The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prevents Congress from making laws respecting an establishment of religion; prohibiting the free exercise of religion; or abridging the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom of peaceable assembly and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights. In the original draft of the Bill of Rights, what is now the First Amendment occupied third place. The first two articles were not ratified by the states, so the article on disestablishment and free speech ended up being first.
The Bill of Rights was proposed to assuage Anti-Federalist opposition to Constitutional ratification. Initially, the First Amendment applied only to laws enacted by the Congress, and many of its provisions were interpreted more narrowly than they are today. Beginning with Gitlow v. New York (1925), the Supreme Court applied the First Amendment to states—a process known as incorporation—through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The First Amendment applies only to state actors.
With regard to religious freedom, the Court has frequently cited Thomas Jefferson's call for "a wall of separation between church and State", a metaphor for the separation of religions from government and vice versa as well as the free exercise of religious beliefs that many Founders favored. Speech rights were expanded significantly in a series of 20th- and 21st-century court decisions which protected various forms of political speech, anonymous speech, campaign finance, pornography, and school speech; these rulings also defined a series of exceptions to First Amendment protections.
The Free Press Clause protects publication of information and opinions, and applies to a wide variety of media. In Near v. Minnesota (1931) and New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protected against prior restraint—pre-publication censorship—in almost all cases. The Petition Clause protects the right to petition all branches and agencies of government for action. In addition to the right of assembly guaranteed by this clause, the Court has also ruled that the amendment implicitly protects freedom of association.
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Background
alt=George Mason|thumb|[[George Mason was the principal author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, adopted by the Fifth Virginia Convention on June 12, 1776.]]
The right to petition for redress of grievances was a principle included in the 1215 Magna Carta, as well as the 1689 English Bill of Rights. In 1776, the second year of the American Revolutionary War, the Virginia colonial legislature passed a Declaration of Rights that included the sentence "The freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic Governments." Eight of the other twelve states made similar pledges. However, these declarations were generally considered "mere admonitions to state legislatures", rather than enforceable provisions.
After several years of comparatively weak government under the Articles of Confederation, a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia proposed a new constitution on September 17, 1787, featuring among other changes a stronger chief executive. George Mason, a Constitutional Convention delegate and the drafter of Virginia's Declaration of Rights, proposed that the Constitution include a bill of rights listing and guaranteeing civil liberties. Other delegates—including future Bill of Rights drafter James Madison—disagreed, arguing that existing state guarantees of civil liberties were sufficient and any attempt to enumerate individual rights risked the implication that other, unnamed rights were unprotected. After a brief debate, Mason's proposal was defeated by a unanimous vote of the state delegations.thumb|[[James Madison drafted of the Bill of Rights.]]For the constitution to be ratified, however, nine of the thirteen states were required to approve it in state conventions. Opposition to ratification ("Anti-Federalism") was partly based on the Constitution's lack of adequate guarantees for civil liberties. Supporters of the Constitution in states where popular sentiment was against ratification (including Virginia, Massachusetts, and New York) successfully proposed that their state conventions both ratify the Constitution and call for the addition of a bill of rights. The U.S. Constitution was eventually ratified by all thirteen states. In the 1st United States Congress, following the state legislatures' request, James Madison proposed twenty constitutional amendments, and his proposed draft of the First Amendment read as follows:
<blockquote>The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed. The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable. The people shall not be restrained from peaceably assembling and consulting for their common good; nor from applying to the Legislature by petitions, or remonstrances, for redress of their grievances.</blockquote>
This language was greatly condensed by Congress, and passed the House and Senate with almost no recorded debate, complicating future discussion of the Amendment's intent. Congress approved and submitted to the states for their ratification twelve articles of amendment on September 25, 1789. The revised text of the third article became the First Amendment, because the last ten articles of the submitted 12 articles were ratified by the requisite number of states on December 15, 1791, and are now known collectively as the Bill of Rights.
