, where it’s unavoidable if you’re moving between your classrooms. The question becomes, do you value the safety of your students more or do you value the grievances of Jonathan Ayling more?”

In a statement, vice-chancellor Nic Smith said the debate had been postponed to ensure there was enough time to finalise the most effective format and speakers for the event. He said the university remained committed to holding the debate in late May.

“Over 600 people have registered to attend the event, reflecting the high level of interest across our community in discussing this topic. We have also had a large number of different voices express an interest in being part of the conversation. We want to ensure we have a cross-section of balanced and representative views in the discussion and we need more time to do this, hence the decision to postpone the event for a few weeks.”

Ayling said two dates had been put to him for the rescheduling and, at this stage, he had no indication from the vice-chancellor he had been dropped from the event.

Ayling said his organisation stood up for everyone’s right to speak, and he found it ironic a panel discussion on free speech risked being shut down because of “threats of boycotts and protests”.

“We stand up that weak arguments have their say so they can be shown to be weak arguments, and strong arguments have their say so they can be shown to be strong arguments. It’s a dangerous view that free speech needs to be held back from hurting minorities. The first thing free speech does is protect the minorities.

“If we’re going to live in this idea that everyone gets to have a say, that in a democracy everyone gets to participate in society equally, then we’re going to have to accept that if you disagree with someone or you consider their perspective offensive, or harmful, or belligerent, they still get a say. We have to have confidence in the fact that society as a whole can discern error from truth.”

He said the university was the ultimate location for dialogue and debate to occur.

“If students are not resilient enough or mature enough to be able to deal in ideas – even those that they find uncomfortable – then maybe they shouldn’t be at university.”

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