IV.                    Who Is a Person?

1.         Corporations and companies enjoy some 1^st Amendment rights, but the gov’t can place more limits on commercial than on noncommercial speech:

                                                                i.      It can place restrictions on ads for cigarettes, liquor, and gambling and can regulate advertising for some less harmful products.

2.         However, school newspapers can be censored by their schools if they use school funds to print.

3.         Basically, school-sponsored activities can be controlled as long as such controls relate to reasonable concerns, such as school mission and education.

V.                     Church and State

1.         Many people falsely believe that the 1^st Amendment requires a “separation between church and state,” but it actually simply has a free-exercise clause that prohibits Congress from making a law that bans the “free exercise” of religion and an establishment clause that says that Congress “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

                                                                i.      The first clause basically says that Congress (or state governments) can’t make a law that says everyone has to be of a certain religion or one that bans a certain religious activity, and even certain laws that would directly hinder a religion can be overturned.

                                                               ii.      A person can practice his religious beliefs freely as long as such beliefs do not break existing law (just because a religion says to smoke pot doesn’t mean a person can still do that).

                                                              iii.      Some cases are trickier, like one’s dislike of war due to his religion; in fact, the Supreme Court has even said that one cannot be drafted if he conscientiously despised war (even if he isn’t religious or does not believe in a higher being).

                                                              iv.      An unemployed person can also receive benefits if he refuses to take a job that involves working on Saturdays (due to his religion), and a state cannot require people like the Amish to send their children to school past the 8^th grade if their religion forbids it.

2.         It was Thomas Jefferson who wrote the second clause that basically “separated church and state.”

                                                                i.      In interpreting this ambiguous language, the Supreme Court has adopted the wall-of-separation principle, which means that the gov’t cannot be involved in religion at all.

a.         Basically, state and federal governments must be neutral toward religion.

                                                               ii.      The gov’t cannot require a person to profess a belief or disbelief in or aid (a) religion(s).

                                                              iii.      Busing to Christian schools was okay, however, because actual busing is a neutral activity.

                                                              iv.      The Court has also tried to strike down every form of prayer in school, individual or mass.

                                                               v.      The gov’t can pay to construct parochial schools or give books to students of such schools, etc… but it can’t pay a teacher who teaches in such a school.

a.         Basically, it cannot directly contribute to the instruction of religion.

                                                              vi.      The Court has basically come up with a “test” to see what kinds of involvements are constitutional: it has a secular purpose; its primary effect neither advances nor inhibits religion; it does not foster an excessive gov’t entanglement w/ religion (vague, huh?).

                                                             vii.      More confusing crap: prayer in schools = bad, prayer in Congress = OK; public school chaplain = bad, armed service chaplain = OK; advance religion = bad, “In God We Trust” on coins = OK.  Summarization is just not possible for the Supreme Court on this matter.