Freedom of religion
thumb|300px|The [[Maryland Toleration Act secured religious liberty in the English colony of Maryland. Similar laws were passed in the Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. These laws stood in direct contrast with the Puritan theocratic rule in the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies.]]
Religious liberty, also known as freedom of religion, is "the right of all persons to believe, speak, and act – individually and in community with others, in private and in public – in accord with their understanding of ultimate truth." The acknowledgement of religious freedom as the first right protected in the Bill of Rights points toward the American founders' understanding of the importance of religion to human, social, and political flourishing.
The first clause prohibits any governmental "establishment of religion" and the second prohibits any governmental interference with "the free exercise thereof." These clauses of the First Amendment encompass the two big arenas of religion in constitutional law. "Establishment cases deal with the Constitution's ban on Congress endorsing, promoting or becoming too involved with religion. Free exercise cases deal with Americans' rights to practice their faith." Both clauses sometimes compete with each other. The Supreme Court in McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union (2005) clarified this by the following example: When the government spends money on the clergy, then it looks like establishing religion, but if the government cannot pay for military chaplains, then many soldiers and sailors would be kept from the opportunity to exercise their chosen religions. In Murdock v. Pennsylvania (1943) the Supreme Court stated: "Freedom of press, freedom of speech, freedom of religion are in a preferred position," adding that "[plainly], a community may not suppress, or the state tax, the dissemination of views because they are unpopular, annoying or distasteful." One of the central purposes of the First Amendment, the Supreme Court wrote in Gillette v. United States (1970), consists "of ensuring governmental neutrality in matters of religion." In Wallace v. Jaffree regarding silent school prayer, it was maintained that the central liberty that unifies the various clauses in the First Amendment is the individual's freedom of conscience. In Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002), the Court stated: First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.
Establishment of religion
The Establishment Clause forbids federal, state, and local laws whose purpose is "an establishment of religion." The term "establishment" denoted in general direct aid to the church by the government. In Larkin v. Grendel's Den, Inc. (1982), the Supreme Court stated that "the core rationale underlying the Establishment Clause is preventing "a fusion of governmental and religious functions." The Establishment Clause acts as a double security, for it both bars religious control over government and political control over religion.
Originally, the First Amendment applied only to the federal government, and some states continued official state religions after ratification. However, in Everson v. Board of Education (1947), the Supreme Court incorporated the Establishment Clause (i.e., made it apply against the states). The First Amendment's framers knew that intertwining government with religion could lead to bloodshed or oppression, because this happened too often historically. To prevent this dangerous development, they set up the Establishment Clause as a line of demarcation between the functions and operations of the institutions of religion and government in society. At the core of the Establishment Clause lays the principle of denominational neutrality. The clearest command of the Establishment Clause is, according to the Supreme Court in Larson v. Valente (1982) that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another. thumb|President [[Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1802 of a wall of separation.|left]]
While its meaning is not clarified in the Constitution, the Establishment Clause is often understood as mandating the separation of church and state. "[I believe] with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, [and] that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, ... thus building a wall of separation between Church & State." This metaphor was introduced as a judicial doctrine in Everson, and to this day, it defines discussion on the Establishment Clause.
The First Amendment's prohibition on an establishment of religion includes many things from prayer in widely varying government settings over financial aid for religious individuals and institutions to comment on religious questions. One such controversial decision was taken in Engel v. Vitale (1962), which held it unconstitutional for public schools to organize prayer or Bible reading sessions for students, even if on a voluntary basis. It determined whether an action is an establishment if: a) the statute (or practice) lacked a secular purpose; b) its principal or primary effect advanced or inhibited religion; or c) it fostered excessive government entanglement with religion. After the Supreme Court ruling in the coach praying case of Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022), the Lemon Test may have been replaced or complemented with a reference to historical practices and understandings.
The opponents of those who firmly subscribe to the separation of church and state: separationists, are accommodationists. They argue, along with Justice William O. Douglas, that "[w]e are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being." Chief Justice Warren E. Burger coined the term "benevolent neutrality" as a combination of neutrality and accommodationism to characterize a way to ensure that the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause do not contradict each other.