1st Amendment
505 – Unreasonable Searches
When a government agency searches without a reason it’s called “fishing”. When the Attorney General of New Jersey issued a subpoena demanding the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the donors to a pregnancy center, it wasn’t just fishing, it was searching for a white whale.
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498 – Colorado Conversion Therapy Oral Arguments
Who decides what treatment is best for your child? Most people expect the government to protect children from dangerous treatments, even if their parents want it. But shouldn’t the government need to prove harm beyond a reasonable doubt before criminalizing treatment? Sadly, that is not the question before the court in the case Chiles v. Salazar. Rather, it is a twisted attempt to use the First Amendment to strike down this Colorado law.
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494 – Flag Burning
When it comes to freedom of speech, there are two things that generate a fair amount of controversy. First is yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater and second is burning the United States flag. Recently, Donald Trump issued an Executive Order about flag burning. So let’s take a look at the order and some of the history around flag burning.
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490 – Access to Porn
As a society, we’ve decided that certain things like alcohol, tobacco, and pornography are not safe for minors. When I buy wine at the grocery store, I have to show my ID to verify my age. Take a look at my picture on the website and you’ll see I’m well over the age where I can purchase alcohol, but I’m still asked to verify my age. That’s because my rights end when it infringes on the rights of another. However, the Free Speech Coalition thinks an adult’s “right” to access pornography without age verification trumps the safety of minors. That is the basis of the case Free Speech Coalition, Inc., et el. v. Paxton, Attorney General Of Texas, which the Supreme Court decided this past term.
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488 – Wisconsin Religious Definition
Back in March, the Supreme Court argued the case Catholic Charities Bureau, Inc., et al. v. Wisconsin Labor And Industry Review Commission et al. I reviewed those arguments in my article 472 – Are You Religious Enough? In June, the court released its decision, and thankfully, the court came to what I believe is the correct decision. That’s not to say they came to the conclusion for the right reasons.
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473 – To Allow Opt Outs or Not to Allow Opt Outs, That is the Question
The question of if and when parents should be allowed to opt their children out of certain activities and curriculum in public schools has been raging for quite a while. With our societies rapidly changing standards, the need for parents to oversee and control the upbringing of their children has become even more important. Yet the Montgomery County School Board decided that in one area of instruction, story time, parents of children as young as three would not be allowed to opt their children out of religiously objectionable material. Did the School Board violate the First Amendment, or maybe another one?
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472 – Are You Religious Enough?
The State of Wisconsin exempts religious organizations from their unemployment tax system. Even though everyone agrees that Catholic Charities is controlled by a church, Wisconsin Supreme Court held that Catholic Charities is not “operated primarily for religious purposes”, and therefore does not qualify for the exemption. Catholic Charities appealed to the Supreme Court to ask if that decision violated the First Amendment.
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