BOOS v. BARRY

Whether a municipal sign code that restricts posting based on purpose is either content-based or content-neutral and, if content-based, whether the code survives strict scrutiny.

Did the Secret Service unconstitutionally discriminate against protestors when asking one group to leave while allowing another to stay?

Do Vermonts mandatory limits on candidate expenditures violate the First Amendment as interpreted in Buckley v. Valeo (1976)?

Whether protests can be held liable in court for inflicting intentional emotional distress when picketing a funeral with hyperbolic signs, some of which are directed at the deceased.

Whether the First Amendment allows public schools to prohibit students from displaying messages that allegedly promote the use of illegal substances at so-called school-sponsored events. Whether the Ninth Circuit departed from established principles of qualified immunity in holding that a public high school principal was liable in a damages lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. _ 1983 when, pursuant to the school districts policy against displaying messages promoting illegal substances, she disciplined a student for displaying a large banner with a slang marijuana reference at a school-sponsored, faculty-supervised event.

Whether the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) induces public libraries to violate the 1st Amendment, thereby exceeding Congress's power under the Spending Clause by providing that a library that is otherwise eligible for special federal assistance for Internet access in the form of discount rates for educational purposes under the Telecommunications Act of 1996, 47 U.S.C. 254(h), or grants under the Library Services and Technology Act, 20 U.S.C. 9121 et seq., may not receive that assistance unless the library has in place a policy that includes the operation of a technology protection measure on Internet-connected computers that protects against access by all persons to visual depictions that are obscene or child pornography, and that protects against access by minors to visual depictions that are harmful to minors, a condition of the receipt of federal funding.

Whether a statute banning cross-burning with the intent to intimidate violates the First Amendment.

Whether the "harmful to minors provisions" of the Child Online Protection Act violate the First Amendment.

A Colorado statue establishes a 100-foot zone around the entrance to any "health care facility." Within this buffer zone, people may not, without consent "knowingly approach another person within 8 feet," for the purpose of passing out literature or engaging in "oral protest, education, or counseling" on a public sidewalk. The question is whether the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of the speaker are abridged by the protection the statute provides for the unwilling listener.

Whether a federal law requiring cable operators to "fully scramble" indecent and sexually explicit programming on adult stations violate the First Amendment.

Whether the city of Erie's ban on public nudity violates the First Amendment or is a valid exercise of the city's power to regulate harmful secondary effects associated with nude-dancing establishments.

Whether a mandatory student activity fee used to facilitate extracurricular student speech at a public university violates the First Amendment.

Whether a law requiring the National Endowment for the Arts to consider "general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public" before awarding grants to artistic projects is impermissibly viewpoint-based and unconstitutionally vague.

Whether the government may constitutionally require cable television system operators to carry local broadcast stations.

Whether a public university can deny funds to a religious student group that it provides to nonreligious student groups.

Whether the court-mandated inclusion of the Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc. (GLIB) in Boston’s 1993 St. Patrick’s Day parade violated the First Amendment rights of the private group, the South Boston Allied War Veterans Council, that the city of Boston authorized to organize the parade.

Whether a local school district that allows its facilities to be used for social and civic purposes may prevent a religious organization from using the facilities to show a movie that presents family issues from a religious perspective.

Whether a city ordinance prohibiting the distribution of commercial flyers from news racks on city-owned property violates the First Amendment.

Whether an ordinance punishing such action that “arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, or gender” violates the First Amendment.

Whether a New York statute that required that an accused or convicted criminal's income from speech describing his crime be deposited in an escrow account for possible distribution to the criminal's victims or other creditors violated the First Amendment.

Whether the First Amendment prevents a state from imposing a sales tax on only selected segments of the media.

Whether Appellees' prosecution for burning a United States flag in violation of the Flag Protection Act of 1989 is consistent with the First Amendment.

Whether a New York City regulation requiring performers in Central Park to use the city's sound amplification system and technicians violates the First Amendment

Whether Gregory Lee Johnson's conviction under a Texas law for publicly burning an American flag in protest violates the First Amendment.

