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Northwest Ordinance
Congress passes the Northwest Ordinance. Though primarily a law establishing government guidelines for colonization of new territory, it also provides that “religion, morality and knowledge being necessary also to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” -
Sedition Act Expires
Congress lets the Sedition Act of 1798 expire, and President Thomas Jefferson pardons all person convicted under the Act. The act had punished those who uttered or published “false, scandalous, and malicious” writings against the government. -
Repeal of the Gag Rules
The U.S. House of Representatives adopts gag rules preventing discussion of antislavery proposals. The House repeals the rules in 1844. -
Patterson v. Colorado
The U.S. Supreme Court determines it does not have jurisdiction to review the “contempt” conviction of U.S. senator and Denver newspaper publisher Thomas Patterson for articles and a cartoon that criticized the state supreme court. Leaving undecided the question of whether First Amendment guarantees are applicable to the states via the 14th Amendment, the Court holds that the free-speech and press guarantees only guard against prior restraint and do not prevent “subsequent punishment.” -
Schenck v. U.S.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Holmes sets forth his clear-and-present-danger test: “whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has the right to prevent.” Schenck and others had been accused of urging draftees to oppose the draft and “not submit to intimidation.” -
Gitlow v. New York
In Gitlow v. New York, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds under the New York criminal anarchy statute Benjamin Gitlow’s conviction for writing and distributing “The Left Wing Manifesto.” The Court concludes, however, that the free-speech clause of the First Amendment applies to the states through the due-process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. -
Whitney v. California
The case involves Charlotte Anita Whitney, a member of the Socialist Party and former member of the Communist Labor Party. Justice Louis Brandeis writes in his concurring opinion a passage that becomes a fundamental First Amendment principle: “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” -
Bible Public School Cases
The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down the practices of requiring daily Bible readings in public schools in the companion cases Abington School District v. Schempp and Murray v. Curlett. “They are religious exercises, required by the States in violation of the command of the First Amendment that the Government maintain strict neutrality, neither aiding nor opposing religion,” Justice Tom Clark writes for the Court. -
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District
A landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court that defined the constitutional rights of students in U.S. public schools. -
Board of Education v. Pico
A case in which the United States Supreme Court split on the First Amendment issue of a local school boards removing library books from junior high schools and high schools. -
Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser
Decision by the United States Supreme Court involving free speech in public schools. -
Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier
Concerns about public school curricular student newspapers.