1st Amendment Activity - Toms

By jostoms

  • Abrams v. United States

    Abrams v. United States
    • The US supreme court upholds the convictions of five individuals charged with violating the Espionage Act.
    • The Espionage Act prohibited obtaining information, recording pictures, or copying descriptions of any information relating to the national defense
    • The individuals had circulated pamphlets critical of the US Government and its involvement in WW1
    • This passage forms the foundation of the “marketplace of ideas” theory of the First Amendment

  • DeJonge v. Oregon

    DeJonge v. Oregon
    • DeJonge wanted to host a communist party but was then arrested for it.
    • He took it to the US Supreme court and they reversed the conviction of an individual under a state criminal syndicalism law for participation in a Communist Party political meeting.
    • The court writes that "peaceful assembly for lawful discussion cannot be made a crime"

  • Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire

    Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire
    • Chaplinsky was using "fighting words" and then got into the fight and was arrested and tried to say that his words were protected by his freedom of speech.
    • US Supreme court determined that "fighting words" are not protected by the 1st Amendment
    • fighting words are defined as "those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of peace"
    • The court states no such words are essential of any exposition to ideas

  • NSPA v. Skokie

    NSPA v. Skokie
    • the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, that prohibited marchers at the proposed Skokie rally from wearing Nazi uniforms or displaying swastikas.
    • they then took it to the Illinois Supreme Court where it ruled that the National Socialist Party of America (NSPA), a neo-Nazi group, can march through Skokie Illinois, a community mostly inhabited by a number of Holocaust survivors.
    • They have the First Amendment's right to assemble.

  • Wallace v. Jaffree

    Wallace v. Jaffree
    • the US Supreme Court invalidates an Alabama law authorizing a one-minute silent period at the start of each school day "for meditation or voluntary prayer."
    • The Court finds that the law was enacted to endorse religion, thus violating the establishment clause

  • Employment Division v. Smith

    Employment Division v. Smith
    • US Supreme court finds the free-exercise clause of the first amendment is not violated when two employees were fired after it was discovered that they ingested peyote as part of a religious ceremony
    • Peyote is a small spineless cactus that have psychoactive alkaloids that give people a hallucinations
    • The court rules that "an individual's religious beliefs" do not "excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct the state is free to regulate"

  • Abood v. Detroit Board of Education

    Abood v. Detroit Board of Education
    • the US Supreme Court declares that a state may require a public employee to pay dues to organizations such as unions and state bars, as long as the money is used for purposes such as collective bargaining and contract and grievance hearings.
    • The Court notes that, pursuant to the first amendment, state workers may not be forced to give political candidates or to fund political messages unrelated to their employee organization's bargaining function.

  • Virginia v. Black

    Virginia v. Black
    • The US Supreme Court rules that a state law banning cross-burning largely passes constitutional muster.
    • The court reasons that many cross-burnings are intimidating that they constitute true threats.
    • The court invalidates a part of the Virginia law that presumed that all cross-burnings were done with intent to intimidate

  • Citizens United v. FEC

    Citizens United v. FEC
    • US Supreme Court decides that limitations on corporate spending in elections, including political ads, violate First Amendment political free-speech rights.
    • Corporations may spend unlimited amounts to support a candidate although direct contributions by corporations are still prohibited.

  • Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association

    Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association
    • many concerned groups including politicians and parents have sought to enact regulatory controls of video games to prevent their sales to youth.
    • US Supreme Court ruled that videogames are a form of speech protected by the First Amendment
    • The Court holds California's law restricting the sale or rental of violent videogames to minors is unconstitutional