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1st Amendment

DOES THE FIRST AMENDMENT STILL MATTER?

First Amendment: “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.”

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution provides the foundation for many of our most treasured freedoms. Yet, over the years, the courts have taken the liberty to decide how and when these freedoms apply. Two examples of 1^st Amendment freedoms being threatened include religious freedom and freedom of speech, especially over the airwaves and the Internet. Although our founders kept these rights simple so they would last, courts continue to justify more exceptions for when they do not apply. Therefore, it is necessary for the Supreme Court to re-affirm these rights as applying to all Americans at all times. 

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god… I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state. ~ Thomas Jefferson, January 1, 1802 (in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association) 

Faith has always been a foundational freedom and cornerstone since the founding of the United States. Over the years, the individual right to freely practice religion has been significantly threatened. This has occurred based on the concept of separation of church and state created by the Supreme Court. However, the U.S. Constitution did not create a separation between church and state. In fact, the concept is based on a letter from Thomas Jefferson in 1802 to the Danbury Baptist Association. However, history shows that Jefferson intended his words to prevent the government from intruding in an individual’s religious beliefs, not the other way around. The Court has upheld legislatures opening up with prayer, but not schools. It has also chosen when it is and is not appropriate to display the Ten Commandments. And, in 2009, for the first time, three school employees in Florida were criminally prosecuted for praying, although they were eventually declared “not guilty.”[1] It is time for the U.S. Supreme Court to do its constitutional duty – protecting the constitutional rights of citizens – rather than deciding when those rights do and do not apply. For more information on religious freedom issues, visit the Family Research Council at www.frc.org. 

Another way the federal government has been encroaching on the freedom of speech is through regulations on what can and cannot be communicated over the airwaves – TV, radio, and more recently, the Internet. Through policies such as the “Fairness Doctrine,” which enables the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to determine that there are balanced messages on each political issue on TV and radio, the government is trying to slowly gain more power to determine what people are able to communicate. 

Campaign Finance is another area where the government, through burdensome regulations, is trying to control how people express their political beliefs through financial contributions. Reforms including “clean election laws,” which create taxpayer funded elections to avoid the supposed “corruption” of private financing, enable the government to penalize those who work raise private funds, and further limit communication from and about candidates. For more information on political free speech issues, visit www.campaignfreedom.org.

The Internet is one of the last frontiers of freedom and non-regulation, resulting in unprecedented innovations and advances in technology. However, regulation of the Internet, being proposed as “Net Neutrality,” is yet another strategy by the FCC and proponents of big government to regulate the flow of information on the internet by keeping it “neutral” through government managed networks. An October 2009 report from the Heartland Institute states, “While ‘neutrality’ connotes passivity, what the neutralists actually desire is a more activist government imposing more control over the Internet – substituting the decision of a handful of bureaucrats for the voluntary choices of millions of individual consumers and businesses.”[2]

While styles of churches and worship have changed and methods of communication have advanced, these core freedoms stand unchanged. It is now time for our ever changing regulations to realign themselves with 1^st Amendment principles. Hopefully the Supreme Court will re-affirm these rights before it is too late.