Legal Question in Constitutional Law in Georgia
First and Tenth amendment
The First Amendment says:
''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 Constitution goes into great detail describing what it means by Congress and makes many references to State Legislatures.
The Tenth Amendment says:
''The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.''
The First Amendment specifically prohibits Congress. The rest of the Constitution does not prohibit the States from establishing a religion, or for that matter restricting free speech. What legally stops the States from doing these things? Since the Supreme Court ruled on some State cases recently I'm sure that I must be missing something. Otherwise, the Court would have simply cited the Tenth amendment, dismissed the cases, and proceeded to the ruling about file sharing.
2 Answers from Attorneys
Re: First and Tenth amendment
Originally, the First Amendment applied only to the federal government and not to the states. This changed with the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, which applied the Bill of Rights to the states. The language of the Fourteenth Amendment isn't as clear about this as one might like, but this is how the courts have interpreted the Amendment since it was enacted.
Re: First and Tenth amendment
As stated in one of today's Supreme Court cases: "The First Amendment provides that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . . This prohibition of establishment applies to the States
and their political subdivisions through the Fourteenth Amendment."
Santa Fe Independent School Dist. v. Doe, 530 U. S. 290, 301 (2000)
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