Last year, a survey received national attention when 40% of respondents couldn’t name a single right guaranteed by the First Amendment, and one one person out of 1009 could name all five. As a way to combat what is clearly…
Tag: first amendment
Victory for ACLU and Chokehold in AZ
The Arizona Department of Corrections decided to reverse its previous ban on Paul Butler’s autobiography, Chokehold: Policing Black Men after the ACLU threatened to sue. ACLU announced the decision on Twitter, and Butler also tweeted about the decision, calling it…
GA Judge Holds Up Student’s Right to Be Heard
The First Amendment rights of students continue to be a topic of litigation fifty years after the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (you can read about Tinker and subsequent cases here). April 2019, in K.B. v.…
Student Stands Up for LGBTQIA Community and Her Own First Amendment Rights
A Fourth Grader in South Carolina is suing her school district for infringing on her First Amendment rights after they refused to accept her essay on LGBTQIA rights. The assignment was to craft a letter “to society” about something the…
CBLDF Speaks Out Against Harsh and Discriminatory Punishment of 6th Grader
A sixth-grade student was arrested in Florida after refusing to participate in the pledge of allegiance. The substitute teacher attempted to insist on his participation but the student still abstained, explaining his views that the flag represents racism in America.…
Happy President’s Day
It’s clear when perusing through history textbooks, those who founded and ran America often cared deeply about the First Amendment and the importance of knowledge and information. Read their own words, as a reminder why these freedoms are not to be…
Support Students’ First Amendment Rights
The Student Press Law Center (SPLC), the Freedom Forum Institute, and the Newseum in Washington, DC, have banded together to declare that 2019, the 50th Anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Tinker decision, the Year of the Student Journalist. With a…
VA Rejects Bill Protecting Students’ First Amendment Rights
The Virginia legislature rejected HB 2382, a bill protecting the First Amendment rights of student journalists, on Monday after the House Education Subcommittee produced a tie vote. The bill was written to return K – 12 and public colleges and…
The Free Speech Century – Examining the Great American Experiment
The First Amendment, ratified in 1791, is by no means new. But as the recent book The Free Speech Century points out, it was largely uninterpreted until three landmark decisions came down from the Supreme Court in 1919 – marking…
Protesters Face New Harsh Penalties All Across America
Legislation around the country is being introduced and passed to turn the people’s right to protest into domestic terrorism. Following the massive protest at Standing Rock, North Dakota, legislators helped pen new laws that would drastically increase the penalty for…