First Amendment Law

The US Supreme Court has said that, despite the “no law” words used in the First Amendment, government can pass some laws that curtail speech. In the first half of the twentieth century, the US Supreme Court did not consider films to be “speech” protected by the First Amendment. Ohio’s constitution, however, had a provision very similar to the US Constitution’s First Amendment and so film owners asked the US Supreme Court to rule that Ohio’s free speech guarantee prevented censorship. Books, plays, movies, television shows, video games, songs, new media productions, and other forms of entertainment are unquestionably “speech” protected by the First Amendment. Given this, government’s ability to censor or regulate entertainment is limited, which has allowed people who create entertainment to say pretty much anything they want. The entertainment industry has long understood that court decisions, even in an area as hallowed as the First Amendment, can be fragile things.