Whether a high school principal’s removal of two articles from the student newspaper about pregnancy and divorce violated the First Amendment rights of the student editors. To what extent, consistent with the First Amendment, may educators exercise editorial control over school-sponsored speech?

Whether a state sales tax scheme that taxes general interest magazines, but exempts newspapers and religious, professional, trade, and sports journals, violates the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of the press

Whether federal exclusion of legal defense and political advocacy organizations from participation in a charity drive aimed at federal employees violates the First Amendment

Whether a federal law that prohibits a photographic color reproduction of United States currency on the cover of a magazine is unconstitutional either on its face or as applied to a magazine publisher.

Whether the denial of a permit to protestors requesting to camp out in Washington D.C. parks, according to Park Service regulations, violated the protestors' First Amendment rights.

Whether an interschool mail system's grant of mail access to the Perry Education Association but no other union violated the First Amendment's free speech guarantee.

Whether a state, consistent with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, may confine religious organizations wishing to sell and distribute religious literature at a state fair to an assigned location within the fairgrounds.

Whether a state statute that bars picketing of residences or dwellings, but exempts from its prohibition "the peaceful picketing of a place of employment involved in a labor dispute" violates the First Amendment because it is not content-neutral.

Whether an order of appellee New York Public Service Commission that prohibits the inclusion by appellant and other public utility companies in monthly bills of inserts discussing controversial issues of public policy directly infringes the freedom of speech protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments and thus is invalid.

Whether striking union members have a First Amendment free speech right to picket inside a shopping center in order to advertise their strike against the owner of one of the stores.

Whether a conviction for affixing a peace symbol to a United States flag under a state statute prohibiting flag desecration violates the First Amendment.

Whether a state may punish speech that is not part of “narrowly limited classes of speech” outside First Amendment protection (such as incitement, obscenity, or fighting words), and whether advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future period qualifies as incitement.

Does a Chicago city ordinance which bans non-union picketing within 150 feet of a school building violate both the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

Whether the city’s “anti-picketing” ordinance and “anti-noise” ordinance violated the First Amendment.

Whether a Georgia criminal statute prohibiting “opprobrious words or abusive language, tending to cause a breach of the peace” violates the First Amendment.

Whether arresting someone for wearing a jacket that says “Fuck the Draft” under a California statute which prohibits “offensive conduct” violated the First Amendment.

Whether a New York statute that made it illegal to "publicly [to] mutilate, deface, defile, or defy, trample upon, or cast contempt upon either by words or act [any flag of the United States]" violates the First Amendment.

Whether a Birmingham city ordinance, which gave public officials the unbridled authority to issue or withhold parade permits without reference to the legitimate regulation of public streets and sidewalks, unconstitutionally abridged the petitioner’s First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

Whether the wearing of armbands by public school students as a form of symbolic speech is protected by the First Amendment.

Whether burning a draft card as part of an anti-war protest is symbolic speech protected by the First Amendment.

Must a protester, when faced with an injunction enforcing a facially unconstitutional ordinance, engage in an orderly judicial review of that injunction before disobeying it?

Whether 1st and 14th Amendment freedoms give students the right to engage in peaceful protests on jailhouse grounds.

Whether a breach of the peace conviction arising out of a peaceful sit-in in a segregated library infringed upon the petitioners First Amendment free speech, assembly, and petition rights.

Do statutory "disturbance of the peace" and "obstruction of public passageways" convictions, for a peaceable demonstration that contains speech that may potentially incite violence, infringe on a demonstrator's First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly?

Do statutory "disturbance of the peace" and "obstruction of public passageways" convictions, for a peaceable demonstration that contains speech that may potentially incite violence, infringe on a demonstrator's First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly?

Whether the First Amendment was violated when civil rights protestors, marching in front of the state house, were arrested after refusing to disperse when a crowd gathered.

Whether a municipal ban on the use of any sound system emitting "loud and raucous" noises on public streets violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.