-
Sedition Act
This act was used to silence pro french sentiment in the us. This act made it a crime to criticize the federal Government. Under this law newspaper publishers were imprisoned. The law was later thrown away by the new republican president Thomas Jefferson. Who pardoned all offenders. -
Gag Rules
As More and more abhoslist started to send antislavery petitions to congress pro slavery members of the house of representatives Adopted a gag rule that bar those petitions from being viewed and debated. John Adams fought to repeal these rules. -
Reynolds v. United States
a Supreme Court of the United States case that held that religious duty was not a defense to a criminal indictment.Reynolds was the first Supreme Court opinion to address the First Amendment's protection of religious liberties, impartial juries and the Confrontation Clauses of the Sixth Amendment. the First Amendment protected his practice of his religion;that his grand jury had not been legally constituted; that challenges of certain jurors were improperly overruled -
Jones v. City of Opelika (1942)
violating a statute by selling books without a license. All licenses were subject to immediate revocation by the city without requiring advance notice. Jones, a Jehovah's Witness, .When traditional means of distribution are used by religious groups, they can be held to the same standards as non-religious groups. The court held that Jones had no standing to challenge that part of the statute because he did not have a license that was revoked -
Stone V Ghram
the Supreme Court ruled Kentucky statute was unconstitutional and in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, because it lacked a nonreligious, legislative purpose. The statute required the posting of a copy of the Ten Commandments on the wall of each public classroom in the state. While the copies of the Ten Commandments were purchased with private funding, the Court ruled that because they were being placed in publicclassrooms they were in violation of the First Amendment. -
McDonald v. Smith
In 1981, David Smith brought a libel suit against Robert McDonald claiming that Mcdonald had included knowing and malicious lies in a letter to the President concerning Smith's possible appointment as a United States attorney. Smith claimed that these libelous claims damaged both his chances of appointment and his reputation and career. The Court decided 8–0 (Justice Powell took no part in the case) that the right to petition was subject to the same legal limitations that the rights to speech. -
New York v. Ferber
This is a precedential decision given by the United States Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously that the First Amendment right to free speech did not forbid states from banning the sale of material depicting children engaged in sexual activity, even if the material was not obscene -
R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul
this is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Supreme Court unanimously struck down St. Paul's Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance and reversed the conviction of a teenager, referred to in court documents only as R.A.V., for burning a cross on the lawn of an African-American family for violating the First Amendment's protections for freedom of speech. -
Rust v. Sullivan
regulations prohibiting employees in federally funded family-planning facilities from counseling a patient on abortion This ruling was made after the Department issued a regulation in 1988 expanding its interpretation of the Title X provision that no family planning funds Many physicians and clinics challenged the regulation, arguing that it violated their First Amendment right to free speech and the right of women to seek an abortion under Roe v. Wade -
Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District
First Amendment was offended by a school district that refused to allow a church access to school premises to show films dealing with family and child-rearing issues faced by parents. In a unanimous decision,[1] the court concluded that it was.
