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Motor actions in speech production are both rapid and highly dexterous, even though speed and accuracy are often thought to conflict. Fitts’ law has served as a rigorous formulation of the fundamental speed-accuracy tradeoff in other domains of human motor action, but has not been directly examined with respect to speech production. This paper examines Fitts’ law in speech articulation kinematics by analyzing USC-TIMIT, a large database of real-time magnetic resonance imaging data of speech production. This paper also addresses methodological challenges in applying Fitts-style analysis, including the definition and operational measurement of key variables in real-time MRI data. Results suggest high variability in the task demands associated with targeted articulatory kinematics, as well as a clear tradeoff between speed and accuracy for certain types of speech production actions. Consonant targets, and particularly those following vowels, show the strongest evidence of this tradeoff, with correlations as high as 0.71 between movement time and difficulty. Other speech actions seem to challenge Fitts’ law. Results are discussed with respect to limitations of Fitts’ law in the context of speech production, as well as future improvements and applications.