Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: Is Free speech protected?
In the United States, freedom of speech and expression is strongly protected from government restrictions by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, many state constitutions, and state and federal laws. The Supreme Court of the United States has recognized several categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment and has recognized that governments may enact reasonable time, place, or manner restrictions on speech. The First Amendment's constitutional right of free speech, which is applicable to state and local governments under the incorporation doctrine,[1] only prevents government restrictions on speech, not restrictions imposed by private individuals or businesses unless they are acting on behalf of the government.[2] However, laws may restrict the ability of private businesses and individuals from restricting the speech of others, such as employment laws that restrict employers' ability to prevent employees from disclosing their salary with coworkers or attempting to organize a labor union.
For two decades after the "Dennis" decision, free speech issues related to advocacy of violence were decided using balancing tests such as the one initially articulated in "Dennis". In 1969, the court established stronger protections for speech in the landmark case "Brandenburg v. Ohio", which held that "the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action". "Brandenburg" is now the standard applied by the Court to free speech issues related to advocacy of violence.
Having asserted the Supreme Court's jurisdiction over the matter, Brennan now turned to the constitutional issues. The Commonwealth of Virginia argued that it was not regulating the free speech of individual lawyers and citizens, but rather that of a corporation (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), and that the U.S. Constitution did not protect the free speech rights of corporations as strongly as it did that of people. Brennan disagreed: Corporations, he said, not only have rights equal to that of individuals, but a corporation may also assert free speech and free assembly rights on behalf of its members. The nature of these free speech rights in particular, Brennan said, were not limited to "abstract discussion", but included lawful advocacy against government intrusion on this and other rights. Litigation, too, he said, was protected. Litigation was not merely a mechanism for resolving differences between two private parties but a constitutionally protected form of political expression. Furthermore, litigation is constitutionally protected because it is one of the few lawful means by which equal protection of the laws can be enforced. The state of Virginia had argued that organizational activity (collecting membership dues, hiring attorneys, advocating lawsuits, etc.) of the kind the NAACP engaged in was not literally a speech act, a petition for redress of grievances, or assembly of the kind mentioned in the First Amendment. But Brennan and the majority disagreed, concluding that Court precedent clearly establishes that this kind of lawful activity is protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
In response, the Free Speech Legal Defense Fund (FSLDF) was formed by industry leaders to protect the rights of members in all areas of adult entertainment. In 1991, as the government attack was blunted, the FSLDF decided to select a name more reflective of its broadened role in the adult community, and the Free Speech Coalition was born. The association became closely aligned with other organizations representing the rights of free speech and civil liberties
The government may not criminally punish immigrants based on speech that would be protected if said by a citizen. On entry across borders, the government may bar non-citizens from the United States based on their speech, even if that speech would have been protected if said by a citizen. Speech rules as to deportation, on the other hand, are unclear. Lower courts are divided on the question, while the leading cases on the subject are from the Red Scare.
Kulinski self-describes as a "free speech absolutist", saying he is truly principled on the issue of freedom of speech. As such, he would denounce calls to censor a speaker's speech whether that speaker is a right-winger or a left-winger. He notes that there is a difference between legal free speech issues, where the government censors speech, and issues related to the principle of freedom of speech, where private entities censor speech. As such, he opposed the ban of Alex Jones from multiple online platforms saying that this violates the principle of free speech. In order to prevent large social media companies from censoring speech, Kulinski has proposed to regulate them as public entities, which would put all of their users under the protection of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In his advocacy for free speech absolutism, he has warned that the Left being fine with deplatforming will have unintended and often negative consequences in terms of its ability to make winning arguments.
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees free speech, and the degree to which incitement is protected speech is determined by the imminent lawless action test introduced by the 1969 Supreme Court decision in the case "Brandenburg v. Ohio". The court ruled that incitement of events in the indefinite future was protected, but encouragement of "imminent" illegal acts was "not" protected. This "view reflects longstanding law and is shared by the Federalist Society, the ACLU, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and the vast majority of Americans, including most staunch free-speech advocates."
