Landmark First Amendment cases

Several Supreme Court cases define the limits of First Amendment freedoms. In Schenck v. United States (1919), the Court upheld the conviction of a man who distributed leaflets opposing the World War I draft, creating the "clear and present danger" test; that standard was later replaced by the narrower test from Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), which protects speech unless it is meant to incite imminent lawless action and is likely to do so. In Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), the Court ruled that students who wore black armbands to protest the Vietnam War were protected, since students do not "shed their constitutional rights... at the schoolhouse gate," though schools may limit speech that would substantially disrupt learning. In New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), the Court refused to stop newspapers from publishing the Pentagon Papers, a classified history of the Vietnam War, setting a very high bar for prior restraint. On religion, Engel v. Vitale (1962) held that official, school-sponsored prayer in public schools violates the Establishment Clause, even if it is voluntary and nondenominational, and Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) held that the Free Exercise Clause protected Amish families who stopped sending their children to school after eighth grade.

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