First Amendment Archives

Does First Amendment Require Selling Violent Video Games to Children?

By ACRU Staff|2020-04-23T21:50:22-04:00November 4th, 2010|

ACRU Senior Legal Analyst Ken Klukowski wrote this column appearing November 3, 2010 on Townhall.com

Many newer video games depict graphic violence, such as torturing and defiling women and children. These games are sold to kids. The Supreme Court is considering whether the First Amendment forbids states from restricting the sale of these games to minors.

With modern technology, newer video games can look very realistic. Some of these games are graphic in the extreme, in which the player can maim, kill, dismember, torture, or– believe it or not– sexually assault someone.

In response to parents’ outrage over some of these shocking video […]

Ohio Government Censors Pro-Life Group, Court Battle Begins

By ACRU Staff|2020-04-23T21:58:20-04:00October 27th, 2010|

ACRU Senior Legal Analyst Ken Klukowski wrote this column appearing October 26, 2010, on Townhall.com.

Congressman Steve Driehaus broke faith with his constituents in the Cincinnati, Ohio area, by voting for the big-government monstrosity known as Obamacare. The pro-life Susan B. Anthony List (SBAL) has run billboards condemning Driehaus’ vote, asserting that Obamacare funds abortion. SBAL is correct that Obamacare does fund abortion under a federal court ruling that covers Ohio.

Ohio has a law making it a crime to publicize a false statement. On suspicion that SBAL’s statement was a lie, the Ohio Elections Commission has launched an investigation in an attempt to […]

ACLU Says: Better Drunk Than Religious

By ACRU Staff|2020-04-23T21:52:56-04:00September 30th, 2010|

ACRU Senior Fellow Robert Knight wrote this article on September 30, 2010.

Despite the ACLU’s effort to censor a “religious” speaker at a Nebraska high school, students on Wednesday (Sept. 29) got to hear a compelling account of why they should not drink and drive from a man whose brother was killed by a drunk driver.

The appearance at Lyons-Decatur Northeast High School by Keith Becker, who says he has spoken to more than 150 Nebraska schools and who makes no secret of his Christianity, was opposed by the ACLU’s local chapter when they got wind of it.

ACLU Nebraska Legal Director Amy […]

Ken Blackwell: Delaware GOP Rumblings

By ACRU Staff|2020-04-23T21:52:56-04:00September 21st, 2010|

ACRU Senior Fellow Ken Blackwell wrote this column appearing September 16, 2010, on The Daily Caller website.

During post-election analysis, Republican luminaries stumbled badly in discussing Christine O’Donnell on the night of the Delaware senatorial primary.

But Delaware Republicans had just voted. They had given their support–rather convincingly–to the clearly more conservative O’Donnell in a hotly contested primary election. Where was the unity that night?

Her opponent, Mike Castle, is surely a prominent Delaware Republican. A veteran of the Governor’s Mansion and the holder of the state’s only seat in Congress, Castle should have won in a walk. But restive […]

Peter Ferrara: The Proposed New York Mosque and the Constitution

By ACRU Staff|2020-04-23T21:52:56-04:00August 5th, 2010|

ACRU General Counsel Peter Ferrara wrote this column appearing August 4, 2010 on FOXNews.com.

Muslim interests propose to build a 15 story mosque in Manhattan towering over the site of the 9/11 atrocity just 600 feet away. They would name the monument “Cordoba House.”

The original Great Mosque of Cordoba was built in the 10th century in Cordoba, Spain, the capital of the Muslim caliphate of al Andalus, ruling over the conquered Spaniards.

The Cordoba Mosque was the third largest mosque complex in the world at the time, built on the site of a former Christian church to commemorate […]

ACRU Joins Effort to Protect Prayer

By ACRU Staff|2020-04-23T21:52:56-04:00July 20th, 2010|

A federal judge in Wisconsin held in April that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional as a violation of the First Amendment Establishment Clause. On July 7, ACRU joined a brief coauthored by ACRU Fellow and Senior Legal Analyst Ken Klukowski that makes the case as to how and why a National Day of Prayer is perfectly acceptable to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Moreover, though, the brief makes the case as to why this lawsuit should just be dismissed without even considering the constitutional challenge, because the plaintiffs, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and several affiliated individuals, lack standing to bring this suit […]

Ken Klukowski: The Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, and Guns

By ACRU Staff|2020-04-23T21:54:04-04:00June 30th, 2010|

ACRU Senior Legal Analyst Ken Klukowski wrote this column appearing on BigGovernment.com on June 30, 2010.

This week’s historic Supreme Court case on gun rights has pivotal implications for Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings. From now on, the biggest battles over the Second Amendment will be won or lost in the Supreme Court.

In the 2008 case DC v. Heller, the Supreme Court held 5-4 that the Second Amendment secures an individual right to own a gun. But because the Bill of Rights only applies directly to federal laws (such as those in DC), Heller only made the Second Amendment a right against […]

Ken Klukowski: The Gun Rights Decision in McDonald v. Chicago

By ACRU Staff|2020-04-23T21:54:04-04:00June 29th, 2010|

ACRU Senior Legal Analyst Ken Klukowski wrote this column appearing on Townhall.com on June 29, 2010.

On June 28, the Supreme Court handed down the most consequential decision of this term in the historic gun-rights case, McDonald v. Chicago. Now the Second Amendment right to own a gun extends against every level of government, in a complex 5-4 decision that shows President Obama is using the Supreme Court to push a gun-control agenda.

After the 2008 Heller case holding that the Second Amendment secures an individual right, the biggest question for anyone working in constitutional law was simple: Does the Second Amendment provide a right […]

John Armor: Poor Richard's Internet

By ACRU Staff|2020-04-23T21:52:57-04:00June 26th, 2010|

ACRU legal counsel John Armor wrote this column appearing on Townhall.com on June 26, 2010.

Let’s raise two questions: What would Ben Franklin think of the Internet? And, what would be his opinion of efforts by the current Administration to censor Internet content, or even shut it down in “an emergency?”

Events in Franklin’s life may answer those questions. A recent two-hour TV special on him made one point that deserves repeating: Of all the Framers who created the United States of America in law and in fact, the one who would be “most at home in the modern world” was […]

Ken Klukowski: DISCLOSE Act Attacks Freedom of Speech

By ACRU Staff|2020-04-23T21:52:57-04:00June 25th, 2010|

ACRU Senior Legal Analyst Ken Klukowski wrote this column appearing on WashingtonExaminer.com on June 24, 2010.

Congress is considering a censorship law to muzzle conservative groups, one that exempts pro-Democrat groups from its requirements, called the DISCLOSE Act. This blatant assault on the First Amendment is worse in some respects than McCain-Feingold, and should be a major focus during Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Modern campaign finance started with the 1976 Supreme Court case Buckley v. Valeo, where among other things the Court held that campaign contributions were protected by the First Amendment, but less protected than speech, and subject to disclosure requirements. Ever […]