Commercial speech occupies a unique role as a free speech exception. While there is no complete exception, legal advocates recognize it as having "diminished protection". For example, false advertising can be punished and misleading advertising may be prohibited. Commercial advertising may be restricted in ways that other speech can't if a "substantial" governmental interest is advanced, and that restriction supports that interest as well as not being overly broad. This doctrine of limited protection for advertisements is due to a balancing inherent in the policy explanations for the rule, namely that other types of speech (for example, political) are much more important.
In June 2005, the Free Speech Coalition (FSC) sued the Department of Justice to enjoin the regulations until they can be challenged in whole in court. In December 2006, a federal judge issued an injunction protecting secondary producers who are members of the Free Speech Coalition, but FBI inspections of these producers are still ongoing despite the injunction.
Compelled speech is a transmission of expression required by law. A related legal concept is "protected speech". In the United States, compelled speech is governed by the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution. In the same way that the First Amendment protects free expression, in many cases it similarly protects an individual from being required to utter or otherwise express a thought with which they disagree.
Hate speech in the United States is not regulated, in contrast to that of most other liberal democracies. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that hate speech is legally protected free speech under the First Amendment. The most recent Supreme Court case on the issue was in 2017, when the justices unanimously reaffirmed that there is effectively no "hate speech" exception to the free speech rights protected by the First Amendment.
In 2016, YAL began its “Fight for Free Speech” campaign, an initiative designed to protect free speech on college campuses by challenging unconstitutional restrictions on students’ First Amendment rights. As of January 2019, Fight for Free Speech had successfully overturned unconstitutional free speech policies on 50 college campuses:
The court ruled 7–1 against O'Brien. In the opinion of the court, Chief Justice Warren wrote that while the First Amendment does protect freedom of speech, it does not protect all things that may extraneously be labeled 'symbolic speech'. As such, O'Brien's protest was not protected because the United States had a compelling interest in preventing the destruction or mutilation of draft cards. To help himself and future justices determine what may be protected under the free speech clause, he developed a series of requirements that laws must meet in order to stay out of conflict with the First, and thus be considered constitutional, known now as the "O'Brien" test.
"Free speech protects us all and ensures we can exercise the critical right to share our truth. Violence is not free speech. My bill will protect students who are peacefully protesting from bad apples in the crowd who exploit peaceful protests to engineer violent riots."
The week’s original title, “National Freedom of Speech Week,” was recognized by the United States Patent and Trademark Office as a mark owned by The Media Institute in March 2008. The Patent and Trademark Office also recognized the Free Speech Week slogan, “Free Speech: The Language of America,” as a protected mark owned by The Media Institute. However, the Institute has always pursued a policy of “open licensing,” allowing others to use both marks without charge.
In 1996 the "Communications Decency Act" (CDA) was enacted to protect children from accessing adult material on the Internet. The Child Pornography Protection Act (CPPA) soon followed; this legislation sought to criminalize the depiction of minors in sexually explicit video or online content, even if those depicted in the material were over 18-years of age. FSC filed suit against then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, charging that the CPPA abridged first amendment rights by defining protected speech as obscene or as child pornography. In 2002, FSC views were upheld in the US Supreme Court in "Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition", the "virtual child porn" case.
The most notable proponent of the free speech fights in the official arena was New York City Police Commissioner Arthur Woods, who argued that all American groups should be granted the right of free speech and assembly. Rather than repress their constitutional rights, Woods felt that it was the duty of the police to protect the demonstrators. His personal philosophy dictated that free speech could be regulated only in ways that protected it through the creation of channels of expression which would not impede the rights of others.
One of the primary issues with the debates surrounding the free speech fights was that commentators understood that certain types of speech should be regarded as illegal and were not covered as free speech—sedition, libel, inciting speech, and obscenity fell into this category of speech, yet what some regarded as obscenity or libel, others regarded simply as government criticism that should be protected by the Constitution.
