The First Amendment 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 assembly, or 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.
Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Company, 157 U.S. 429 (1895), affirmed on rehearing, 158 U.S. 601 (1895), was a landmark case of the Supreme Court of the United States. In a 5–4 decision, the Supreme Court struck down the income tax imposed by the Wilson–Gorman Tariff Act for being an unapportioned direct tax. The decision was superseded in 1913 by the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which allows Congress to levy income taxes without apportioning them among the states.
Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 (1968), was a unanimous landmark United States Supreme Court case that invalidated an Arkansas statute prohibiting the teaching of human evolution in the public schools. The Court held that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits a state from requiring, in the words of the majority opinion, "that teaching and learning must be tailored to the principles or prohibitions of any religious sect or dogma." The Supreme Court declared the Arkansas statute unconstitutional because it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. After this decision, some jurisdictions passed laws that required the teaching of creation science alongside evolution when evolution was taught. The Court also ruled these laws were unconstitutional in the 1987 case, Edwards v. Aguillard.
Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448 (1980), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that the U.S. Congress could constitutionally use its spending power to remedy the effects of past discrimination. The case arose as a suit against the enforcement of provisions in a 1977 spending bill that required 10% of federal funds going towards public works programs to go to minority-owned companies.
United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739 (1987), was a United States Supreme Court decision that determined that the Bail Reform Act of 1984 was constitutional, which permitted the federal courts to detain an arrestee prior to trial if the government could prove that the individual was potentially a danger to society. The Act was held to violate neither the United States Constitution's Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment nor its Excessive Bail Clause of the Eighth Amendment.
The Law That Never Was: The Fraud of the 16th Amendment and Personal Income Tax is a 1985 book by William J. Benson and Martin J. "Red" Beckman which claims that the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, commonly known as the income tax amendment, was never properly ratified. In 2007, and again in 2009, Benson's contentions were ruled to be fraudulent.
DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno, 547 U.S. 332 (2006), is a United States Supreme Court case involving the standing of taxpayers to challenge state tax laws in federal court. The Court unanimously ruled that state taxpayers did not have standing under Article III of the United States Constitution to challenge state tax or spending decisions simply by virtue of their status as taxpayers. Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the majority opinion, which was joined by all of the justices except for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who concurred separately.
U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995), is a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that states cannot impose qualifications for prospective members of the U.S. Congress stricter than those the Constitution specifies. The decision invalidated 23 states' Congressional term limit provisions. The parties to the case were U.S. Term Limits, a nonprofit advocacy group, and Arkansas politician Ray Thornton, among others.
The Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982 was a comprehensive transportation funding and policy act of the United States Federal Government, 96 Stat. 2097. The legislation was championed by the Reagan administration to address concerns about the surface transportation infrastructure. The Act contained Title V, known as the Highway Revenue Act of 1982, which added five cents to the per gallon gas tax, of which four cents was dedicated to restore interstate highways and bridges, and one cent for public transit. The Act also set a goal of 10 percent for participation of disadvantaged business enterprises in federal-aid projects.
Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385 (1920), was a U.S. Supreme Court decision in which Silverthorne had attempted to evade paying taxes. Federal agents illegally seized tax books from Silverthorne and created copies of the records. The ruling, delivered by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., was that any evidence obtained, even indirectly, from an illegal search was inadmissible in court. He reasoned that otherwise, police would have an incentive to circumvent the Fourth Amendment to obtain derivatives of the illegally obtained evidence. This precedent later became known as the "fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine," and is an extension of the exclusionary rule.
Texas Monthly v. Bullock, 489 U.S. 1 (1989), was a case brought before the US Supreme Court in November 1988. The case was to test the legality of a Texas statute that exempted religious publications from paying state sales tax.
United States v. Johnson, 481 U.S. 681 (1987), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court barred the widow of a serviceman killed while piloting a helicopter on a United States Coast Guard rescue mission from bringing her claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act. The decision was based upon the Supreme Court's holding in Feres v. United States (1950): "[T]he Government is not liable under the Federal Tort Claims Act for injuries to servicemen where the injuries arise out of or are in the course of activity incident to service."
United States v. General Dynamics Corp., 481 U.S. 239 (1987), is a United States Supreme Court case, which hold that under 162(a) of the Internal Revenue Code and Treasury Regulation 1.461-1(a)(2), the "all events" test entitled an accrual-basis taxpayer to a federal income tax business-expense deduction, for the taxable year in which (1) all events had occurred which determined the fact of the taxpayer's liability, and (2) the amount of that liability could be determined with reasonable accuracy.
Collector v. Day, 78 U.S. 113 (1871), was a United States Supreme Court case that questioned the United States Federal government's ability to impose a tax upon the "salary of a judicial officer of the State." Even though this particular case favors state employees' rights, it was overruled in 1939 by Graves v. New York, where the Supreme Court ruled that the income tax imposed by the State of New York on an employee of the Federal Home Owners Load Corporation was constitutional, since there was no requirement of immunity contained in the Constitution or in any act of Congress. Collector is still important to discussions of constitutional law because of Judge Nelson's statement of the doctrine of dual federalism in the case's opinion.
United States v. Hatter, 532 U.S. 557 (2001), was a United States Supreme Court case decided in 2001. The case concerned an alleged violation of the Compensation Clause of the United States Constitution when Congress extended Medicare and Social Security taxes to federal judge salaries. Additionally, the case dealt with whether a later increase of federal judge salaries, greater than the new taxes, remedied the potential violation.
Texas Dept. of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., 576 U.S. 519 (2015), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court analyzed whether disparate impact claims are cognizable under the Fair Housing Act. In Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion, the Court held that Congress specifically intended to include disparate impact claims in the Fair Housing Act, but that such claims require a plaintiff to prove it is the defendant's policies that cause a disparity.
United Dominion Industries, Inc. v. United States, 532 U.S. 822 (2001), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that an affiliated group's product liability loss must be figured on a consolidated, single-entity basis; a conglomerate cannot aggregate the product liability loss of its subsidiaries and report that sum as its product liability loss.
American Trucking Associations, Inc. v. Scheiner, 483 U.S. 266 (1987), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a state tax on using motor vehicles on the highway is unconstitutional when the amount of the tax is not calculated to be proportional to highway use and when the tax treats in-state and out-of-state road users differently.
American Trucking Associations, Inc. v. Smith, 496 U.S. 167 (1990), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the Court's decision in American Trucking Associations, Inc. v. Scheiner did not apply retroactively.
Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media, 588 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that, where commercial or financial information is both customarily and actually treated as private by its owner and provided to the government under an assurance of privacy, the information is "confidential" within the meaning of the Freedom of Information Act.
