WHITEHILL v. ELKINS, PRESIDENT, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, et al.

Does the 1st Amendment protect a public employee’s subpoenaed trial testimony that was not a part of the employee’s ordinary job responsibilities?

Whether publication of lawfully obtained communications that had been recorded by an illegal wiretap is protected by the First Amendment, despite being prohibited by a statute.

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

Whether a Florida statute prohibiting grand jury witnesses from disclosing his own testimoy after the grand jury's term has ended violates the First Amendment.

Whether First Amendment principles of academic freedom require a judicial finding of a specific need before peer review materials relating to discrimination charges are disclosed to the EEOC

Whether a qualified First Amendment right of access to criminal proceedings applied to preliminary hearings as conducted in California

Whether a newspaper involved in civil litigation has a First Amendment right to disseminate, in advance of trial, information gained through the pretrial discovery process.

Whether a "use tax" on the cost of paper and ink products consumed in the production of periodic publications violates the guaranted of the freedom of the press in the First Amendment.

Whether the right of the public and press to attend criminal trials is guaranteed under the United States Constitution.

Whether the news media have a constitutional right of access to a county jail, over and above that of other persons, to interview inmates and make sound recordings, films, and photographs for publication and broadcasting.

Whether a police search of a student newspaper, conducted pursuant to a warrant, violated the First Amendment when the information sought pertained to criminal investigations.

Whether a Virginia statute criminalizing the publication of truthful information about judicial review proceedings violated the First Amendment's freedom of speech guarantee.

Whether the DC District Court should release to a broadcast company for broadcasting and sale to the public. tapes admitted into evidence at the trial of President Nixon's former advisers.

Did a state trial judge, presiding over a widely publicized murder trial, violate the First Amendment when he entered an order which, as modified by the Nebraska Supreme Court, restrained petitioner newspaper, broadcasters, journalists, news media associations, and national newswire services from publishing or broadcasting accounts of confessions or admissions made by the accused to law enforcement officers or third parties, except members of the press, and other facts "strongly implicative" of the accused

Did the Georgia law violate the freedom of the press as protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments?

Whether a Florida statute that afforded a right to reply to personal attacks on political candidates by newspapers violated the First Amendment.

Whether a federal prison policy prohibiting newspaper interviews of individually designated inmates of federal prisons abridges the First Amendment's freedom of the press.

Whether a California prison regulation barring media interviews with specific individual inmates infringed on the First Amendments' guarantees of speech and of the press.

Whether RICO's forfeiture provisions constituted a prior restraint on speech and were overbroad thereby violating the First Amendment.

Whether reporters can refuse to disclose sources to state grand juries.

"Does appellants' action in refusing to allow an alien scholar to enter the country to attend academic meetings violate the First Amendment rights of American scholars and students who had invited him?"

Whether the New York Times and the Washington Post could be enjoined from publishing excerpts from a classified Defense Department study of U.S. involvement in the Indochina War. More broadly, whether the First Amendment protects the publication of "classified information."

Whether a teacher's dismissal by the Board of Education for publishing a letter in a newspaper critical of the Board's allocation of funds violated his freedom of speech under the First Amendment.

This case draws into question the constitutionality a section of the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950,which provides that, when a Communist-action organization is under a final order to register, it shall be unlawful for any member of the organization "to engage in any employment in any defense facility."

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 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."

Does requiring individuals to register their political party affiliation with the Attorney General violate the First Amendment?

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 Subcommittee of the House Committee on Un-American Activities inquiry into petitioners past or present membership in the Communist Party violated the First Amendment.

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

Whether an investigation conducted under the aegis of state legislature to determine whether a professor was a subversive person in the state and including asking him for the contents of a lecture he gave at the state university and his knowledge of the Progressive Party violated the First Amendment.

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 a state loyalty oath violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Whether the Alien Registration Act of 1940, authorizing the deportation of legally resident aliens because of membership in the Communist Party, violated freedom of speech and assembly in contravention of 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 sect. 9 (h) of the Taft Hartley Act (1947) which required officers of labor unions to sign affidavits indicating that they were not members of the Communist Party, or supporters of it, or advocated the violent overthrow of the government violated the First Amendment

Whether a citation for contempt of court could, consistent with the First Amendment, be upheld against a Corpus Christi newspaper which published critical news and commentary about a pending court case, even if that information was not entirely true.

Whether a citation for contempt of court against an editor of the Miami Herald for publishing two editorials critical of the court and its judges violated the First Amendment's free press guarantee.

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, consistent with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, mere participation in a meeting called by the Communist Party can be criminalized.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Whether a post office regulation compelling newspapers to disclose the names and addresses of all editors and stockholders as well as circulation information, and to mark all paid material "advertisement" violates the First Amendment's free press guarantees.