Supreme Court Opinions

Judicial interpretation is the way in which the judiciary construes the law, particularly constitutional documents, legislation and frequently used vocabulary. This is an important issue in some common law jurisdictions such as the United States, Australia and Canada, because the supreme courts of those nations can overturn laws made by their legislatures via a process called judicial review. For example, the United States Supreme Court has decided such topics as the legality of slavery as in the Dred Scott decision, and desegregation as in the Brown v Board of Education decision, and abortion rights as in the Roe v Wade decision. As a result, how justices interpret the constitution, and the ways in which they approach this task has a political aspect. Terms describing types of judicial interpretation can be ambiguous; for example, the term judicial conservatism can vary in meaning depending on what is trying to be "conserved". One can look at judicial interpretation along a continuum from judicial restraint to judicial activism, with different viewpoints along the continuum. Phrases which are regularly used, for example in standard contract documents, may attract judicial interpretation applicable within a particular jurisdiction whenever the same words are used in the same context. In the United States, there are different methods to perform judicial interpretation: Balancing happens when judges weigh one set of interests or rights against an opposing set, typically used to make rulings in First Amendment cases. For example, cases involving freedom of speech sometimes require justices to make a distinction between legally permissible speech and speech that can be restricted or banned for, say, reasons of safety, and the task then is for justices to balance these conflicting claims. The balancing approach was criticized by Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter who argued that the Constitution gives no guidance about how to weigh or measure divergent interests. Doctrinalism considers how various parts of the Constitution have been "shaped by the Court's own jurisprudence", according to Finn.

In American constitutional law, a statute is void for vagueness and unenforceable if it is too vague for the average citizen to understand, and a constitutionally-protected interest cannot tolerate permissible activity to be chilled within the range of the vagueness (either because the statute is a penal statute with criminal or quasi-criminal civil penalties, or because the interest invaded by the vague law is a strict scrutiny constitutional right). There are several reasons a statute may be considered vague; in general, a statute might be void for vagueness when an average citizen cannot generally determine what persons are regulated, what conduct is prohibited, or what punishment may be imposed. For example, criminal laws which do not state explicitly and definitely what conduct is punishable are void for vagueness. A statute is also void for vagueness if a legislature's delegation of authority to judges and/or administrators is so extensive that it would lead to arbitrary prosecutions. Related to the "void for vagueness" concept is the "unconstitutional vagueness" concept. A law can be "void for vagueness" if it imposes on First Amendment freedom of speech, assembly, or religion. The "void for vagueness" doctrine applies only to criminal or penal laws (or quasi-criminal laws, for example laws that carry civil penalties), and laws that potentially limit "strict scrutiny" constitutional rights. The doctrine does not apply to private law (that is, laws that govern rights and obligations as between private parties), only to laws that govern rights and obligations vis-a-vis the government. The doctrine also requires that to qualify as constitutional, a law must: State explicitly what it mandates, and what is enforceable. Define potentially vague terms. Roots and purpose. In the case of vagueness, a statute might be considered void on constitutional grounds. Specifically, roots of the vagueness doctrine extend into the two due process clauses, in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The courts have generally determined that vague laws deprive citizens of their rights without fair process, thus violating due process. The following pronouncement of the void for vagueness doctrine was made by Justice Sutherland in Connally v General Construction Company (1926): he terms of a penal statute must be sufficiently explicit to inform those who are subject to it what conduct on their part will render them liable to its penalties… and a statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application violates the first essential of due process of law. The void for vagueness doctrine is a constitutional rule. This rule requires that laws are so written that they explicitly and definitely state what conduct is punishable. The vagueness doctrine thus serves two purposes. First: All persons receive a fair notice of what is punishable and what is not. Second: The vagueness doctrine helps prevent arbitrary enforcement of the laws and arbitrary prosecutions. There is however no limit to the conduct that can be criminalized, when the legislature does not set minimum guidelines to govern law enforcement.

Overseas and nonresident citizens. U.S. citizens residing overseas who would otherwise have the right to vote are guaranteed the right to vote in federal elections by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) of 1986. As a practical matter, individual states implement UOCAVA. A citizen who has never resided in the United States can vote if a parent is eligible to vote in certain states. In some of these states the citizen can vote in local, state, and federal elections, in others in federal elections only. Voting rights of U.S. citizens who have never established residence in the U.S. vary by state and may be impacted by the residence history of their parents. U.S. territories. U.S. citizens and non-citizen nationals who reside in American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, or the United States Virgin Islands are not allowed to vote in U.S. national and presidential elections, as these U.S. territories belong to the United States but do not have presidential electors. The U.S. Constitution requires a voter to be resident in one of the 50 states or in the District of Columbia to vote in federal elections. To say that the Constitution does not require extension of federal voting rights to U.S. territories residents does not, however, exclude the possibility that the Constitution may permit their enfranchisement under another source of law. Statehood or a constitutional amendment would allow people in the U.S. territories to vote in federal elections. Like the District of Columbia, territories of the United States do not have U.S. senators representing them in the senate, and they each have one member of the House of Representatives who is not allowed to vote. These voting restrictions have been challenged in a series of lawsuits in the 21st century. In 2015, residents of Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands joined as plaintiffs in Segovia v Board of Election Commissioners (2016). The participants had all formerly lived in Illinois, but because of a change of residency to an unincorporated territory were no longer able to vote. Their claim was that the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, as it is implemented, violates the Equal Protection Clause. At issue was that Illinois, the former residence of all of the plaintiffs, allowed residents of the Northern Mariana Islands who had formerly lived in Illinois to vote as absentee voters, but denied former residents living in other unincorporated territories the same right. The US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled in 2016 that under the Absentee Voting Act, former residents of US states are entitled to vote in elections of the last jurisdiction in which they qualified to vote, as long as they reside in a foreign location. Using rational basis review, the court stated that the Northern Mariana Islands had a unique relationship with the United States and could be treated differently. It further pointed out that as the law does not differentiate between residents within a territory, as to who formerly resided in a state, but all are treated equally, no violation occurred. The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit concurred with the decision, but dismissed the case for lack of standing because the application of the Absentee Voting Act in Illinois is a state issue.

Young adults. A third voting rights movement was won in the 1960's to lower the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen. Activists noted that most of the young men who were being drafted to fight in the Vietnam War were too young to have any voice in the selection of the leaders who were sending them to fight. Some states had already lowered the voting age: notably Georgia, Kentucky, and Hawaii, had already permitted voting by persons younger than twenty-one. The Twenty-sixth Amendment, ratified in 1971, prohibits federal and state laws which set a minimum voting age higher than 18 years. As of 2008, no state has opted for an earlier age, although some state governments have discussed it. California has, since the 1980s, allowed persons who are 17 to register to vote for an election where the election itself will occur on or after their 18th birthday, and several states including Indiana allow 17-year-olds to vote in a primary election provided they will be 18 by the general election. Prisoners. Prisoner voting rights are defined by individual states, and the laws are different from state to state. Some states allow only individuals on probation to vote. Others allow individuals on parole and probation. As of 2012, only Florida, Kentucky and Virginia continue to impose a lifelong denial of the right to vote to all citizens with a felony record, absent a restoration of rights granted by the Governor or state legislature. However, in Kentucky, a felon's rights can be restored after the completion of a restoration process to regain civil rights. In 2007, Florida legislature restored voting rights to convicted felons who had served their sentences. In March 2011, however, Governor Rick Scott reversed the 2007 reforms. He signed legislation that permanently disenfranchises citizens with past felony convictions. After a referendum in 2018, however, Florida residents voted to restore voting rights to roughly 1.4 million felons who have completed their sentences. In July 2005, Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack issued an executive order restoring the right to vote for all persons who have completed supervision. On October 31, 2005, Iowa's Supreme Court upheld mass re enfranchisement of convicted felons. Nine other states disenfranchise felons for various lengths of time following the completion of their probation or parole. Other than Maine and Vermont, all U.S. states prohibit felons from voting while they are in prison. In Puerto Rico, felons in prison are allowed to vote in elections. Practices in the United States are in contrast to some European nations that allow prisoners to vote, while other European countries have restrictions on voting while serving a prison sentence, but not after release. Prisoners have been allowed to vote in Canada since 2002. The United States has a higher proportion of its population in prison than any other Western nation, and more than Russia or China. The dramatic rise in the rate of incarceration in the United States, a 500% increase from the 1970s to the 1990s, has vastly increased the number of people disenfranchised because of the felon provisions. According to the Sentencing Project, as of 2010 an estimated 5.9 million Americans are denied the right to vote because of a felony conviction, a number equivalent to 2.5% of the U.S. voting-age population and a sharp increase from the 1.2 million people affected by felony disenfranchisement in 1976. Given the prison populations, the effects have been most disadvantageous for minority and poor communities.

Legal challenges to disfranchisement. Although African Americans quickly began legal challenges to such provisions in the 19th century, it was years before any were successful before the U.S. Supreme Court. Booker T Washington, better known for his public stance of trying to work within societal constraints of the period at Tuskegee University, secretly helped fund and arrange representation for numerous legal challenges to disfranchisement. He called upon wealthy Northern allies and philanthropists to raise funds for the cause. The Supreme Court's upholding of Mississippi's new constitution, in Williams v Mississippi (1898), encouraged other states to follow the Mississippi plan of disenfranchisement. African Americans brought other legal challenges, as in Giles v Harris (1903) and Giles v Teasley (1904), but the Supreme Court upheld Alabama constitutional provisions. In 1915, Oklahoma was the last state to append a grandfather clause to its literacy requirement due to Supreme Court cases. From early in the 20th century, the newly established National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took the lead in organizing or supporting legal challenges to segregation and disfranchisement. Gradually they planned the strategy of which cases to take forward. In Guinn v United States (1915), the first case in which the NAACP filed a brief, the Supreme Court struck down the grandfather clause in Oklahoma and Maryland. Other states in which it was used had to retract their legislation as well. The challenge was successful. But, nearly as rapidly as the Supreme Court determined a specific provision was unconstitutional, state legislatures developed new statutes to continue disenfranchisement. For instance, in Smith v Allwright (1944), the Supreme Court struck down the use of state-sanctioned all-white primaries by the Democratic Party in the South. States developed new restrictions on black voting; Alabama passed a law giving county registrars more authority as to which questions they asked applicants in comprehension or literacy tests. The NAACP continued with steady progress in legal challenges to disenfranchisement and segregation. In 1957, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to implement the Fifteenth Amendment. It established the United States Civil Rights Commission; among its duties is to investigate voter discrimination. As late as 1962, programs such as Operation Eagle Eye in Arizona attempted to stymie minority voting through literacy tests. The Twenty-fourth Amendment was ratified in 1964 to prohibit poll taxes as a condition of voter registration and voting in federal elections. Many states continued to use them in state elections as a means of reducing the number of voters.

