First Amendment — Online Journal — Columbia Undergraduate Law Review

Objections to Objective Evidence: How the Courts Should Scrutinize Officer Motive in Retaliatory Arrest Claims

Until this year, jaywalking was illegal in New York City. Yet, it would be quite a challenge to find a New Yorker who never jaywalked before 2025. While low-level offenses like jaywalking or littering can be cause for arrest, police officers typically exercise personal discretion in deciding whether to pursue such cases. As affirmed by Justice Gorsuch in Nieves v. Bartlett, “no one doubts that officers regularly choose against making arrests, especially for minor crimes, even when they possess probable cause [for arrest].” This subjective arrest standard can allow for the infiltration of personal bias into arrestmaking decisions. In these cases, someone may face arrest not solely because of their illegal conduct, but because of their expression. For example, a police officer who typically does not arrest for jaywalking may be incentivized to arrest a jaywalking civilian wearing a political slogan that the officer disagrees with.

Iris WuDecember 17, 2025First Amendment, Free Speech, Retaliatory Arrest, Retaliation, Arrest, Constitution

State Limitations on Secular School Curriculum: How the Lemon Test Models Scrutiny Over State Discretion

As of July 2021, at least twenty-six states have legislated restrictions on the teaching of critical theory concepts in K-12 public schools. Of these states, seven have passed bills set to go into effect this year. Texas, Idaho, Oklahoma, Arizona, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Tennessee have enacted curriculum restrictions, district fines, and course credit stipulations in an attempt to regulate the discussion of race, gender, and sexuality in classrooms. [1] The fundamental legal question regarding these laws is whether states are entitled to such discretion in school curricula. Pressure is mounting for the U.S. Supreme Court to review these bans due to conflicting analyses in the lower courts.

The Paradox Of Right to Work Laws and International Human Rights Law

Right-to-work laws and the accompanying decline in unionization in the United States surfaced in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31 (2018), where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public-sector union dues conflict with the First Amendment because such dues require workers to donate their money to public sector unions for political purposes.

Amadea DatelAugust 17, 2021Tags: right-to-work laws, Janus, unions, First Amendment, international law

Confederate Monuments as Government Speech: Pleasant Grove City v Summum and Its Ambiguities

Following the mass protests caused by the murder of George Floyd, among other unarmed African Americans in May 2020, the removal of Confederate symbols has again captured national attention. Yet, opponents of Confederate monuments now face a major constitutional hurdle: the government speech doctrine, which holds that First Amendment restrictions, such as content discrimination, do not apply when the United States government is the speaker. Therefore, the question becomes: Do Confederate monuments occupying government land adhere to the government speech doctrine?

Jerry ChenJune 20, 2021First Amendment, free speech

The State of Religious Liberty After Bostock, Little Sisters, & Our Lady of Guadalupe

In June 2020, the Supreme Court delivered a victory for LGBTQ+ rights in Bostock v. Clayton County. In this case, the Court ruled that firing an employee for being gay or transgender violates the prohibition on discrimination “because of … sex” in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While many Americans rejoiced over this victory, others were concerned about the ruling’s implications for religious liberty.

Will FosterOctober 4, 2020Supreme Court, First Amendment, Religion, Religious Freedom, LGBTQ+ Rights, Discrimination

Rap Beef, Diss Tracks, and what Pennsylvania v. Knox can tell us about Protected Free Speech

Pennsylvania v. Knox (2018) is situated in a larger debate concerning the extent to which rap music constitutes protected free speech. More specifically, this case tested the limits of rap as a form of free speech and the extent to which the First Amendment tolerates violence expressed in rap lyrics. However, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s limited understanding of the nuances of rap, and their judicial narrowing of this art form as monolithic, has set precedent that inserts legal and textual ambiguity into the nexus between between free speech and rap.

fall 2019JiHoon KoDecember 4, 2019free speech, First Amendment, hip-hop, rap Comments

Espinoza v. Montana (2019): Should My Public Tax Dollars Pay for Your Religious Private School Education?

Founding Father Thomas Jefferson interpreted the First Amendment as the building of a wall between church and state. Reynolds v. United States (1878), a Supreme Court of the United States case that outlawed polygamy, affirmed Jefferson’s interpretation that the objective of the establishment clause of the First Amendment was to establish a clear separation between church and state. Although this intention was clarified, the Court has since continuously struggled to define what this separation entails and how to properly identify the scope of the freedom of religious expression.

fall 2019Rachel HalpernNovember 14, 2019Religious Education, Establishment Clause, Espinoza, First Amendment

Religious Symbols in the Modern Age: Evaluating History’s Role in the Establishment Clause

A crisis exists in the jurisprudence of the Establishment Clause—a key component of the First Amendment that outlines the separation of church and state. The clause states that the government cannot establish an official religion or make any laws that favor either a particular religion, religion over non-religion, or non-religion over religion. However, the religious influence in social and legal matters has been inescapable throughout American history, and this is something that the courts still must come to terms with today.

Vivian LuNovember 7, 2019religion, Establishment Clause, secularism, First AmendmentComment

The Age of Cyber Federalism

Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza woke up one morning in 2017 to find she had been blocked by @realDonaldTrump on Twitter. Dani Bostick woke up to the same news later that year, as did Annie Rice, an author, William LeGate, a tech entrepreneur, and Caroline Orr, a researcher. Soon, a contingent of Twitter dissenters emerged who all had been banned from the president’s official Twitter page.[1]

Jaden SchneiderNovember 11, 2018Donald Trump, First Amendment, Knight First Amendment Institute, Constitutional law, technologyComment