X-Nico

10 unusual facts about First Amendment to the United States Constitution


Dolores Sloviter

In 1996 Sloviter was a member of a three-judge panel of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania which heard a challenge to the Communications Decency Act, Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, on grounds that it abridged the free speech provisions of the First Amendment.

José A. Santos

They sued, with an argument grounded in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, to be allowed to wear such patches during the race.

Joyce L. Kennard

In that case, the California Supreme Court held that Nike could not claim a First Amendment "commercial free speech" defense when charged with lying about sweatshop conditions in its overseas manufacturing plants.

Lloyd Nolan

The gathering, which was hosted by Anthony Eisley, a star of ABC's Hawaiian Eye series, sought to flood the United States Congress with letters in support of school prayer, following two decisions in 1962 and 1963 of the United States Supreme Court which struck down the practice as in conflict with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Monroe Jay Lustbader

Lustbader argued that "vicious and deliberately false statements made during a campaign" are not protected forms of free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Pardon My Scotch

Pardon My Scotch was filmed four months after the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, which ended the American experiment with Prohibition.

Ritual de lo habitual

Two versions of the disc packaging were created: one album featured cover artwork by singer Perry Farrell, related to the song "Three Days" and including male and female nudity; the other cover has been called the "clean cover", and features only black text on a white background, listing the band name, album name, and the text of the First Amendment (the "freedom of speech" amendment) of the U.S. Constitution.

Secure Web SmartFilter EDU

Other critics believe that the imposition of Internet filtering software without the consent of the user constitutes a violation of the First Amendment.

United States national motto

The constitutionality of the modern national motto has been questioned with relationship to the separation of church and state outlined in the First Amendment.

Zappa confluentus

Zappa was named after musician Frank Zappa "for his articulate and sagacious defense of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution".


1997 in LGBT rights

2 — District judge Eugene Nickerson in Abel v. United States of America, a challenge to "don't ask, don't tell", rules that the law in its entirety violates the First and Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union

The Supreme Court of the United States decided the case, which began in 1999, and found that, contra the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, "the Child Online Protection Act COPA's reliance on community standards to identify 'material that is harmful to minors' does not by itself render the statute substantially overbroad for purposes of the First Amendment" (majority opinion).

Board of Airport Commissioners of Los Angeles v. Jews for Jesus, Inc.

, 482 U.S. 569 (1987), is a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that an ordinance prohibiting all "First Amendment activities" in the Los Angeles International Airport was facially unconstitutional due to its overbreadth.

Ceremonial deism

The term was coined in 1962 by the then-dean of Yale Law School, Eugene Rostow, and has been used since 1984 by the Supreme Court of the United States to assess exemptions from the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Chickasaw, Alabama

It was the subject of a Supreme Court of the United States decision (Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 (1946)), which stated that despite being a privately owned town, because it functioned as a town open to the public, the right conferred by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution cannot be abridged.

Child pornography laws in the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States has found child pornography to be "legally obscene", a term that refers to offensive or violent forms of pornography that have been declared to be outside the protections of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Christian Legal Society

The court upheld, against a First Amendment challenge, the policy of the University of California, Hastings College of the Law governing official recognition of student groups, which required the groups to accept all students regardless of their status or beliefs in order to obtain recognition.

Darryl Cherney

Cherney and the late Bari's estate were awarded $4.4 million for violations of the First Amendment (freedom of speech) and the Fourth Amendment (the right to be free from unlawful arrest and illegal search and seizure).

Detroit Free Press v. Ashcroft

Believing this closure to be a violation to First Amendment rights to speech and press, The Detroit News, Detroit Free Press, Metro Times, Haddad, and Michigan Representative John Conyers filed a suit against John Ashcroft, Michael Creppy, and Immigration Judge Elizabeth Hacker (the Government) claiming that the Creppy Directive was unconstitutional.

The plaintiffs, Detroit Free Press, Detroit News, Michigan Representative John Conyers, and Rabih Haddad argued that it was a violation of the First Amendment for the defendants, Attorney General Ashcroft, Chief Immigration Judge Creppy, and Immigration Judge Elizabeth Hacker, to apply a blanket ruling of the Creppy Directive in order to keep immigration hearings closed to the press and the public.

Doe v. 2themart.com Inc.

140 F. Supp. 2d 1088 (2001), was a federal case decided by United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, on the issue of an individual’s First Amendment right to speak anonymously on the Internet and a private party’s right to disclose the identity of the anonymous Internet user by enforcing a civil subpoena.