Religious test. In several British North American colonies, before and after the 1776 Declaration of Independence, Jews, Quakers, Catholics, and/or Atheists were excluded from the franchise and/or from running for elections. The Delaware Constitution of 1776 stated that "Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust, before taking his seat, or entering upon the execution of his office, shall ... also make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit: I, A B. do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.". This was repealed by Article I, Section II. of the 1792 Constitution: "No religious test shall be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, under this State". The 1778 Constitution of the State of South Carolina stated, "No person shall be eligible to sit in the house of representatives unless he be of the Protestant religion", the 1777 Constitution of the State of Georgia (article 6) that "The representatives shall be chosen out of the residents in each county ... and they shall be of the Protestant religion". With the growth in the number of Baptists in Virginia before the Revolution, who challenged the established Anglican Church, the issues of religious freedom became important to rising leaders such as James Madison. As a young lawyer, he defended Baptist preachers who were not licensed by (and were opposed by) the established state Anglican Church. He carried developing ideas about religious freedom to be incorporated into the constitutional convention of the United States. In 1787, Article One of the United States Constitution stated that "the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature". More significantly, Article Six disavowed the religious test requirements of several states, saying: "o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." But, in Maryland, Jewish Americans were excluded from State office until the law requiring candidates to affirm a belief in an afterlife was repealed in 1828. African Americans and poor whites. At the time of ratification of the Constitution in the late 18th century, most states had property qualifications which restricted the franchise; the exact amount varied by state, but by some estimates, more than half of white men were disenfranchised. Several states granted suffrage to free men of color after the Revolution, including North Carolina. This fact was noted by Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis' dissent in Dred Scott v Sandford (1857), as he emphasized that blacks had been considered citizens at the time the Constitution was ratified: Of this there can be no doubt. At the time of the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, all free native-born inhabitants of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina, though descended from African slaves, were not only citizens of those States, but such of them as had the other necessary qualifications possessed the franchise of electors, on equal terms with other citizens.

Roe v Wade was a 1971, 1973 landmark decision by the US Supreme Court. It ruled that a state law that banned abortion was unconstitutional. The 7 to 2 decision had Chief Justice Warren E Burger and six other Justices vote for "Jane Roe" and Justices William Rehnquist and Byron White vote against it. The decision divided the United States and is still controversial. People became divided into pro-life and pro-choice groups. Pro-life supporters argue that the unborn baby has the same right to life as other people, and the government should intervene to protect it. Pro-choice supporters believe that the unborn baby is not the same as a person, and the woman has the right to choose what she wants to do with her body and that the government should not intervene. Roe was limited by a later decision, Webster v Reproductive Health Services (1989), which allowed the regulation of abortion in some cases. Several states have considered laws banning abortions altogether. In May 2022, a leaked draft of the Supreme Court's decision to overrule Roe v Wade was published. Background. The case began in 1970 in Texas as a challenge against a law banning any kind of abortion unless the mother's life was in danger. A pregnant Texas woman, Norma McCorvey (alias Jane Roe), brought a lawsuit against Henry Wade, Dallas County District Attorney, in a Texas federal court. Claiming to be a single woman and pregnant, McCorvey wanted to terminate her pregnancy. She wanted it to be done safely by a doctor but said that she could not afford to travel outside Texas. She could not get a legal abortion in Texas because her life was not in danger. Her lawsuit claimed that the Texas law violated her right to privacy, protected by the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Roe added she sued "on behalf of herself and all other women" in the same situation. The case slowly made its way to the US Supreme Court. Meanwhile, McCorvey had her baby and placed it for adoption. Majority opinion. In a 7 to 2 decision, the court held that a woman's right to an abortion was protected by her right to privacy under the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision allowed a woman to decide whether or not to have an abortion during the first trimester. That affected the laws of 46 states. Justice Harry Blackmun wrote the majority opinion. "We... acknowledge our awareness of the sensitive and emotional nature of the abortion controversy, of the vigorous opposing views, even among physicians, and of the deep and seemingly absolute convictions that the subject inspires." — Justice Blackmun (1973).

Shurtleff v City of Boston, (2022), was a United States Supreme Court case related to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Background. Boston, Massachusetts allows groups to have their flags flown over Boston City Hall. A Christian group, Camp Constitution, sought to have the city fly a Christian flag. Camp Constitution and its director Hal Shurtleff teach that the United States was created as a "Christian nation." After the city denied their application, the first denial of more than a few hundred applications, Shurtleff sued. The city prevailed in the district court and the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and Shurtleff appealed to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court. Certiorari was granted in the case on September 30, 2021. On May 2, 2022, the Court unanimously ruled that the City of Boston violated the First Amendment by denying Shurtleff's application to fly the flag. Reactions. The Joe Biden administration and the American Civil Liberties Union sided with the Christian group. The administration said that "The city cannot generally open its flagpole to flags from private civic and social groups while excluding otherwise similar groups with religious views".

Milestones of national franchise changes 1789: The Constitution grants the states the power to set voting requirements. Generally, states limited this right to property-owning or tax-paying white males (about 6% of the population). 1790: The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited citizenship to "free white persons." In practice, only white male property owners could naturalize and acquire the status of citizens, and the vote. 1792 to 1838: Free black males lose the right to vote in several Northern states including in Pennsylvania and in New Jersey. 1792 to 1856: Abolition of property qualifications for white men, from 1792 (New Hampshire) to 1856 (North Carolina) during the periods of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy. However, tax-paying qualifications remained in five states in 1860—Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Delaware and North Carolina. They survived in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island until the 20th century. In the 1820 election, there were 108,359 ballots cast. Most older states with property restrictions dropped them by the mid-1820s, except for Rhode Island, Virginia and North Carolina. No new states had property qualifications although three had adopted tax-paying qualifications – Ohio, Louisiana, and Mississippi, of which only in Louisiana were these significant and long lasting. The 1828 presidential election was the first in which non-property-holding white males could vote in the vast majority of states. By the end of the 1820s, attitudes and state laws had shifted in favor of universal white male suffrage. Voter turnout soared during the 1830s, reaching about 80% of the adult white male population in the 1840 presidential election. 2,412,694 ballots were cast, an increase that far outstripped natural population growth, making poor voters a huge part of the electorate. The process was peaceful and widely supported, except in the state of Rhode Island where the Dorr Rebellion of the 1840s demonstrated that the demand for equal suffrage was broad and strong, although the subsequent reform included a significant property requirement for anyone resident but born outside of the United States. The last state to abolish property qualification was North Carolina in 1856. However, tax-paying qualifications remained in five states in 1860 – Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Delaware and North Carolina. They survived in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island until the 20th century. In addition, many poor whites were later disenfranchised. 1868: Citizenship is guaranteed to all persons born or naturalized in the United States by the Fourteenth Amendment, setting the stage for future expansions to voting rights. 1869–1920: Some states allow women to vote. Wyoming was the first state to give women voting rights in 1869. 1870: The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prevents states from denying the right to vote on grounds of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era began soon after. Former Confederate states passed Jim Crow laws and amendments to effectively disfranchise African-American and poor white voters through poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses and other restrictions, applied in a discriminatory manner. During this period, the Supreme Court generally upheld state efforts to discriminate against racial minorities; only later in the 20th century were these laws ruled unconstitutional. Black males in the Northern states could vote, but the majority of African Americans lived in the South. 1887: Citizenship is granted to Native Americans who are willing to disassociate themselves from their tribe by the Dawes Act, making the men technically eligible to vote.

Voting rights in the United States, specifically the enfranchisement and disenfranchisement of different groups, has been a moral and political issue throughout United States history. Eligibility to vote in the United States is governed by the United States Constitution and by federal and state laws. Several constitutional amendments (the Fifteenth, Nineteenth, and Twenty-sixth specifically) require that voting rights of U.S. citizens cannot be abridged on account of race, color, previous condition of servitude, sex, or age (18 and older); the constitution as originally written did not establish any such rights during 1787 thru 1870, except that if a state permitted a person to vote for the "most numerous branch" of its state legislature, it was required to permit that person to vote in elections for members of the United States House of Representatives. In the absence of a specific federal law or constitutional provision, each state is given considerable discretion to establish qualifications for suffrage and candidacy within its own respective jurisdiction; in addition, states and lower level jurisdictions establish election systems, such as at-large or single member district elections for county councils or school boards. Beyond qualifications for suffrage, rules and regulations concerning voting (such as the poll tax) have been contested since the advent of Jim Crow laws and related provisions that indirectly disenfranchised racial minorities. A historic turning point was the 1964 Supreme Court case Reynolds v Sims that ruled both houses of all state legislatures had to be based on electoral districts that were approximately equal in population size, under the "one man, one vote" principle. The Warren Court's decisions on two previous landmark cases—Baker v Carr (1962) and Wesberry v Sanders (1964)—also played a fundamental role in establishing the nationwide "one man, one vote" electoral system. Since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Twenty-fourth Amendment, and related laws, voting rights have been legally considered an issue related to election systems. In 1972, the Burger Court ruled that state legislatures had to redistrict every ten years based on census results; at that point, many had not redistricted for decades, often leading to a rural bias. In cases of county or municipal elections, at-large voting has been repeatedly challenged when found to dilute the voting power of significant minorities in violation of the Voting Rights Act. In the early 20th century, numerous cities established small commission forms of government in the belief that "better government" could result from the suppression of ward politics. Commissioners were elected by the majority of voters, excluding candidates who could not afford large campaigns or who appealed to a minority. Generally the solution to such violations has been to adopt single-member districts (SMDs), but alternative election systems, such as limited voting or cumulative voting, have also been used since the late 20th century to correct for dilution of voting power and enable minorities to elect candidates of their choice. The District of Columbia and five major territories of the United States have one non-voting member each (in the United States House of Representatives) and no representation in the United States Senate. People in the U.S. territories cannot vote for president of the United States. People in the District of Columbia can vote for the president because of the Twenty-third Amendment.

Brown v Davenport, (2022), was a case decided by the United States Supreme Court. The case concerned whether habeas relief may be granted if the Brecht v Abrahamson test alone is satisfied, or if the application of Chapman v California by the state courts was unreasonable because of AEDPA. The court held that federal courts can not grant habeas relief when state courts have already ruled on a prisoner's claim, unless the situation satisfies the test laid out in Brecht v Abrahamson, and the test laid out in AEDPA. Background In 2008, Ervine Davenport was convicted of first-degree murder. His conviction was challenged because during his trial he had been placed in shackles. His wrists, waist, and ankles were all restrained, but there was a curtain to prevent the jury from seeing the shackles. The state said that although the shackles were unconstitutional, they did not affect the jury's verdict. Michigan's Court of Appeals agreed with the state. The Michigan Supreme Court disagreed, however, after several jurors testified that they had seen the shackles or heard comments about them, and then sent the case back to the lower courts. The lower court again determined that the shackles did not affect the verdict, and the appellate court agreed with the state once again, and the Michigan Supreme Court denied an appeal. Davenport then challenged his conviction in the federal courts. The district court refused to hear the case. He then petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, which agreed to hear the case. This appeals court cited the Deck v Missouri decision, and quoted from Holbrook v Flynn: "shackling is inherently prejudicial". The court found that the state had not met the burden of proof necessary to show that the jury was not influenced by the shackling, and provided habeas relief. The state attempted to have the decision stayed, but the court declined. … United States v Vaello Madero, (2022), was a United States Supreme Court case related to the constitutionality of the exclusion of United States citizens residing in Puerto Rico from the Supplemental Security Income program. In an 8 to 1 decision, the Court ruled that as Congress had been granted broad oversight of United States territories by Article Four of the United States Constitution, the exclusion of the territories by Congress from programs like Supplemental Security Income did not violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Background. The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program is a benefit for older or impaired citizens that are unable to take care of themselves. As established by Congress, the benefits are available to all citizens of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the Northern Mariana Islands, but does not cover residents of the other United States territories, including Puerto Rico. Jose Luis Vaello Madero was a recipient of SSI benefits while living in New York, and then moved to Puetro Rico in 2013. He continued to receive SSI benefits, but eventually the government discovered his new residence, terminated the SSI benefits and sought to recover approximately $28,000 he had improperly received while in Puetro Rico. A federal district judge and the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit found that this exclusion violated the equal protection principle of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution's due process clause, which was first established in Bolling v Sharpe.

City of Austin v Reagan National Advertising of Austin LLC, (2022), was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with the application of zoning restrictions on digital billboards in the city of Austin Texas. In a 6 to 3 ruling, the Court ruled that the Austin regulation against off-premise digital signs was content-neutral and thus should be reviewed as a facial challenge rather than a strict scrutiny following from the reasoning in Reed v Town of Gilbert. Background. Austin is one of 350 cities and towns in Texas that enacted bans related to digital billboards along the sides of highways, generally as a long-term effect of the Highway Beautification Act as well as to avoid distractions for drivers along these highways. Austin's city codes includes a Sign Code that distinguishes between signage that is located on-premises, including signs in shop windows and mounted street signs on the property, and those off-premises, like billboards. On-premises signs are generally unregulated and may be updated and improved without any limitations, including improvements to digital signage. Off-premises signage, however, are restricted from such improvements. In addition, the city has banned the installation of new billboards. Around 2017, two advertising companies that operated static billboards in Austin, Lamar Advantage Outdoor Company and Reagan National Advertising of Austin, sued the city as the city council denied over 80 applications to allow them to convert existing static billboards into digital billboards. The advertising companies contended that the city had allowed some digital signage such as that on the Austin Convention Center, and believed the ban was unconstitutional. They were joined by the Austin Police Association and supporters of local emergency services, believing that such digital billboards could be used to provide information such as Amber Alerts. The case was first filed in a state district court before the city moved it to the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas in 2017. The district court selected to review the matter under intermediate scrutiny based on Metromedia Incorporated v San Diego, rather than the strict scrutiny content-based standard of Reed v Town of Gilbert, as the off-premise versus on-premise standard was content-neutral. Under this distinction, the District Court ruled for the city. Though the city amended the sign code in 2017 after litigation had started, the changes did not impact the case nor render it moot. The advertisers appealed to the Fifth Circuit. In October 2020, the Fifth Circuit reversed the District's ruling in favor of the advertisers. The Fifth Circuit used the strict scrutiny standard of Reed to evaluate the city codes, as it determined that because to determine whether a sign was on or off-premises, one had to consider the message it was conveying, and that meant that this was a content-based restriction. Given this assessment, the rationale the city had given to maintain the ban against digital signage – to assure the safety of drivers and maintain the beauty of the landscape – were not sufficient reasons to violate the First Amendment rights of the advertisers, and thus ruled the city's sign code unconstitutional

Thompson v. Clark, (2022), was a United States Supreme Court case concerning whether a plaintiff suing for malicious prosecution must show that he or she was affirmatively exonerated of committing the alleged crime. The Supreme Court, in a 6 to 3 opinion authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh held that no such requirement existed and that a plaintiff suing for malicious prosecution in the context of a Fourth Amendment "need only show that his prosecution ended without a conviction." Justice Samuel Alito dissented from the majority opinion and was joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch. Media coverage of the decision portrayed the Court's ruling as a victory for civil rights lawsuits. Background. Larry Thompson, a Navy veteran and postal worker, lived with his fiancée and newborn daughter in an apartment in Brooklyn, New York. When Thompson's daughter was one week old, his sister-in-law called 911 and accused Thompson of sexually abusing the child. Four police officers were dispatched to Thompson's house to investigate but Thompson refused to let them in without a search warrant. In response, the four officers forced their way into Thompson's home and attempted to restrain Thompson. Thompson resisted, was taken into custody for two days, and was subsequently charged with resisting arrest. Further investigation by law enforcement revealed no signs of child abuse. Rather than prosecute Thompson for resisting arrest, the prosecution opted to dismiss the charges. Neither the prosecutor nor the judge offered any explanation as to why the charges were dismissed. Following the dismissal of his criminal charges, Thompson filed suit against the officers responsible for arresting him under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and alleging, among other things, that he had been maliciously prosecuted in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights, which provided the right against unlawful seizures. Thompson's claims were dismissed at the trial level and his appeal to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals was similarly denied as both courts held that, under existing precedent, Thompson was required to show that he had been affirmatively found innocent of committing the underlying crime. On November 6, 2020, Thompson filed a petition for a writ of certiorari, which was granted on March 8, 2021. During the October 12, 2021, oral argument, the justices posed a series of hypotheticals involving the fictional character of Jean Valjean and the mythological centaur.

Ramirez v. Collier (2022), is a United States Supreme Court case related to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. Background. On July 19, 2004, 20-year-old John Henry Ramirez (born June 29, 1984), a former United States Marine, accompanied by two female acquaintances, murdered 46-year-old convenience store worker Pablo Castro outside a Times Market in Corpus Christi, Texas. Ramirez stabbed Castro a total of twenty-nine times, resulting in his death. The trio stole less than two dollars from Castro and fled the scene without entering the store. The two female acquaintances were captured a day later but Ramirez fled to Mexico and was not captured until 2008. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death soon thereafter. Ramirez was originally scheduled to be executed in September 2020. That warrant was withdrawn. In 2021, Ramirez filed suit to challenge the Texas execution protocol under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, seeking to have his minister be allowed to lay hands on his body and audibly pray during the execution process. The district court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit both denied stays of execution, the latter over the dissent of Judge James L Dennis. Ramirez then filed a petition for a writ of certiorari. Houston Community College System v. Wilson (2022), is a United States Supreme Court case related to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Background. David Buren Wilson was elected a member of the Houston Community College System's board in 2013 who was censured for repeated incidences of what other members of the Board of Trustees deemed to be behavior that was not becoming of an elected official or beneficial to the HCC system. Wilson filed suit claiming that the censure was an offense to his First Amendment rights. Supreme Court. Certiorari was granted in the case on April 26, 2021. In a March 24, 2022 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Wilson's First Amendment rights were not violated by his fellow board members' censure of him because the censure did not result in any hindrance of his ability to exercise his free speech in his capacity as an elected official and member of the public. The opinion cites the fact that the use of censure by elected bodies to address the behavior and actions of their members is a practice with a long history in the United States, and it also states that the censure itself constitutes an exercise of First Amendment rights by Wilson's colleagues on the board who voted to reprimand him.

Federal Bureau of Investigation v. Fazaga, (2022), was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with the use of law enforcement surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 and the state secrets privilege defense. The case stems from a 2011 class action lawsuit filed against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) related to one of its surveillance operations. In August 2012, the district court dismissed the case on the basis of the FBI's invocation of state secrets privilege. The Ninth Circuit overturned this ruling in part in 2019, ruling that FISA precluded the defendants from invoking the state secrets defense. However, the Supreme Court overturned the Ninth Circuit's ruling in a unanimous decision in March 2022, stating that FISA does not override the state secrets defense. Background. In 2006, the FBI and the Orange County, California Joint Terrorism Task Force ran Operation Flex, a counterterrorism operation, by recruiting a fitness instructor, Craig Monteilh, to become an informant. Monteilh, under an assumed name, pretended to convert to Islam and joined the Islamic Center of Irvine (ICOI) in Irvine, California. Besides his own gathering of information, Monteilh wore and planted recording devices throughout the mosque and in homes and businesses of ICOI members that Monteilh came to know personally, passing on the information to the FBI. After about a year, Monteilh began making statements about taking violent action while in the presence of ICOI. He was reported to the police and put under a restraining order from ICOI. The FBI lost confidence in Monteilh and ended the operation. Monteilh was convicted of grand theft in connection with the distribution of steroids in a separate matter in 2008, and ended up in California state prison. In April 2008, he was stabbed repeatedly in prison after being labeled a snitch. Monteilh filed a lawsuit against the FBI, stating that they failed to protect him after using him for their investigation, and made numerous details of Operation Flex public in 2009 prior to filing his suit against the FBI in 2010. Monteilh also spoke to these details of Operation Flex in a 2009 case the FBI brought against Ahmad Niazi, an Afghan immigrant that Monteilh had attempted to blackmail to become an FBI informant, though charges against Niazi were eventually dropped.

Wooden v. United States, (2022), was a Supreme Court of the United States case dealing with the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA). In a unanimous decision, the court ruled that multiple criminal offenses that a person commits during a single criminal episode do not count as separate convictions when considering the number of prior convictions a criminal has under the ACCA. Background. In 1997, William Wooden was involved with the burglary of a self-storage space, breaking into ten adjacent units within a single night. He was convicted on ten counts of burglary and served an eight-year prison sentence. Later, in 2014, Wooden was arrested for possession of a rifle under Georgia law when a police officer, out of uniform and without a warrant, entered his home and discovered the rifle. The charges were later dismissed due to the irregularities of the discovery, but federal officers stepped in to charge Wooden for possession of firearms under the ACCA. While a first-time conviction under the ACCA would normally lead to a sentence of 21 to 27 months, federal prosecutors believed that the ten prior convictions from the storage burglary were separate "occasions" under the ACCA, and triggered the enhanced sentencing provision of the ACCA for criminals that have been convictions on three or more separate occasions, setting a minimum sentence of 15 years. While Wooden argued that the ten burglary convictions should be treated as a single occasion for purposes of the ACCA, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee found in favor of the government's argument, as this stance was based on current case law for the Sixth Circuit. The decision was upheld on appeal at the Sixth Circuit.

Current scheme. Acquisition of nationality. There are various ways a person can acquire United States nationality, either at birth, by naturalization, or through court decisions and/or treaties. Birth within the United States. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." The language has been codified in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, section 301(a). Regardless of the status of the parent, unless they are in the employ of a foreign government, birth within the territory confers nationality. The Supreme Court has not explicitly ruled whether children born in the United States to unauthorized migrants present in the country are birthright nationals, but it is generally presumed they are. Birth certificates from U.S. jurisdictions are typically acceptable proof of nationality. Through birth abroad to United States citizens. For children born abroad, a Consular Report of Birth Abroad may be requested to confirm entitlement as a national. Section 301(c) of the Nationality Act of 1952 extends automatic nationality at birth to children born abroad to two parents who are U.S. nationals, as long as one of the parents resided for any length of time in the United States or its possessions. Section 301(g) establishes that to attain automatic nationality for a child born abroad to a citizen and a foreign national, residency in the United States or its possessions is also required. Time served as active military service was considered equivalent to residence in the U.S. For children with one national parent, requirements vary, depending on when they were born, and whether the parents were married. Legitimate children. Automatic nationality is extended based upon the law applicable at the time of the child's birth: If a birth abroad occurred after May 24, 1934 but prior to December 23, 1952, the U.S. national parent must have resided in the United States or its possessions for ten years, with five of them after the age of fourteen. If a birth abroad occurred after December 24, 1952 but prior to November 13, 1986, the U.S. national parent must have been the legal and genetic or gestational parent, and have resided in the United States or its possessions for ten years, with five of them after the age of fourteen. If the birth occurred on or after November 14, 1986, the U.S. national must have resided in the United States for five years, two of them after the age of fourteen, previous to the birth of the child.

