A lot of US Supreme Court First Amendment cases might never have been decided:
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In the
United States, numerous cases involving Jehovah's Witnesses are now landmark decisions of
First Amendment law. In all, Jehovah's Witnesses brought 23 separate First Amendment actions before the U.S. Supreme Court between 1938 and 1946.
Supreme Court Justice
Harlan Fiske Stone once quipped, "I think the Jehovah's Witnesses ought to have an endowment in view of the aid which they give in solving the legal problems of civil liberties."
[28]
The most important U.S. Supreme Court legal victory won by the Witnesses was in the case
West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette (1943), in which the court ruled that school children could not be forced to
pledge allegiance to or
salute the
U.S. flag. The
Barnette decision overturned an earlier case,
Minersville School District vs. Gobitis (1940), in which the court had held that Witnesses could be forced against their will to pay homage to the flag.
The
fighting words doctrine was established by
Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942). In that case, a Jehovah's Witness had reportedly told a New Hampshire town marshal who was attempting to prevent him from preaching "You are a damned
racketeer" and "a damned
fascist" and was arrested. The court upheld the arrest, thus establishing that "
insulting or 'fighting words', those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate
breach of the peace" are among the "well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech [which] the prevention and punishment of...have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem."
On January 15, 1951, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision of a lower court in convicting two Jehovah's Witnesses lecturers of disorderly conduct of conducting public speeches in a city park of Harford County in Maryland without permits. The Supreme Court stated that the initial conviction was based on the lack of permits that were unconstitutionally denied, therefore convictions were not able to stand. The initial conviction was declined for review by the Maryland Court of Appeals under its normal appellate power, and further declined to take the case on certiorari, stating that the issues were not "matters of public interest" which made it desirable to review.
Chief Justice Fred Vinson delivered the opinion of the Court, stating that rarely has any case been before this Court which shows so clearly an unwarranted discrimination in a refusal to issue such a license. It is true that the City Council held a hearing at which it considered the application. But we have searched the record in vain to discover any valid basis for the refusal.
[29]
On March 9, 1953, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned and remanded the Supreme Court of
Rhode Island's affirmation of the conviction of an Ordained Minister of Jehovah's Witnesses for a violation of holding a religious meeting in a city park of Pawtucket. The opinion of the court was that a religious service of Jehovah's Witnesses was treated differently from a religious service of other sects. That amounts to the state preferring some religious groups over this one. The court stated that the city had not prohibited church services in the park as Catholics could hold mass in the same park and Protestants could conduct their church services there without violating the ordinance.
[30]
In a more recent case, Jehovah's Witnesses refused to get government permits to preach door-to-door in
Stratton, Ohio. In 2002, the case was heard in the U.S. Supreme Court (
Watchtower Society v. Village of Stratton — 536 U.S. 150 (2002)). The Court ruled in favor of Jehovah's Witnesses, holding that making it a misdemeanor (to engage in door-to-door advocacy without first registering with the mayor and receiving a permit) violates the first Amendment as it applies to religious proselytizing, anonymous political speech, and the distribution of handbills.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_cases_involving_Jehovah's_Witnesses_by_country#United_States
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"Zechariah Chafee, a great champion of free speech, once described the Jehovah's Witnesses, whose free speech rights he repeatedly supported, as a 'sect distinguished by great religious zeal and astonishing powers of annoyance.'"
http://www.dorfonlaw.org/2011/03/okeefes-no-hero-but-he-is-journalist.html