The First Amendment
Speech, religion, and protest
Protects religion, speech, the press, assembly, and petition, and limits what the government can do about each.
Ratified 1791 · 3 minute read
Published by Quasi-Legal Institute · Report an error
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
In plain language
Two protections about religion
The government cannot set up an official religion (the Establishment Clause), and it cannot stop you from practicing your own (the Free Exercise Clause). Courts balance the two when they pull against each other.
It limits the government, not everyone
The First Amendment begins with the words “Congress shall make no law.” Over time, courts have applied it to every level of government through the Fourteenth Amendment, including state legislatures, city councils, and public schools.
It does not limit private actors. A private company, a website, or a private school can usually set its own rules about speech without violating the First Amendment. Other laws or contracts may still apply, but the amendment itself is a restriction on government power.
Protected does not mean unlimited
Courts have identified a few categories of speech that receive little or no protection. These include speech intended and likely to incite imminent lawless action, true threats, defamation, and obscenity. The test for incitement comes from Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), and it is deliberately demanding: advocating something unpopular or even illegal in the abstract is not enough.
Outside those categories, the government can still regulate the time, place, and manner of speech, for example by requiring a permit for a large march or limiting amplified sound at night. Those rules must be neutral about the message being delivered.
What changes in a public school
In Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), the Supreme Court held that students and teachers do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” A school may restrict student speech if it would materially and substantially disrupt the work of the school or invade the rights of others, but it needs more than a dislike of the viewpoint.
The rule is different for speech a school itself sponsors, such as a school newspaper produced for a class. Under Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (1988), administrators may control that kind of expression for legitimate educational reasons. And in Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. (2021), the Court recognized that a school’s power to punish speech that happens off campus is much more limited than its power on campus.