United States nationality law details the conditions in which a person holds United States nationality. In the United States, nationality is typically obtained through provisions in the U.S. Constitution, various laws, and international agreements. Citizenship is a right, not a privilege. While the domestic documents often use citizenship and nationality interchangeably, nationality refers to the legal means in which a person obtains a national identity and formal membership in a nation and citizenship refers to the relationship held by nationals who are also citizens. Individuals born in any of the 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia or almost any inhabited territory are natural-born United States citizens. The sole exception is American Samoa, where individuals are typically non-citizen U.S. nationals at birth. Foreign nationals living in any state or qualified territory may naturalize after becoming permanent residents and meeting a residence requirement (normally five years). History. Constitutional foundation. Nationality defines the legal relationship between a person and a state or nation, specifying who is a member or subject of a particular nation. The rights and obligations of citizenship are defined by this relationship, as well as the protections to which nationals are entitled. Though nationality and citizenship are distinct and the United States recognizes the distinction between those who are entitled or not entitled to rights, its statutes typically use the words "citizen" and "citizenship" instead of "national" and "nationality". The Constitution of the United States did not define either nationality or citizenship, but in Article 1, section 8, clause 4 gave Congress the authority to establish a naturalization law. Before the American Civil War and adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, there was no other language in the Constitution dealing with nationality. Nationality laws 1790–1866. The first statute to define nationality and naturalization in the United States was the Naturalization Act of 1790. It limited those who were eligible to be nationals as free, white persons. Following the practices of English common law, the legal system of the United States absorbed coverture, or the assumption that a woman's loyalty and obligations to her spouse were more important than her loyalty and obligation to the nation. While the Nationality Act did not forbid a woman to have her own nationality, judicial rulings and custom on domestic matters established that infants, slaves, and women were unable to participate in public life, as a result of the belief that they lacked critical judgment and had no right to exercise free will or control property. Native Americans were considered to be subjects of foreign governments and per decisions like Dred Scott v Sandford (1857) were only eligible to become naturalized if they assimilated white culture. From 1802, only fathers were able to pass on their nationality to their children. The Naturalization Act of 1804 confirmed that a woman's nationality was dependent upon her marital status and the Naturalization Act of 1855 tied a wife's nationality, and that of her children, to her husband's. A wife who married a foreign husband in this period was assumed to have suspended her nationality in favor of his. She was able to repatriate upon termination of the marriage and resumption of residence in the United States. While the 1855 Act specified that foreign wives gained U.S. nationality, the law created confusion as to whether it required American women who married aliens to take the nationality of the spouse. For example, Nellie Grant, daughter of President Ulysses S Grant, reacquired her U.S. nationality in 1898 by an Act of Congress, after a divorce from a British husband.

Current scheme. Acquisition of nationality. There are various ways a person can acquire United States nationality, either at birth, by naturalization, or through court decisions and/or treaties. Birth within the United States. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." The language has been codified in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, section 301(a). Regardless of the status of the parent, unless they are in the employ of a foreign government, birth within the territory confers nationality. The Supreme Court has not explicitly ruled whether children born in the United States to unauthorized migrants present in the country are birthright nationals, but it is generally presumed they are. Birth certificates from U.S. jurisdictions are typically acceptable proof of nationality. Through birth abroad to United States citizens. For children born abroad, a Consular Report of Birth Abroad may be requested to confirm entitlement as a national. Section 301(c) of the Nationality Act of 1952 extends automatic nationality at birth to children born abroad to two parents who are U.S. nationals, as long as one of the parents resided for any length of time in the United States or its possessions. Section 301(g) establishes that to attain automatic nationality for a child born abroad to a citizen and a foreign national, residency in the United States or its possessions is also required. Time served as active military service was considered equivalent to residence in the U.S. For children with one national parent, requirements vary, depending on when they were born, and whether the parents were married. Legitimate children. Automatic nationality is extended based upon the law applicable at the time of the child's birth: If a birth abroad occurred after May 24, 1934 but prior to December 23, 1952, the U.S. national parent must have resided in the United States or its possessions for ten years, with five of them after the age of fourteen. If a birth abroad occurred after December 24, 1952 but prior to November 13, 1986, the U.S. national parent must have been the legal and genetic or gestational parent, and have resided in the United States or its possessions for ten years, with five of them after the age of fourteen. If the birth occurred on or after November 14, 1986, the U.S. national must have resided in the United States for five years, two of them after the age of fourteen, previous to the birth of the child.

Wooden v. United States, (2022), was a Supreme Court of the United States case dealing with the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA). In a unanimous decision, the court ruled that multiple criminal offenses that a person commits during a single criminal episode do not count as separate convictions when considering the number of prior convictions a criminal has under the ACCA. Background. In 1997, William Wooden was involved with the burglary of a self-storage space, breaking into ten adjacent units within a single night. He was convicted on ten counts of burglary and served an eight-year prison sentence. Later, in 2014, Wooden was arrested for possession of a rifle under Georgia law when a police officer, out of uniform and without a warrant, entered his home and discovered the rifle. The charges were later dismissed due to the irregularities of the discovery, but federal officers stepped in to charge Wooden for possession of firearms under the ACCA. While a first-time conviction under the ACCA would normally lead to a sentence of 21 to 27 months, federal prosecutors believed that the ten prior convictions from the storage burglary were separate "occasions" under the ACCA, and triggered the enhanced sentencing provision of the ACCA for criminals that have been convictions on three or more separate occasions, setting a minimum sentence of 15 years. While Wooden argued that the ten burglary convictions should be treated as a single occasion for purposes of the ACCA, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee found in favor of the government's argument, as this stance was based on current case law for the Sixth Circuit. The decision was upheld on appeal at the Sixth Circuit. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court granted Wooden's petition in February 2021. The case was argued on October 4, 2021. The Court issued its decision on March 8, 2022. The judgment was unanimous, reversing the decision of the lower courts. The majority opinion was written by Justice Elena Kagan, joined in whole by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh and all but Part 2-B by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett. Kagan wrote that based both on the legislative history of the ACCA and the ordinary meaning of "occasion", that the ten burglary convictions that Wooden had received were all within the same occasion. "Consider first how an ordinary person (a reporter; a police officer; yes, even a lawyer) might describe Wooden's 10 burglaries — and how she would not", Kagan wrote. While Justice Barrett wrote a concurrence in part and in the judgment which was joined by Justice Thomas, she wrote that she took issue with Justice Kagan's use of legislative history as part of the rationale. Kagan had pointed to a 1988 amendment where Congress had made it clear that they intended that the enhanced sentencing was to come from separate episodes by referring to a person that was convicted under the enhanced provisions of the ACCA after performing a stick-up of six people at the same time. Barrett stated this was too much of a stretch for statutory interpretation and that they should defer to what Congress explicitly stated in the law. Justice Neil Gorsuch also wrote a concurrence in judgment, joined in the most part by Justice Sotomayor. Gorsuch wrote that Wooden's case calls for the use of the rule of lenity, deferring in favor of the defendant when there is ambiguity in criminal law. Gorsuch also expressed concern that the ACCA created enhanced penalties to be decided by a judge rather than by a jury, which may be a violation of the Fifth and Sixth Amendment.

United States v Zubaydah, (2022), was a United States Supreme Court case related to the state secrets privilege. Background. Abu Zubaydah was captured by the United States in Pakistan in 2002 and has been alleged to be a member of Al Qaeda. While in custody he had been transferred to multiple sites, including several black sites operated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), before he was transferred indefinitely to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp by 2003. While the information on these sites was classified, activities at one site in Poland became public knowledge after Zubaydah and his council requested an investigation in 2010 from Polish officials into his treatment while at a black site in Poland. The report found that Zubaydah had been subjected to waterboarding and other forms of torture at the black site under direction of two CIA contractors. Zubaydah sought disclosures from the two contractors in 2017 through federal courts to testify to their role in his detention. The CIA objected, claiming that any information regarding the black site was classified and could not be disclosed, even if the responses that Zubaydah sought did not reveal anything about the site's location. Zubayday countered that the site's general location in Poland had already been revealed to the public through other means. He prevailed in the district court and a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed, over Judge Ronald M. Gould's dissent. Judge Daniel Bress, joined by 11 colleagues, dissented from the denial of rehearing en banc. Supreme Court. Certiorari was granted in the case on April 26, 2021. Oral arguments were heard on October 6, 2021. On March 3, 2022, a fractured Court reversed the Ninth Circuit in a mostly 7–2 vote. The majority decision was written by Justice Stephen Breyer, joined in full by Chief Justice John Roberts and in part by Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Breyer acknowledged that while information about the CIA black site in Poland had been identified in public, the type of information that Zubaydah sought "would tend to confirm (or deny) the existence of a CIA detention site in Poland", and thus there was reasonable cause for the government to consider any further confirmation a matter of national security, since this potentially could expose the existence of black sites in other countries. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurrence to the judgment which Justice Samuel Alito joined. Thomas agreed with the judgment of the majority, but believed that Zubaydah did not need the information he was requesting from the contractors to pursue his case. Justice Elena Kagan also wrote a concurrence, but stated the case should be remanded to the district court to review what information Zubaydah sought that could be separated from state secrets. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the dissent, joined by Sonia Sotomayor. Gorsuch argued that the fact that Zubayduh was held at a black site in Poland between 2002 and 2003 was now public knowledge and thus no longer a state secret, and was concerned about the over-classification of information by the government. He also stated, in agreement with Kagan, that the case should be remanded to district court to separate out what information could be obtained without evoking any state secret privilege.

Tiered scrutiny. Despite the undoubted importance of Brown, much of modern equal protection jurisprudence originated in other cases, though not everyone 18/2022 agrees about which other cases. Many scholars assert that the opinion of Justice Harlan Stone in United States v Carolene Products Co. (1938) contained a footnote that was a critical turning point for equal protection jurisprudence, but that assertion is disputed. Whatever its precise origins, the basic idea of the modern approach is that more judicial scrutiny is triggered by purported discrimination that involves "fundamental rights" (such as the right to procreation), and similarly more judicial scrutiny is also triggered if the purported victim of discrimination has been targeted because he or she belongs to a "suspect classification" (such as a single racial group). This modern doctrine was pioneered in Skinner v Oklahoma (1942), which involved depriving certain criminals of the fundamental right to procreate: When the law lays an unequal hand on those who have committed intrinsically the same quality of offense and sterilizes one and not the other, it has made as invidious a discrimination as if it had selected a particular race or nationality for oppressive treatment. Until 1976, the Supreme Court usually ended up dealing with discrimination by using one of two possible levels of scrutiny: what has come to be called "strict scrutiny" (when a suspect class or fundamental right is involved), or instead the more lenient "rational basis review". Strict scrutiny means that a challenged statute must be "narrowly tailored" to serve a "compelling" government interest, and must not have a "less restrictive" alternative. In contrast, rational basis scrutiny merely requires that a challenged statute be "reasonably related" to a "legitimate" government interest. However, in the 1976 case of Craig v Boren, the Court added another tier of scrutiny, called "intermediate scrutiny", regarding gender discrimination. The Court may have added other tiers too, such as "enhanced rational basis" scrutiny, and "exceedingly persuasive basis" scrutiny. All of this is known as "tiered" scrutiny, and it has had many critics, including Justice Thurgood Marshall who argued for a "spectrum of standards in reviewing discrimination", instead of discrete tiers. Justice John Paul Stevens argued for only one level of scrutiny, given that "there is only one Equal Protection Clause". The whole tiered strategy developed by the Court is meant to reconcile the principle of equal protection with the reality that most laws necessarily discriminate in some way. Choosing the standard of scrutiny can determine the outcome of a case, and the strict scrutiny standard is often described as "strict in theory and fatal in fact". In order to select the correct level of scrutiny, Justice Antonin Scalia urged the Court to identify rights as "fundamental" or identify classes as "suspect" by analyzing what was understood when the Equal Protection Clause was adopted, instead of based upon more subjective factors.

