The First Amendment of the Constitution plainly states that, “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.”

Free speech is one of the sacrosanct rights codified at the start of the Bill of Rights by the nation’s founders. But there are limits. As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously wrote in 1919, in a unanimous decision for Schenk v. United States, “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”

And exercising free speech does not mean the speaker is free from co

See Full Page