Do you think the First Amendment right to free speech should apply to people like the Westboro Baptist Church?

Smith, 472 U.S. 479 (1985), has sometimes been interpreted to mean that the right to petition can extend no further than the right to speak; but McDonald held only that speech contained within a petition is subject to the same standards for defamation and libel as speech outside a petition. In those circumstances the Court found “no sound basis for granting greater constitutional protection to statements made in a petition . Than other First Amendment expressions.”

There may arise cases where the special concerns of the Petition Clause would provide a sound basis for a distinct analysis; and if that is so, the rules and principles that define the two rights might differ in emphasis and formulation. The right of assembly was originally distinguished from the right to petition. In United States v.

Cruikshank,167 the Supreme Court held that "the right of the people peaceably to assemble for the purpose of petitioning Congress for a redress of grievances, or for anything else connected with the powers or duties of the National Government, is an attribute of national citizenship, and, as such, under protection of, and guaranteed by, the United States. The very idea of a government, republican in form, implies a right on the part of its citizens to meet peaceably for consultation in respect to public affairs and to petition for a redress of grievances."168 Justice Waite's opinion for the Court carefully distinguished the right to peaceably assemble as a secondary right, while the right to petition was labeled to be a primary right. Later cases, however, paid less attention to these distinctions.

Although it is not explicitly protected in the First Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled, in NAACP v. Alabama,169 freedom of association to be a fundamental right protected by it. In Roberts v.

United States Jaycees,170 the Supreme Court held that associations may not exclude people for reasons unrelated to the group's expression. However, in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston, 515 U.S. 557 (1995), the Court ruled that a group may exclude people from membership if their presence would affect the group's ability to advocate a particular point of view.

Likewise, in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale,171 the Supreme Court ruled that a New Jersey law, which forced the Boy Scouts of America to admit an openly gay member, to be an unconstitutional abridgment of the Boy Scouts' right to free association. Part of the United States Bill of Rights is rooted in the English Bill of Rights and other aspects of English law.

The English Bill of Rights, however, does not include many of the protections found in the First Amendment. For example, while the First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech to the general populace, the English Bill of Rights protected only "Freedome of Speech and Debates or Proceedings in Parlyament."172 The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, a French revolutionary document passed just weeks before Congress proposed the Bill of Rights, contains certain guarantees that are similar to those in the First Amendment. Article III, Sections 4 and 5 of the Constitution of the Philippines, written in 1987, contain identical wording to the First Amendment regarding speech and religion, respectively.

174 These phrases can also be found in the 1973175 and 1935176 Philippine constitutions. All three constitutions contain, in the section on Principles, the sentence, "The separation of Church and State shall be inviolable", echoing Jefferson's famous phrase. While the First Amendment does not explicitly set restrictions on freedom of speech, other declarations of rights sometimes do so.

The First Amendment was one of the first guarantees of religious freedom: neither the English Bill of Rights, nor the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, contains a similar guarantee. Dreisbach and Mark David Hall. Dreisbach, Mark David Hall, and Jeffry Morrison.