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The Continental Congress adopts the final draft of the Declaration of Independence on July 4.
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Congress lets the Sedition Act of 1798 expire, and President Thomas Jefferson pardons all person convicted under the Act. The act had punished those who uttered or published “false, scandalous, and malicious” writings against the government.
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The 14th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified. The amendment, in part, requires that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
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Roger Baldwin and others start up a new organization dedicated to preserving civil liberties called the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
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Congress authorizes President Franklin D. Roosevelt to create the Office of Censorship.
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In Cohen v. California, the U.S. Supreme Court reverses the breach-of-peace conviction of an individual who wore a jacket with the words “F— the Draft” into a courthouse. The Court concludes that offensive and profane speech are protected by the First Amendment.
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Congress passes the Equal Access Act. The federal law prohibits secondary schools that are receiving federal financial assistance from denying equal access to student groups on the basis of religious, political or philosophical beliefs or because of the content of their speech.
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Congress passes the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). President Clinton orders the Department of Education to send guidelines on religious expression to every public school district in the United States.
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The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the Children’s Internet Protection Act in United States v. American Library Association, Inc. The law requires public libraries and public schools to install filtering software on computers to receive federal funding.
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The U.S. Supreme Court rejects constitutional challenges (including one based on the First Amendment) to the Copyright Term Extension Act, which extended the copyright protection term by 20 years. The Court reasoned in Eldred v. Ashcroft that copyright law already has built-in First Amendment protections in the fair-use doctrine and the expression-idea dichotomy principle (providing that copyright protects expressions, not ideas).
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In Morse v. Frederick, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that principal Deborah Morse did not violate the First Amendment rights of high school student Joseph Frederick when she punished him for displaying a “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner on a public street directly across from his school while the Winter Olympic Torch Relay passed through Juneau, Alaska. The Court creates a “drug speech” exception to the Court’s landmark student-speech case, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Distric
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In Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that video games are a form of speech protected by the First Amendment. The Court holds California’s law restricting the sale or rental of violent video games to minors is unconstitutional.