Gilded Age interpretation and the Plessy decision. In the United States, 1877 marked the end of Reconstruction and the start of the Gilded Age. The first truly landmark equal protection decision by the Supreme Court was Strauder v West Virginia (1880). A black man convicted of murder by an all-white jury challenged a West Virginia statute excluding blacks from serving on juries. Exclusion of blacks from juries, the Court concluded, was a denial of equal protection to black defendants, since the jury had been "drawn from a panel from which the State has expressly excluded every man of race." At the same time, the Court explicitly allowed sexism and other types of discrimination, saying that states "may confine the selection to males, to freeholders, to citizens, to persons within certain ages, or to persons having educational qualifications. We do not believe the Fourteenth Amendment was ever intended to prohibit this. ... Its aim was against discrimination because of race or color." The next important postwar case was the Civil Rights Cases (1883), in which the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was at issue. The Act provided that all persons should have "full and equal enjoyment of ... inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement." In its opinion, the Court explicated what has since become known as the "state action doctrine", according to which the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause apply only to acts done or otherwise "sanctioned in some way" by the state. Prohibiting blacks from attending plays or staying in inns was "simply a private wrong". Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented alone, saying, "I cannot resist the conclusion that the substance and spirit of the recent amendments of the Constitution have been sacrificed by a subtle and ingenious verbal criticism." Harlan went on to argue that because (1) "public conveyances on land and water" use the public highways, and (2) innkeepers engage in what is "a quasi-public employment", and (3) "places of public amusement" are licensed under the laws of the states, excluding blacks from using these services was an act sanctioned by the state.

The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". It mandates that individuals in similar situations be treated equally by the law. A primary motivation for this clause was to validate the equality provisions contained in the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which guaranteed that all citizens would have the guaranteed right to equal protection by law. As a whole, the Fourteenth Amendment marked a large shift in American constitutionalism, by applying substantially more constitutional restrictions against the states than had applied before the Civil War. The meaning of the Equal Protection Clause has been the subject of much debate, and inspired the well-known phrase "Equal Justice Under Law". This clause was the basis for Brown v Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court decision that helped to dismantle racial segregation. The clause has also been the basis for Obergefell v Hodges which legalized same-sex marriages, along with many other decisions rejecting discrimination against, and bigotry towards, people belonging to various groups. While the Equal Protection Clause itself applies only to state and local governments, the Supreme Court held in Bolling v Sharpe (1954) that the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment nonetheless imposes various equal protection requirements on the federal government via reverse incorporation. Text. The Equal Protection Clause is located at the end of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State 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.

Substantive due process. By the middle of the 19th century, "due process of law" was interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court to mean that "it was not left to the legislative power to enact any process which might be devised. The due process article is a restraint on the legislative as well as on the executive and judicial powers of the government, and cannot be so construed as to leave Congress free to make any process 'due process of law' by its mere will." The term "substantive due process" (SDP) is commonly used in two ways: first to identify a particular line of case law, and second to signify a particular attitude toward judicial review under the Due Process Clause. The term "substantive due process" began to take form in 1930s legal casebooks as a categorical distinction of selected due process cases, and by 1950 had been mentioned twice in Supreme Court opinions. SDP involves liberty-based due process challenges which seek certain outcomes instead of merely contesting procedures and their effects; in such cases, the Supreme Court recognizes a constitutionally-based "liberty" which then renders laws seeking to limit said "liberty" either unenforceable or limited in scope. Critics of SDP decisions typically assert that those liberties ought to be left to the more politically accountable branches of government. Courts have viewed the due process clause, and sometimes other clauses of the Constitution, as embracing those fundamental rights that are "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty". Just what those rights are is not always clear, nor is the Supreme Court's authority to enforce such unenumerated rights clear. Some of those rights have long histories or "are deeply rooted" in American society. The courts have largely abandoned the Lochner era approach (1897 thru 1937) when substantive due process was used to strike down minimum wage and labor laws in order to protect freedom of contract. Since then, the Supreme Court has decided that numerous other freedoms that do not appear in the plain text of the Constitution are nevertheless protected by the Constitution. If these rights were not protected by the federal courts' doctrine of substantive due process, they could nevertheless be protected in other ways; for example, it is possible that some of these rights could be protected by other provisions of the state or federal constitutions, and alternatively they could be protected by legislatures. The Court focuses on three types of rights under substantive due process in the Fourteenth Amendment, which originated in United States v Carolene Products Company (1938). Those three types of rights are: the first eight amendments in the Bill of Rights (for example, the Eighth Amendment); restrictions on the political process (for example, the rights of voting, association, and free speech); and, the rights of "discrete and insular minorities".

n United States constitutional law, a Due Process Clause is found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which prohibits arbitrary deprivation of "life, liberty, or property" by the government except as authorized by law. The U.S. Supreme Court interprets these clauses broadly, concluding that they provide three protections: procedural due process (in civil and criminal proceedings); substantive due process, a prohibition against vague laws; and as the vehicle for the incorporation of the Bill of Rights. Text. The clause in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. The clause in Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: ...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. Background. Clause 39 of Magna Carta provided: No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land. The phrase "due process of law" first appeared in a statutory rendition of the Magna Carta in 1354 during the reign of Edward III of England, as follows: No man of what state or condition he be, shall be put out of his lands or tenements nor taken (taken to mean arrested or deprived of liberty by the state), nor disinherited, nor put to death, without he be brought to answer by due process of law. Drafting. New York was the only state that asked Congress to add "due process" language to the U.S. Constitution. New York ratified the U.S. Constitution and proposed the following amendment in 1788: o Person ought to be taken imprisoned or disseized of his freehold, or be exiled or deprived of his Privileges, Franchises, Life, Liberty or Property but by due process of Law. In response to this proposal from New York, James Madison drafted a due process clause for Congress. Madison cut out some language and inserted the word without, which had not been proposed by New York. Congress then adopted the exact wording that Madison proposed after Madison explained that the due process clause would not be sufficient to protect various other rights: Although I know whenever the great rights, the trial by jury, freedom of the press, or liberty of conscience, come in question in that body , the invasion of them is resisted by able advocates, yet their Magna Carta does not contain any one provision for the security of those rights, respecting which the people of America are most alarmed.

Appropriation of name or likeness. Although privacy is often a common-law tort, most states have enacted statutes that prohibit the use of a person's name or image if used without consent for the commercial benefit of another person. Appropriation of name or likeness occurs when a person uses the name or likeness of another person for personal gain or commercial advantage. Action for misappropriation of right of publicity protects a person against loss caused by appropriation of personal likeness for commercial exploitation. A person's exclusive rights to control their name and likeness to prevent others from exploiting without permission is protected in similar manner to a trademark action with the person's likeness, rather than the trademark, being the subject of the protection. Appropriation is the oldest recognized form of invasion of privacy involving the use of an individual's name, likeness, or identity without consent for purposes such as ads, fictional works, or products. "The same action – appropriation – can violate either an individual's right of privacy or right of publicity. Conceptually, however, the two rights differ". Privacy Law Legislation. The Fair Credit Reporting Act. The Fair Credit Reporting Act became effective on April 25, 1971 and implemented limitations on the information that could be collected, stored, and utilized by agencies such as credit bureaus, tenant screenings, and health agencies. The law also defined the rights granted to individuals in regards to their financial information including the right to obtain a credit score; the right to know what information is in your financial file; the right to know when your information is being accessed and used; and the right to dispute any inaccurate or incorrect information.

The privacy laws of the United States deal with several different legal concepts. One is the invasion of privacy, a tort based in common law allowing an aggrieved party to bring a lawsuit against an individual who unlawfully intrudes into their private affairs, discloses their private information, publicizes them in a false light, or appropriates their name for personal gain. The essence of the law derives from a right to privacy, defined broadly as "the right to be let alone." It usually excludes personal matters or activities which may reasonably be of public interest, like those of celebrities or participants in newsworthy events. Invasion of the right to privacy can be the basis for a lawsuit for damages against the person or entity violating the right. These include the Fourth Amendment right to be free of unwarranted search or seizure, the First Amendment right to free assembly, and the Fourteenth Amendment due process right, recognized by the Supreme Court as protecting a general right to privacy within family, marriage, motherhood, procreation, and child rearing. Attempts to improve consumer privacy protections in the US in the wake of the 2017 Equifax data breach, which affected 145.5 million US consumers, failed to pass in Congress. Right to privacy. Early years. The early years in the development of privacy rights began with English common law, protecting "only the physical interference of life and property". The Castle doctrine analogizes a person's home to their castle – a site that is private and should not be accessible without permission of the owner. The development of tort remedies by the common law is "one of the most significant chapters in the history of privacy law". Those rights expanded to include a "recognition of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings and his intellect." Eventually, the scope of those rights broadened even further to include a basic "right to be let alone," and the former definition of "property" would then comprise "every form of possession – intangible, as well as tangible." By the late 19th century, interest in privacy grew as a result of the growth of print media, especially newspapers. Between 1850 and 1890, U.S. newspaper circulation grew by 1,000 percent – from 100 papers with 800,000 readers to 900 papers with more than 8 million readers. In addition, newspaper journalism became more sensationalized, and was termed yellow journalism. The growth of industrialism led to rapid advances in technology, including the handheld camera, as opposed to earlier studio cameras, which were much heavier and larger. In 1884, Eastman Kodak company introduced their Kodak Brownie, and it became a mass market camera by 1901, cheap enough for the general public. This allowed people and journalists to take candid snapshots in public places for the first time. Privacy was dealt with at the state level. For example, Pavesich v New England Life Insurance Company (in 1905) was one of the first specific endorsements of the right to privacy as derived from natural law in US law. Judith Wagner DeCew stated, "Pavesich was the first case to recognize privacy as a right in tort law by invoking natural law, common law, and constitutional values." Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis, partners in a new law firm, feared that this new small camera technology would be used by the "sensationalistic press." Seeing this becoming a likely challenge to individual privacy rights, they wrote the "pathbreaking" Harvard Law Review article in 1890, "The Right to Privacy". According to legal scholar Roscoe Pound, the article did "nothing less than add a chapter to our law", and in 1966 legal textbook author, Harry Kalven, hailed it as the "most influential law review article of all". In the Supreme Court case of Kyllo v United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001), the article was cited by a majority of justices, both those concurring and those dissenting.

Assistance of Counsel. U.S. Constitution amendment 6 provides: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense. The Assistance of Counsel Clause includes, as relevant here, at least six distinct rights: the right to counsel of choice, the right to appointed counsel, the right not to be constructively denied counsel, the right to conflict-free counsel, the effective assistance of counsel, and the right to represent oneself pro se. A defendant does not have a Sixth Amendment right to counsel in any civil proceeding, including a deportation hearing (even though deportability is often a collateral consequence of criminal conviction). Choice of counsel. A defendant must be given an opportunity to retain counsel, even if not entitled to appointed counsel. Subject to considerations such as conflicts of interest, scheduling, counsel's authorization to practice law in the jurisdiction, and counsel's willingness to represent the defendant (whether pro bono or for a fee), criminal defendants have a right to be represented by counsel of their choice. The remedy for erroneous deprivation of first choice counsel is automatic reversal. In Caplin & Drysdale v United States (1989), the Court held that there is no Sixth Amendment exception to criminal forfeiture; for example, after conviction, the government can seek forfeiture of already paid legal fees under a forfeiture statute, notwithstanding the effect on the defendant's ability to retain counsel of choice. Appointment of counsel. A defendant unable to retain counsel has the right to appointed counsel at the government's expense. While the Supreme Court recognized this right gradually, it currently applies in all federal and state criminal proceedings where the defendant faces authorized imprisonment greater than one year (a "felony") or where the defendant is actually imprisoned. The right to appointed counsel does not extend when the defendant is not sentenced to actual imprisonment and could not have been sentenced for more than one year, even if that conviction is later used to enhance sentencing for another crime, or even if the revocation of probation may result in actual imprisonment. Nor does the defendant have the right to appointed counsel to raise frivolous arguments on direct appeal, or to raise any arguments on habeas or other collateral appeal, even if facing execution.