In a review for "The Historian", Timothy C. Shiell of the University of Wisconsin–Stout wrote, "In providing the first detailed history of free speech from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the Fourteenth Amendment of the 1860s, Michael Kent Curtis offers a major contribution to the scholarship of both that era and of free speech." Shiell wrote on the views put forth by the author in the book, "Curtis does not limit this erudite work to historical narration. He also addresses political and legal movements and ideas that influenced and were influenced by free-speech controversies such as theories of democracy, justifications for broad protections of free speech, and the doctrines of content neutrality and heckler's veto. His treatment of justifications for suppression is especially valuable." Shiell concluded his review writing, "For at least these three reasons—the historical detail, the review of relevant legal and political theory, and the lessons from history—this book is a 'must read' for anyone interested in the period from 1798 to 1870 or in the development of free-speech theory and practice in the United States."
Curtis writes that despite the actions of the government, it is the actions of individuals through speech and protest that allow democracy to function appropriately. The author states that, "again and again, people in power have treated speech that advocated lawful change through democratic process as an incitement to lawless action". Curtis says that free speech rights in the U.S., which at present are believed to be given through 20th century court rulings, were actually developed first in "the forum of public opinion". He says, "The history of free speech shows the need for broadly protective free speech rules applied generally and equally".
Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel of Supreme Court of Ohio, 471 U.S. 626 (1985), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that states can require an advertiser to disclose certain information without violating the advertiser's First Amendment free speech protections as long as the disclosure requirements are reasonably related to the State's interest in preventing deception of consumers. The decision effected identified that some commercial speech may have weaker First Amendment free speech protections than non-commercial speech and that states can compel such commercial speech to protect their interests; future cases have relied on the "Zauderer standard" to determine the constitutionality of state laws that compel commercial speech as long as the information to be disclosed is "purely factual and uncontroversial".
Free Speech, "The People's Darling Privilege": Struggles for Freedom of Expression in American History is a non-fiction book about the history of freedom of speech in the United States written by Michael Kent Curtis and published in 2000 by Duke University Press. The book discusses the evolution of free speech in the U.S. within the context of the actions of individuals and how they affected change. The author writes that protests and actions by citizens helped to evolve the notions surrounding free speech in the U.S. before definitive statements on the matter from U.S. courts. Curtis writes that free speech rights were first developed in "the forum of public opinion", and that, "The history of free speech shows the need for broadly protective free speech rules applied generally and equally".
Exceptions to free speech in the United States refers to categories of speech that are not protected by the First Amendment. Although the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects free speech, exceptions have been made for speech that violates the legal rights of others, or because of compelling governmental interests. Examples of these categories include incitement, true threats, and fighting words. 
In deciding on protections for anonymous speech, the Ninth Circuit cited "Talley v. California," which held that First Amendment protection applied to anonymous speech. It further explained the historical purpose of protecting such speech and referred to the anonymously published Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers, both of which were instrumental during the infancy of the United States and the formation of its Constitution. The court also elaborated on the issue by explaining that First Amendment protections are crucial to the "robust exchange of ideas" without "fear of economic or official retaliation." However, "McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission" showed that the tradition of protecting anonymous speech primarily applied to political causes, not necessarily commercial speech. The Ninth Circuit, therefore, stated that the right to free speech is necessarily limited by the circumstances and type of speech at issue.
FIRE's latest report of University Ratings is "Spotlight on Speech Codes 2016: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation’s Campuses". The foundation gathers together each university's various harassment and hate speech policies, as well as any "Advertised Commitments to Freedom of Speech". On the basis of these and media reports, FIRE then assigns each institution a color code: green ("no serious threats to free speech"), yellow ("some policies that could ban or excessively regulate protected speech") or red ("at least one policy that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech").