Protected speech is the set of things you can do and say that are covered under freedom of speech from a philosophical standpoint. It is the set of things protected by 1a legally in the us (roughly, 1a also includes some non-speech rights). It is the set of things that you should not forbid as a legislature, and the set of things that courts will not enforce laws against even if you try to forbid them anyways.
All those are slightly different definitions, but I wasn't being precise enough in my previous comment that the differences are important.
Then I think the issue is simple. Any speech made illegal by law isn't protected unless the supreme court rules that case to be different, IIRC you americans have precedence rules for that sort of stuff.
Protected speech is any legal speech that additionally enjoys protection from the constitution, while unprotected speech would be legal speech that is not otherwise protected. And then you have illegal stuff that is outlawed.
Courts to my knowledge, even in american, don't consider the constitution at the lower levels, just local legislation, ie any legal speech is equivalent regardless of protected status.
Specific protection status would be regulated by precedent in higher courts which do have the capacity to interprete the constitution.
Courts at every level consider the constitution. Lower level courts routinely rule on constitutional grounds.
The legislature routinely passes unconstitutional laws that purport to punish constitutionally protected speech, and those laws are routinely not enforced against that speech. (Often these laws have other constitutionally valid purposes and are still enforced for those purposes, more rarely their main purpose is to forbid protected speech and they are thrown out entirely).
It is simply not the case in the us that the legislature passing a law against speech means that the speech is unprotected and illegal.
The police would very much enforce them, they aren't in charge of what is constitutional or not, unless your police is incompetent.
What you'd rather want to say is "they are thrown out in court".
>It is simply not the case in the us that the legislature passing a law against speech means that the speech is unprotected and illegal.
Until a court considers otherwise, it very much is. A law is valid until a court overthrows it. Hence it requires proper police (the executive) to enforce it. Otherwise the state will just not function.
All those are slightly different definitions, but I wasn't being precise enough in my previous comment that the differences are important.