Trial procedure. Compulsory process. U.S. Constitution amendment 6 provides: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to have a compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor . . . . The Compulsory Process Clause guarantees the defendant the right to obtain favorable witnesses at trial. For example, the Clause prevents a jurisdiction from precluding defendants from calling their co defendants as witnesses. Similarly, the Clause prevents the government from deporting a witness whose testimony would have been both material and favorable to the defense. The right does not preempt reasonable procedural rules. Thus, the right does not prevent the preclusion of defense witnesses as a discovery sanction. Confrontation. U.S. Constitution amendment 6 provides: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to be confronted with the witnesses against him . . . . In Crawford v Washington (2004), the Supreme Court held that the Confrontation Clause bars the "admission of testimonial statements of a witness who did not appear at trial" unless pursuant to one of the "exceptions established at the time of the founding." "When the declarant appears for cross-examination at trial, the Confrontation Clause places no constraints at all on the use of his prior testimonial statements . . . so long as the declarant is present at trial to defend or explain it." In Davis v Washington (2006), the Court held that the Clause places no restrictions on nontestimonial statements. Crawford did not completely define the term "testimonial." But, Crawford held that, "whatever else the term covers, it applies at a minimum to prior testimony at a preliminary hearing, before a grand jury, or at a former trial; and to police interrogations." Laboratory reports of forensic tests are also testimonial, conferring on the defendant a right to cross-examine the analyst who certifies them. Statements made during police interrogation are nontestimonial if circumstances objectively indicate "that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency" but are testimonial if circumstances objective indicate "that there is no such ongoing emergency, and that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to establish or prove past events potentially relevant to later criminal prosecution." "he relevant inquiry is not the subjective or actual purpose of the individuals involved in a particular encounter, but rather the purpose that reasonable participants would have had, as ascertained from the individuals' statements and actions and the circumstances in which the encounter occurred." One exception established at the founding is if the witness is "unavailable to testify, and the defendant had had a prior opportunity for cross-examination." Another such exception is "forfeiture by wrongdoing," for example where the defendant intends to obtain and obtains the absence of the witness by wrongdoing. Still another exception is "the use of testimonial statements for purposes other than establishing the truth of the matter asserted." Another possible exception is for dying declarations, for example statements made by a speaker on the brink of death while aware that he or she is dying.

The United States Constitution contains several provisions regarding the law of criminal procedure. Petit jury and venue provisions—both traceable to enumerated complaints in the Declaration of Independence—are included in Article Three of the United States Constitution. More criminal procedure provisions are contained in the United States Bill of Rights, specifically the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments. With the exception of the Grand Jury Clause of the Fifth Amendment, the Vicinage Clause of the Sixth Amendment, and (maybe) the Excessive Bail Clause of the Eighth Amendment, all of the criminal procedure provisions of the Bill of Rights have been incorporated to apply to the state governments. Several of these rights regulate pre-trial procedure: access to a non-excessive bail, the right to indictment by a grand jury, the right to an information (charging document), the right to a speedy trial, and the right to be tried in a specific venue. Several of these rights are trial rights: the right to compulsory process for obtaining witnesses at trial, the right to confront witnesses at trial, the right to a public trial, the right to a trial by an impartial petit jury selected from a specific geography, and the right not to be compelled to testify against oneself. Others, such as the assistance of counsel and due process rights, have application throughout the proceeding. If a defendant is convicted, the usual remedy for a violation of one of these provisions is reversal of the conviction or modification of the defendant's sentence. With the exception of structural errors (such as the total denial of counsel), constitutional errors are subject to harmless error analysis, although they must be harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. With the exception of a Double Jeopardy or Speedy Trial violation, the government will usually be permitted to retry the defendant. Pursuant to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), these provisions are the source of nearly all reviewable errors in federal habeas review of state convictions.

A citizen's right to a trial by jury is a central feature of the United States Constitution. It is considered a fundamental principle of the American legal system. Laws and regulations governing jury selection and conviction/acquittal requirements vary from state to state (and are not available in courts of American Samoa), but the fundamental right itself is mentioned five times in the Constitution: Once in the original text (Article 3, Section 2) and four times in the Bill of Rights (in the Fifth, the Sixth, and the Seventh Amendments). The American system utilizes three types of juries: Investigative grand juries, charged with determining whether enough evidence exists to warrant a criminal indictment; petit juries (also known as a trial jury), which listen to evidence presented during the course of a criminal trial and are charged with determining the guilt or innocence of the accused party; and civil juries, which are charged with evaluating civil lawsuits. The most outstanding feature of the U.S. system is that convictions (but not necessarily acquittals) in serious criminal cases must be unanimous, which the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed to be a constitutional guarantee in Ramos v Louisiana.

Freedom of association encompasses both an individual's right to join or leave groups voluntarily, the right of the group to take collective action to pursue the interests of its members, and the right of an association to accept or decline membership based on certain criteria. It can be described as the right of a person coming together with other individuals to collectively express, promote, pursue and/or defend common interests. Freedom of association is both an individual right and a collective right, guaranteed by all modern and democratic legal systems, including the United States Bill of Rights, article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and international law, including articles 20 and 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 22 of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work by the International Labour Organization also ensures these rights. Freedom of association is manifested through the right to join a trade union, to engage in free speech or to participate in debating societies, political parties, or any other club or association, including religious denominations and organizations, fraternities, and sport clubs and not to be compelled to belong to an association. It is closely linked with freedom of assembly, particularly under the U.S. Bill of Rights. Freedom of assembly is typically associated with political contexts. However, (for example the U.S. Constitution, human rights instruments, etcetera.) the right to freedom of association may include the right to freedom of assembly. In the United States, since the Civil Rights Act of 1968, freedom of association was largely curtailed regarding housing, education, and business when it comes to race or ethnicity.

Laissez-faire; from French: laissez faire, 'let do') is an economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (such as subsidies) deriving from special interest groups. As a system of thought, laissez-faire rests on the following axioms: "the individual is the basic unit in society, for example the standard of measurement in social calculus; the individual has a natural right to freedom; and the physical order of nature is a harmonious and self-regulating system." Another basic principle of laissez-faire holds that markets should naturally be competitive, a rule that the early advocates of laissez-faire always emphasized. With the aims of maximizing freedom by allowing markets to self-regulate, early advocates of laissez-faire proposed a impôt unique, a tax on land rent (similar to Georgism) to replace all taxes that they saw as damaging welfare by penalizing production. Proponents of laissez-faire argue for a near complete separation of government from the economic sector. The phrase laissez-faire is part of a larger French phrase and literally translates to "let do", but in this context the phrase usually means to "let it be" and in expression "laid back." Although never practiced with full consistency, laissez-faire capitalism emerged in the mid-18th century and was further popularized by Adam Smith's book The Wealth of Nations. While associated with capitalism in common usage, there are also non-capitalist forms of laissez-faire, including some forms of market socialism.

Freedom of peaceful assembly, sometimes used interchangeably with the freedom of association, is the individual right or ability of people to come together and collectively express, promote, pursue, and defend their collective or shared ideas. The right to freedom of association is recognized as a human right, a political right and a civil liberty. The terms freedom of assembly and freedom of association may be used to distinguish between the freedom to assemble in public places and the freedom to join an association. Freedom of assembly is often used in the context of the right to protest, while freedom of association is used in the context of labor rights and in the Constitution of the United States is interpreted to mean both the freedom to assemble and the freedom to join an association. In the United States the right to petition is enumerated in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which specifically prohibits Congress from abridging "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances". Although often overlooked in favor of other more famous freedoms, and sometimes taken for granted, many other civil liberties are enforceable against the government only by exercising this basic right. According to the Congressional Research Service, since the Constitution was written, the right of petition has expanded. It is no longer confined to demands for “a redress of grievances,” in any accurate meaning of these words, but comprehends demands for an exercise by the government of its powers in furtherance of the interest and prosperity of the petitioners and of their views on politically contentious matters. The right extends to the "approach of citizens or groups of them to administrative agencies (which are both creatures of the legislature, and arms of the executive) and to courts, the third branch of Government. Certainly the right to petition extends to all departments of the Government. The right of access to the courts is indeed but one aspect of the right of petition."

Freedom of the press in the United States is legally protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Nevertheless, freedom of the press in the United States is subject to certain restrictions, such as defamation law, a lack of protection for whistleblowers, barriers to information access and constraints caused by public and government hostility to journalists. History. Thirteen Colonies. In the Thirteen Colonies before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the media was subject to a series of regulations. British authorities attempted to prohibit the publication and circulation of information of which they did not approve. One of the earliest cases concerning freedom of the press occurred in 1734. In a libel case against The New York Weekly Journal publisher John Peter Zenger by British governor William Cosby, Zenger was acquitted and the publication continued until 1751. At that time, there were only two newspapers in New York City and the second was not critical of Cosby's government. U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment permits information, ideas and opinions without interference, constraint or prosecution by the government. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights. Freedom of the press in the United States is legally protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Nevertheless, freedom of the press in the United States is subject to certain restrictions, such as defamation law, a lack of protection for whistleblowers, barriers to information access and constraints caused by public and government hostility to journalists. History. Thirteen Colonies. In the Thirteen Colonies before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the media was subject to a series of regulations. British authorities attempted to prohibit the publication and circulation of information of which they did not approve. One of the earliest cases concerning freedom of the press occurred in 1734. In a libel case against The New York Weekly Journal publisher John Peter Zenger by British governor William Cosby, Zenger was acquitted and the publication continued until 1751. At that time, there were only two newspapers in New York City and the second was not critical of Cosby's government. U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment permits information, ideas and opinions without interference, constraint or prosecution by the government. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.

Types of speech restrictions. The Supreme Court has recognized several different types of laws that restrict speech, and subjects each type of law to a different level of scrutiny. Content-based restrictions. Content-based restrictions "are presumptively unconstitutional regardless of the government's benign motive, content-neutral justification, or lack of animus toward the ideas contained in the regulated speech." Restrictions that require examining the content of speech to be applied must pass strict scrutiny. Content-based restrictions can either discriminate based on viewpoint or subject matter. An example of a law regulating the subject matter of speech would be a city ordinance that forbids all picketing in front of a school except for labor picketing. This law would amount to subject matter discrimination because it favors one subject over another in deciding who it will allow to speak. An example of a law that regulates a speaker's viewpoint would be a policy of a government official who permitted ‘‘pro-life'' proponents to speak on government property but banned ‘‘pro-choice'' proponents because of their views would be engaged in ‘‘viewpoint discrimination.'' Restrictions that apply to certain viewpoints but not others face the highest level of scrutiny, and are usually overturned, unless they fall into one of the court's special exceptions. An example of this is found in the United States Supreme Court's decision in Legal Services Corp. v Velazquez in 2001. In this case, the Court held that government subsidies cannot be used to discriminate against a specific instance of viewpoint advocacy. The Court pointed out in Snyder v Phelps (2011) that one way to ascertain whether a restriction is content-based versus content-neutral is to consider if the speaker had delivered a different message under exactly the same circumstances: "A group of parishioners standing at the very spot where Westboro stood, holding signs that said 'God Bless America' and 'God Loves You,' would not have been subjected to liability. It was what Westboro said that exposed it to tort damages."

