Amendments: Freedom of Religion, Speech and the Press

Freedom of Religion, Speech and the Press
Name
Institution Affiliation
Freedom of Religion, Speech and the Press
Introduction
The freedom of religion, speech and the press is the first amendment of the ten Bill of Rights. It was passed by the Congress on September 25th, 1789 and adopted in the Bill of Rights in December 15th, 1791 (Lind & Rankin, 2012). The amendment grants the citizens the right to choose the religion that best suits their needs, the freedom to speak out freely, and the freedom to fully petition against the government in case they are not satisfied about an issue. Different people have varying religious beliefs and they all have a right to follow their heart’s desires, the right to free speech and access to press services is also important in the success of any nation. The Congress, therefore, has no right to promote one religion over another and cannot prevent any citizen from choosing a religious affiliation, neither can it restrict the right of any citizen to speak out and hold demonstrations over what they believe is right.
Initially, the Bill of Rights was not part of the Constitution in 1787, those against the Constitution, therefore fought to have individual rights included in the Constitution as they were afraid that the government might abuse the rights of its citizens (Church, Schulze & Strydom, 2007). The amendment was first written by James Madison, along with twelve other amendments, but only ten of the twelve made it to the Bill of Rights (Lind & Rankin, 2012). At that time, there existed several misunderstandings between different religions and most of the religious leaders had been imprisoned due to their religious beliefs. With the help of Thomas Jefferson, Madison authored an article that clearly depicted the differences between the state and the religious associations stating that both institutions were independent and another one that showed that the citizens of the United States were at liberty to speak and access the press (Lind & Rankin, 2012)
Despite all these efforts, the first amendment was first applied to the states in 1925 after a series of Supreme Court cases that led to its incorporation into the Constitution of the United States. In 1990, a case was filed in court by The Board of Education of Westside Community Schools v. Mergens (Bhagwat, 2010) involving the right of the school’s students to hold classes on bible study after school. The court ruled that if schools allowed the formation of clubs that were linked to what was taught in school, they had no power to discriminate against the formation of clubs that had a religious affiliation to it. The ruling stated that individuals had a right to endorse religion as opposed to the state endorsing religion on its citizens, therefore, the students had every right to hold a bible study inside the school’s premises as they wanted so long as they were not forcing anyone to attend the bible study. Another Supreme Court case linked to the first amendment was a case of Texas v. Johnson in 1989, Johnson held a demonstration and burnt an American flag to protest against the policies put in place by the president at that time (Lively & Weaver, 2006). Surprisingly, the majority in the court sup...