The Post-Dispatch has called upon a St. Louis judge to dissolve an order barring the paper from publishing mental health information about accused murderer Thomas Kinworthy. Kinworthy, 46, is accused of killing officer Tamarris Bohannon on August 29, 2020 at a house on Hartford Avenue. Joseph E. Martineau, representing the Post-Dispatch, called St. Louis Circuit
The point of the First Amendment is to protect expression people hate – Nazi protesters in Skokie, anti-war protesters burning the American flag, KKK hooligans in an Ohio farmfield, Christian fundamentalists protesting the burial of American soldiers. Tolerance for the speech we despise is the lesson of 232 years of the First Amendment. Yet the
When the great-grandmothers of today’s young women were born, women couldn’t vote. They were expected to be mothers and homemakers. When the grandmothers of today’s young women were born, women had no legal protections against discrimination in education, jobs or credit. The Supreme Court said “Equal Protection” in the 14th Amendment didn’t include women. When
Today’s conservative Roberts Court is a bastion of First Amendment freedom as was the liberal Warren Court half a century ago. But the winners are different. Establishment insiders win today whereas outsiders won most often during the Warren years. On its 200th birthday in 1991, the First Amendment had developed into a powerful shield against
The Bill of Rights has helped create what is arguably the freest enduring society in history. It wasn’t always that way. The original Constitution didn’t have a Bill of Rights. Once the Bill of Rights was added, it didn’t apply for a century to state governments. As recently as 90 years ago, no one had
