BRANDENBURG v. OHIO

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 a federal statute criminalizing depictions of animal cruelty violated the First Amendment.

Whether a state law requiring voters to have a photo ID violates the Petitioners' First Amendment rights.

Whether the state attorney generals complaint operates to limit defendants ability to engage in solicitation-an activity protected by the first amendment. General issue: how much First Amendment protection should be given to the business of charitable solicitation, including telemarketers?

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

Does New Jersey’s public accommodation law violate the free speech and freedom of association rights of the Boy Scouts of America, a private group, by requiring it to admit a gay scoutmaster?

Whether a political party's associational rights under the First Amendment require a state to permit multiple-party candidacies on the state's election ballot.

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 state may constitutionally prohibit write-in voting.

Whether a state, through its election laws, may constitutionally (1) prohibit a political party in one district from using the same name that a different political party uses in another district; (2) require more signatures to get on the ballot in a multidistrict political subdivision than are required to get on a state-wide ballot; and (3) require a political party seeking to be on ballots in both suburban Cook County and in Chicago to obtain 25,000 signatures from both areas.

Whether a New York criminal statute that prohibits persons from knowingly promoting sexual performances by children under the age of 16 by distributing material which depicts such performances violates the First Amendment.

Under the First Amendment as applied to the states, can a licensed pharmacist be disciplined for unprofessional conduct if he "publishes, advertises or promotes, directly or indirectly, in any manner whatsoever, any amount, price, fee, premium, discount, rebate or credit terms . . . for any drugs which may be dispensed only by prescription"?

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 10-day restraining order issued against the "white supremacist" National States Rights Party must be set aside as violative of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

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 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.

Whether the freedom of speech provisions of the First and Fourteenth Amendments protect a criminal suspect who makes a false statement about a police officer without "actual malice."

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?

To what extent does the First Amendment protections for speech and press limit a state's power to award damages in a libel action brought by a public official against critics of his official conduct?

Whether the Florida Legislative Investigative Committee, in an attempt to inform itself about activities of subversive organizations, violated petitioners First and Fourteenth Amendment association rights.

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 Virginia barratry statute which banned the improper solicitation of any legal or professional business unconstitutionally burdened the First Amendment freedom of association rights of the petitioner and petitioners clients.

Whether the membership clause of the Smith Act, as applied to an "active member" of the Communist party, infringes on freedoms of expression and association in violation of the First Amendment.

Whether a conviction under the membership clause of the Smith Act was based on sufficient evidence that a Communist Party member "presently advocated forcible overthrow of the Government."

Whether a Louisiana statute, which requires that each local organization affiliated with an out-of-state association annually file an affidavit stating that none of its national officers are members of "subversive" organizations, violates the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of freedom of association.

Whether a Louisiana statute which compels teachers in public institutions to disclose which organizations they belong or contribute to unconstitutionally burdens a teachers 14th Amendment right of free association.

Whether The City of Little Rocks license tax ordinance which requires the compulsory disclosure of any local organizations membership list in order to verify its tax-exempt status unconstitutionally burdens the freedom of association of an organizations members

Whether a California law requiring a loyalty oath in order to gain a tax exemption violated due process of law.

Did an Alabama law that required the NAACP to provide the names and addresses of all its members and agents in the state violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments?

"The dispositive question is whether obscenity is utterance within the area of protected speech and press."

Whether the conviction of 14 Communists under the Smith Act for conspiring to "advocate and teach the duty of overthrowing the government by force or violence" violated the First Amendment

Whether the distribution of a racist leaflet, in violation of a state criminal libel statute, was protected under the First Amendment.

Whether the Smith Act which makes it a crime to "knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise, or teach the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or by assignation" is on its face and as applied to the Petitioners violative of the First Amendment.

Whether the police can charge a speaker with disorderly conduct for continuing to speak to a restless and hostile crowd.

Does the First Amendment protect people’s right to say things that make other people so angry that it may lead them to cause unrest?

"This case . . . raises questions concerning the constitutional power of a state to apply its antitrade restraint law to labor union activities, and to enjoin union members from peaceful picketing carried on as an essential and inseparable part of a course of conduct which is in violation of the state law. The picketing occurred in Kansas City, Missouri. The injunction was issued by a Missouri state court."

Whether a Mississippi statute punishing speech "reasonably tending to create an attitude of stubborn refusal to salute, honor, and respect the flag and government of the United States" or "calculated to encourage disloyalty to the government of the United States" violates the First Amendment

Does the New Hampshire statute violate Chaplinsky's First and Fourteenth Amendment rights?

Whether a Georgia law prohibiting an "attempt to incite insurrection" was unconstitutional as applied to a Communist member planning to distribute literature, because the law was too vague to provide a sufficiently ascertainable standard of guilt.

Whether a Minnesota statute that allowed "abatement"—an injunction against future publication—of printed material deemed to be a public nuisance constituted an unconstitutional prior restraint in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

Does a California statute that makes the display of a red flag as a statement of "opposition to organized government" violate the First & Fourteenth Amendments?

Whether quoting in print "equivocal language" from the preamble to the IWW Constitution amounted to criminal syndicalism unprotected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Whether California's criminal syndicalism law that made it a crime to defend, advocate, or establish an organization committed to violent means of effecting government change violated the First Amendment.

Whether (1) the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment applies to states, and (2) whether the state criminal anarchy law violated First Amendment.

Whether the Espionage Act violates the First Amendment as applied to distributing leaflets calling for a strike at U.S. ammunitions plants.

Whether a political candidate’s speech that was considered to obstruct the United States’ war effort in violation of the Espionage Act deserved First Amendment protection.

Whether a conviction under the Espionage Act of 1917 for circulating anti-war articles should be overturned on First Amendment grounds.

Charles Schenck was charged with conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act for distributing anti-war leaflets that urged people to boycott the draft.