In the United States, freedom of speech and expression is restricted by time, place and manner— though otherwise strongly protected from government restrictions by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, many state constitutions, and state and federal laws. Freedom of speech, also called free speech, means the free and public expression of opinions without censorship, interference and restraint by the government. The term "freedom of speech" embedded in the First Amendment encompasses the decision about what to say as well as what not to say. The Supreme Court of the United States has recognized several categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment and has recognized that governments may enact reasonable time, place, or manner restrictions on speech. The First Amendment's constitutional right of free speech, which is applicable to state and local governments under the incorporation doctrine, prevents only government restrictions on speech, not restrictions imposed by private individuals or businesses unless they are acting on behalf of the government. However, laws may restrict the ability of private businesses and individuals from restricting the speech of others, such as employment laws that restrict employers' ability to prevent employees from disclosing their salary to coworkers or attempting to organize a labor union. The First Amendment's freedom of speech right not only proscribes most government restrictions on the content of speech and ability to speak, but also protects the right to receive information, prohibits most government restrictions or burdens that discriminate between speakers, restricts the tort liability of individuals for certain speech, and prevents the government from requiring individuals and corporations to speak or finance certain types of speech with which they do not agree. Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment include obscenity (as determined by the Miller test), fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, and regulation of commercial speech such as advertising. Within these limited areas, other limitations on free speech balance rights to free speech and other rights, such as rights for authors over their works (copyright), protection from imminent or potential violence against particular persons, restrictions on the use of untruths to harm others (slander and libel), and communications while a person is in prison. When a speech restriction is challenged in court, it is presumed invalid, and the government bears the burden of convincing the court that the restriction is constitutional.

Supreme Court rulings. Jehovah's Witnesses. Since the 1940s, the Jehovah's Witnesses have often invoked the First Amendment's freedom of religion clauses to protect their ability to engage in the proselytizing (or preaching) that is central to their faith. This series of litigation has helped to define civil liberties case law in the United States and Canada. In the United States of America and several other countries, the legal struggles of the Jehovah's Witnesses have yielded some of the most important judicial decisions regarding freedom of religion, press and speech. In the United States, many Supreme Court cases involving Jehovah's Witnesses are now landmark decisions of First Amendment law. Of the 72 cases involving the Jehovah's Witnesses that have been brought before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Court has ruled in favor of them 47 times. Even the cases that the Jehovah's Witnesses lost helped the U.S. to more clearly define the limits of First Amendment rights. Former Supreme Court Justice Harlan Stone jokingly suggested "The Jehovah's Witnesses ought to have an endowment in view of the aid which they give in solving the legal problems of civil liberties." "Like it or not," observed American author and editor Irving Dilliard, "Jehovah's Witnesses have done more to help preserve our freedoms than any other religious group." Professor C S Braden wrote: "They have performed a signal service to democracy by their fight to preserve their civil rights, for in their struggle they have done much to secure those rights for every minority group in America." "The cases that the Witnesses were involved in formed the bedrock of 1st Amendment protections for all citizens," said Paul Polidoro, a lawyer who argued the Watchtower Society's case before the Supreme Court in February 2002. "These cases were a good vehicle for the courts to address the protections that were to be accorded free speech, the free press and free exercise of religion. In addition, the cases marked the emergence of individual rights as an issue within the U.S. court system. Before the Jehovah's Witnesses brought several dozen cases before the U.S. Supreme Court during the 1930s and 1940s, the Court had handled few cases contesting laws that restricted freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Until then, the First Amendment had only been applied to Congress and the federal government. However, the cases brought before the Court by the Jehovah's Witnesses allowed the Court to consider a range of issues: mandatory flag salute, sedition, free speech, literature distribution and military draft law. These cases proved to be pivotal moments in the formation of constitutional law. Jehovah's Witnesses' court victories have strengthened rights including the protection of religious conduct from federal and state interference, the right to abstain from patriotic rituals and military service and the right to engage in public discourse. During the World War II era, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Jehovah's Witnesses in several landmark cases that helped pave the way for the modern civil rights movement. In all, Jehovah's Witnesses brought 23 separate First Amendment actions before the U.S. Supreme Court between 1938 and 1946.

In the United States, freedom of religion is a constitutionally protected right provided in the religion clauses of the First Amendment. Freedom of religion is closely associated with separation of church and state, a concept advocated by Colonial founders such as Dr. John Clarke, Roger Williams, William Penn, and later Founding Fathers such as James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. The way freedom of religion is interpreted has changed over time in the United States and continues to be controversial. The issue was a major topic of George Washington's Farewell Address. Several American states had their own official state churches both before and after the First Amendment was passed. Illegal religion was a major cause of the 1890 thru 1891 Ghost Dance War. Starting in 1918, nearly all of the pacifist Hutterites emigrated to Canada when Joseph and Michael Hofer died following torture for conscientious objection to the draft. Some have since returned, but most Hutterites remain in Canada. The long-term trend has been towards increasing secularization of the government. The remaining state churches were disestablished in 1820 and teacher-led public school prayer was abolished in 1962, but the military chaplaincy remains to the present day. Although most Supreme Court rulings have been accommodationist towards religion, in recent years there have been attempts to replace the freedom of religion with the more limited freedom of worship. Although the freedom of religion includes some form of recognition to the individual conscience of each citizen with the possibility of conscientious objection to law or policy, the freedom of worship does not. Controversies surrounding the freedom of religion in the US have included building places of worship, compulsory speech, prohibited counseling, compulsory consumerism, workplace, marriage and the family, the choosing of religious leaders, circumcision of male infants, dress, education, oaths, praying for sick people, medical care, worshiping during quarantines, use of government lands sacred to Native Americans, the protection of graves, the bodily use of sacred substances, mass incarceration of clergy, both animal slaughter for meat and the use of living animals, and accommodations for employees, prisoners, and military personnel.

The Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits any law that increases or decreases the salary of members of Congress from taking effect until after the next election of the House of Representatives has occurred. It is the most recently adopted amendment but was one of the first proposed. The 1st Congress submitted the amendment to the states for ratification on September 25, 1789, along with 11 other proposed amendments (Articles 1 thru 12). The last ten Articles were ratified in 1791 to become the Bill of Rights, but the first two, the Twenty-seventh Amendment and the proposed Congressional Apportionment Amendment, were not ratified by enough states to come into force with them. The proposed congressional pay amendment was largely forgotten until 1982, when Gregory Watson, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote a paper for a government class in which he claimed that the amendment could still be ratified. He later launched a nationwide campaign to complete its ratification. The amendment eventually became part of the United States Constitution, effective May 5, 1992, completing a record-setting ratification period of 202 years, 7 months, and 10 days, beating the previous record set by the Twenty-second Amendment of 3 years and 343 days. The idea behind this amendment is to reduce corruption in the legislative branch by requiring an election before a congressperson's salary increase takes effect. The public can thus remove members of Congress from office before their salaries increase. Text. No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

The Twenty-sixth Amendment (Amendment XXVI) to the United States Constitution prohibits the states and the federal government from using age as a reason for denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States who are at least eighteen years old. It was proposed by Congress on March 23, 1971, and three-fourths of the states ratified it by July 1, 1971. Various public officials had supported lowering the voting age during the mid-20th century but were unable to gain the legislative momentum necessary for passing a constitutional amendment. The drive to lower the voting age from 21 to 18 grew across the country during the 1960s, driven in part by the military draft held during the Vietnam War. The draft conscripted young men between the ages of 18 and 21 into the armed forces, primarily the U.S. Army, to serve in or support military combat operations in Vietnam. A common slogan of proponents of lowering the voting age was "old enough to fight, old enough to vote". Determined to get around inaction on the issue, congressional allies included a provision for the 18-year-old vote in a 1970 bill that extended the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court subsequently held in the case of Oregon v Mitchell that Congress could not lower the voting age for state and local elections. Recognizing the confusion and costs that would be involved in maintaining separate voting rolls and elections for federal and state contests, Congress quickly proposed, and the states ratified the Twenty-sixth Amendment. Text. Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age. Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution deals with presidential succession and disability. It clarifies that the vice president becomes president if the president dies, resigns, or is removed from office, and establishes how a vacancy in the office of the vice president can be filled. It also provides for the temporary transfer of the president's powers and duties to the vice president, either on the initiative of the president alone or on the initiative of the vice president together with a majority of the president's cabinet. In either case, the vice president becomes acting president until the presidential powers and duties are returned to the president. The amendment was submitted to the states on July 6, 1965, by the 89th Congress and was adopted on February 10, 1967, the day that the requisite number of states (38) had ratified it. Text and effect. Section 1: Presidential succession. Section 1. In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President. Section 1 clarifies that in the enumerated situations the vice president becomes president, instead of merely assuming the powers and duties of the presidency as acting president. It operates automatically, without needing to be explicitly invoked. Section 2: Vice presidential vacancy. Section 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress. Section 2 provides a mechanism for filling a vacancy in the vice presidency. Before the Twenty-fifth Amendment a vice presidential vacancy continued until a new vice president took office at the start of the next presidential term; the vice presidency had become vacant several times due to death, resignation, or succession to the presidency, and these vacancies had often lasted several years. Section 3: President's declaration of inability. Section 3. Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President. Section 3 allows for the voluntary transfer of presidential authority to the vice president (for example, in anticipation of a medical procedure) by the president declaring in writing to be unable to discharge the powers and duties of the presidency. The vice president then assumes those powers and duties as acting president; the vice president does not become president and the president remains in office, although without authority. The president regains those powers and duties upon declaring, in writing, to be again able to discharge them.

The Twenty-fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax. The amendment was proposed by Congress to the states on August 27, 1962, and was ratified by the states on January 23, 1964. Southern states of the former Confederate States of America adopted poll taxes in laws of the late 19th century and new constitutions from 1890 to 1908, after the Democratic Party had generally regained control of state legislatures decades after the end of Reconstruction, as a measure to prevent African Americans and often poor whites (and following passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, women) from voting. Use of the poll taxes by states was held to be constitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in the 1937 decision Breedlove v Suttles. When the 24th Amendment was ratified in 1964, five states still retained a poll tax: Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia. The amendment prohibited requiring a poll tax for voters in federal elections. But it was not until 1966 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in Harper v Virginia Board of Elections that poll taxes for any level of elections were unconstitutional. It said these violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Subsequent litigation related to potential discriminatory effects of voter registration requirements has generally been based on application of this clause. Text. Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax. Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution extends the right to participate in presidential elections to the District of Columbia. The amendment grants the district electors in the Electoral College as though it were a state, though the district can never have more electors than the least-populous state. The manner in which the electors are appointed is to be determined by Congress. The Twenty-third Amendment was proposed by the 86th Congress on June 16, 1960; it was ratified by the requisite number of states on March 29, 1961. The Constitution provides that each state receives presidential electors equal to the combined number of seats it has in the Senate and the House of Representatives. As the District of Columbia is not a state, it was not entitled to any electors prior to the adoption of the Twenty-third Amendment. As early as 1888, some journalists and members of Congress favored a constitutional amendment to grant the district electoral votes, but such an amendment did not win widespread support until the rise of the civil rights movement in the 1950s. The amendment was not seen as a partisan measure, and ratification of the amendment was endorsed by President Dwight D Eisenhower and both major party candidates in the 1960 presidential election. The ratification of the amendment made the district the only entity other than the states to have any representation in the Electoral College. The first presidential election in which the District of Columbia participated was the election of 1964. Starting with that election the District of Columbia has consistently had three members of the Electoral College, this being the constitutionally implied minimum number it is entitled to; notwithstanding the constitutionally entrenched limitation on its number of electors, the District's population has never reached the threshold where it otherwise would have been entitled to more than three. Since the passage of the Twenty-third Amendment, all but one of the district's electoral votes have been cast for the Democratic Party's presidential candidates. The Twenty-third Amendment did not grant the district voting rights in Congress, nor did it give the district the right to participate in the process that allows the Constitution to be amended. An unsuccessful proposed constitutional amendment to do this was proposed by Congress in 1978, but it was not ratified by enough states for it to be adopted. Many citizens of the district favor statehood or further constitutional amendments to address these issues.

The Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution limits the number of times a person is eligible for election to the office of President of the United States to two, and sets additional eligibility conditions for presidents who succeed to the unexpired terms of their predecessors. Until the amendment's ratification, the president had not been subject to term limits, but George Washington had established a two-term tradition that many other presidents followed. In the 1940 presidential election and the 1944 presidential election, Franklin D Roosevelt became the first president to win third and fourth terms, giving rise to concerns about a president serving an unlimited number of terms. After Roosevelt's death, Republicans and conservative Democrats were swept into Congress in the 1946 elections and were in position to propose an amendment restricting the number of presidential terms. Congress approved the Twenty-second Amendment on March 21, 1947, and submitted it to the state legislatures for ratification. That process was completed on February 27, 1951, when the requisite 36 of the 48 states had ratified the amendment (neither Alaska nor Hawaii had yet been admitted as states), and its provisions came into force on that date. The amendment prohibits anyone who has been elected president twice from being elected again. Under the amendment, someone who fills an unexpired presidential term lasting more than two years is also prohibited from being elected president more than once. Scholars debate whether the amendment prohibits affected individuals from succeeding to the presidency under any circumstances or whether it applies only to presidential elections. Text. Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term. Section 2. This Article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states within seven years from the date of its submission to the states by the Congress.

The Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution repealed the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which had mandated nationwide prohibition on alcohol. The Twenty-first Amendment was proposed by the 72nd Congress on February 20, 1933, and was ratified by the requisite number of states on December 5, 1933. It is unique among the 27 amendments of the U.S. Constitution for being the only one to repeal a prior amendment, as well as being the only amendment to have been ratified by state ratifying conventions. The Eighteenth Amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919, the result of years of advocacy by the temperance movement. The subsequent enactment of the Volstead Act established federal enforcement of the nationwide prohibition on alcohol. As many Americans continued to drink despite the amendment, Prohibition gave rise to a profitable black market for alcohol, fueling the rise of organized crime. Throughout the 1920s, Americans increasingly came to see Prohibition as unenforceable, and a movement to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment grew until the Twenty-first Amendment was ratified in 1933. Section 1 of the Twenty-first Amendment expressly repeals the Eighteenth Amendment. Section 2 bans the importation of alcohol into states and territories that have laws prohibiting the importation or consumption of alcohol. Several states continued to be "dry states'' in the years after the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, but in 1966 the last dry state (Mississippi) legalized the consumption of alcohol. Nonetheless, several states continue to closely regulate the distribution of alcohol. Many states delegate their power to ban the importation of alcohol to counties and municipalities, and there are numerous dry communities throughout the United States. Section 2 has occasionally arisen as an issue in Supreme Court cases that touch on the Commerce Clause. Text. Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed. Section 2. The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited. Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

The Twentieth Amendment (Amendment XX) to the United States Constitution moved the beginning and ending of the terms of the president and vice president from March 4 to January 20, and of members of Congress from March 4 to January 3. It also has provisions that determine what is to be done when there is no president-elect. The Twentieth Amendment was adopted on January 23, 1933. The amendment reduced the presidential transition and the "lame duck" period, by which members of Congress and the president serve the remainder of their terms after an election. The amendment established congressional terms to begin before presidential terms and that the incoming Congress, rather than the outgoing one, would hold a contingent election if the Electoral College deadlocked regarding either the presidential or vice presidential elections. Text. Section 1. The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin. Section 2. The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January unless they shall by law appoint a different day. Section 3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President-elect shall have died, the Vice President-elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President-elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President-elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President-elect nor a Vice President-elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified. Section 4. The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them. Section 5. Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article. Section 6. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission.

Legal challenges. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the amendment's validity in Leser v Garnett. Maryland citizens Mary D. Randolph, "'a colored female citizen' of 331 West Biddle Street", and Cecilia Street Waters, "a white woman, of 824 North Eutaw Street", applied for and were granted registration as qualified Baltimore voters on October 12, 1920. To have their names removed from the list of qualified voters, Oscar Leser and others brought suit against the two women on the sole grounds that they were women, arguing that they were not eligible to vote because the Constitution of Maryland limited suffrage to men and the Maryland legislature had refused to vote to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. Two months before, on August 26, 1920, the federal government had proclaimed the amendment incorporated into the Constitution. Leser said the amendment "destroyed State autonomy" because it increased Maryland's electorate without the state's consent. The Supreme Court answered that the Nineteenth Amendment had similar wording to the Fifteenth Amendment, which had expanded state electorates without regard to race for more than fifty years by that time despite rejection by six states (including Maryland). Leser further argued that the state constitutions in some ratifying states did not allow their legislatures to ratify. The Court replied that state ratification was a federal function granted under Article V of the U.S. Constitution and not subject to a state constitution's limitations. Finally, those bringing suit asserted the Nineteenth Amendment was not adopted because Tennessee and West Virginia violated their own rules of procedure. The Court ruled that the point was moot because Connecticut and Vermont had subsequently ratified the amendment, providing a sufficient number of state ratifications to adopt the Nineteenth Amendment even without Tennessee and West Virginia. The Court also ruled that Tennessee's and West Virginia's certifications of their state ratifications was binding and had been duly authenticated by their respective Secretaries of State. As a result of the Court's ruling, Randolph and Waters were permitted to become registered voters in Baltimore. Another challenge to the Nineteenth Amendment's adoption was dismissed by the Supreme Court in Fairchild v Hughes, because the party bringing the suit, Charles S. Fairchild, came from a state that already allowed women to vote and so Fairchild lacked standing.

Woman suffrage and World War I patriotism. When World War I started in 1914, women in eight states had already won the right to vote, but support for a federal amendment was still tepid. The war provided a new urgency to the fight for the vote. When the U.S. entered World War I, Catt made the controversial decision to support the war effort, despite the widespread pacifist sentiment of many of her colleagues and supporters. As women joined the labor force to replace men serving in the military and took visible positions as nurses, relief workers, and ambulance drivers to support the war effort, NAWSA organizers argued that women's sacrifices made them deserving of the vote. By contrast, the NWP used the war to point out the contradictions of fighting for democracy abroad while restricting it at home. In 1917, the NWP began picketing the White House to bring attention to the cause of women's suffrage. In 1914 the constitutional amendment proposed by Sargent, which was nicknamed the "Susan B. Anthony Amendment", was once again considered by the Senate, where it was again rejected. In April 1917 the "Anthony Amendment", which eventually became the Nineteenth Amendment, was reintroduced in the House and Senate. Picketing NWP members, nicknamed the "Silent Sentinels", continued their protests on the sidewalks outside the White House. On July 4, 1917, police arrested 168 of the protesters, who were sent to prison in Lorton, Virginia. Some of these women, including Lucy Burns and Alice Paul, went on hunger strikes; some were force-fed while others were otherwise harshly treated by prison guards. The release of the women a few months later was largely due to increasing public pressure. Final congressional challenges. In 1918, President Wilson faced a difficult midterm election and would have to confront the issue of women's suffrage directly. Fifteen states had extended equal voting rights to women and, by this time, the President fully supported the federal amendment. A proposal brought before the House in January 1918 passed by only one vote. The vote was then carried into the Senate where Wilson made an appeal on the Senate floor, an unprecedented action at the time. In a short speech, the President tied women's right to vote directly to the war, asking, "Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right?" On September 30, 1918, the proposal fell two votes short of passage, prompting the NWP to direct campaigning against senators who had voted against the amendment. Between January 1918 and June 1919, the House and Senate voted on the federal amendment five times. Each vote was extremely close and Southern Democrats continued to oppose giving women the vote. Suffragists pressured President Wilson to call a special session of Congress and he agreed to schedule one for May 19, 1919. On May 21, 1919, the amendment passed the House 304 to 89, with 42 votes more than was necessary. On June 4, 1919, it was brought before the Senate and, after Southern Democrats abandoned a filibuster, 36 Republican Senators were joined by 20 Democrats to pass the amendment with 56 yeas, 25 nays, and 14 not voting.

The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the United States and its states from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex, in effect recognising the right of women to a vote. The amendment was the culmination of a decades-long movement for women's suffrage in the United States, at both the state and national levels, and was part of the worldwide movement towards women's suffrage and part of the wider women's rights movement. The first women's suffrage amendment was introduced in Congress in 1878. However, a suffrage amendment did not pass the House of Representatives until May 21, 1919, which was quickly followed by the Senate, on June 4, 1919. It was then submitted to the states for ratification, achieving the requisite 36 ratifications to secure adoption, and thereby go into effect, on August 18, 1920. The Nineteenth Amendment's adoption was certified on August 26, 1920. Before 1776, women had a vote in several of the colonies in what would become the United States, but by 1807 every state constitution had denied women even limited suffrage. Organizations supporting women's rights became more active in the mid-19th century and, in 1848, the Seneca Falls convention adopted the Declaration of Sentiments, which called for equality between the sexes and included a resolution urging women to secure the vote. Pro-suffrage organizations used a variety of tactics including legal arguments that relied on existing amendments. After those arguments were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, suffrage organizations, with activists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, called for a new constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the same right to vote possessed by men. By the late 19th century, new states and territories, particularly in the West, began to grant women the right to vote. In 1878, a suffrage proposal that would eventually become the Nineteenth Amendment was introduced to Congress, but was rejected in 1887. In the 1890s, suffrage organizations focused on a national amendment while still working at state and local levels. Lucy Burns and Alice Paul emerged as important leaders whose different strategies helped move the Nineteenth Amendment forward. Entry of the United States into World War I helped to shift public perception of women's suffrage. The National American Woman Suffrage Association, led by Carrie Chapman Catt, supported the war effort, making the case that women should be rewarded with enfranchisement for their patriotic wartime service. The National Woman's Party staged marches, demonstrations, and hunger strikes while pointing out the contradictions of fighting abroad for democracy while limiting it at home by denying women the right to vote. The work of both organizations swayed public opinion, prompting President Wilson to announce his support of the suffrage amendment in 1918. It passed in 1919 and was adopted in 1920, withstanding two legal challenges, Leser v Garnett and Fairchild v Hughes. The Nineteenth Amendment enfranchised 26 million American women in time for the 1920 U.S. presidential election, but the powerful women's voting bloc that many politicians feared failed to fully materialize until decades later. Additionally, the Nineteenth Amendment failed to fully enfranchise African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, and Native American women (see § Limitations). Shortly after the amendment's adoption, Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party began work on the Equal Rights Amendment, which they believed was a necessary additional step towards equality.