Although the court did not find suitable federal court authority on the issue of a third-party seeking through a civil subpoena to reveal the identities of anonymous Internet users, the court maintained that the anonymity of Internet speech is protected by the First Amendment.

Gary Null

Seth Kalichman, professor of social psychology at the University of Connecticut, has decried Null's role as a prominent proponent of AIDS denialism and has accused him of cashing in on HIV/AIDS; in Kalichman's 2009 book, Denying AIDS, he compared Null's activities to Holocaust denial and described Null as an example of a dangerous entrepreneur who "obviously breached" the balance between free speech and protecting public health.

James Madison Freedom of Information Award

The award is intended to reflect the spirit of former U.S. statesman and president James Madison, traditionally regarded as the "Father of the United States Constitution" and primary author behind the George Mason-inspired United States Bill of Rights, and in particular the First Amendment.

Kotohira Jinsha v. McGrath

Judge McLaughlin found the Attorney General’s office in violation of the First Amendment rights of plaintiffs in the United States Constitution with reference to Robert H. Jackson in American Communications Association v. Douds.

Lee v. Weisman

He cited the writings of James Madison and pointed to the changing versions of the First Amendment that the First Congress considered as opposed to the version it eventually adopted.

LGBT rights in the United States

In Wisconsin v. Mitchell (1993) the Supreme Court unanimously held that state penalty-enhancement laws for hate crimes were constitutional and did not violate First Amendment rights to freedom of thought and expression.

Lynch v. Donnelly

For example, the first Congress that passed the First Amendment enacted legislation providing for paid Chaplains in the House and Senate, and "It has long been the practice that federal employees are released from duties on Thanksgiving and Christmas while being paid."

National security letter

Judge Victor Marrero of the Southern District of New York found on 28 September 2004, that NSLs violate the Fourth Amendment ("it has the effect of authorizing coercive searches effectively immune from any judicial process") and First Amendment.

Off-label use

A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan ruled on December 5, 2012 that a drug sales representative who was criminally prosecuted for making off-label promotional statements about Xyrem had suffered a violation of his First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

Omaha Police Department

Al-Amin, citing his First Amendment rights appealed to the City Personnel Board, and with backing and support of the Omaha Chapter of the NAACP, the Coalition Against Injustice, Black Men United, and Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network.

Playboy Foundation

It gives grants and in-kind contributions, such as advertising space in the Playboy magazine to organizations concerned with US First Amendment freedoms.

Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade

In his case, Texas v. Johnson, a five justice majority held that Johnson’s act of flag burning was protected speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Rick Chase

The religious nature of the event was in violation of the U.S. Supreme Court's interpretation of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and as such the school superintendent said the group would not be permitted to return.

Salazar v. Buono

Salazar v. Buono, 559 U.S. 700 (2010) was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States regarding the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Secular liberalism

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution, offering freedom of speech, has been criticized in a 2004 political manifesto by David Fergusson entitled Church, state and civil society.

Segraves v. California

Kelly Segraves, parent of three schoolchildren, sued the State of California, arguing that it violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the US Constitution by teaching evolution.

Seventh-day Adventist Church State Council

The Council is opposed to tuition vouchers as a threat to the liberty and independence of religious schools, opposed to proposed amendments that would alter the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, and opposed to government sponsored religious activities in public schools.

Show Me!

However, starting in 1977, some states began to criminalize the distribution of even non-obscene so-called "child pornography," or "images of abuse," which arguably is not protected by the First Amendment. New York State, home of the publisher, St. Martin's Press, criminalized the distribution of non-obscene "child pornography" in 1977, but the publisher promptly went to court and obtained an injunction against the State.

St. Sava's Serbian Orthodox Seminary

However, in 1976, the United States Supreme Court ruled that this was in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in Serbian Orthodox Diocese v. Milivojevich.

Stanwood Duval

Duval ruled in favor of Planned Parenthood of America, which took the view that the choice of displaying the plates violated the First Amendment to the United States Constitution because there was no alternative display available for supporters of abortion.

Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy

Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten spurred an inquiry into TiZA by the Minnesota Department of Education after her column suggested the school had violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution by teaching religion in the schools.

Texas v. Johnson

Justice William Brennan wrote for a five-justice majority in holding that the defendant Gregory Lee Johnson's act of flag burning was protected speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

United States presidential primary

A few states once staged a blanket primary, in which voters could vote for one candidate in multiple primaries, but the practice was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2000 case of California Democratic Party v. Jones as violating the freedom of assembly guaranteed by the First Amendment.