1. I selected Lemon v. Kurtzman. The First Amendment Clause that was being violated is called the Establishment Clause. This clause states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” This makes sense, as Church and state are indeed supposed to be separate.
2. In this case, the issue involved the funding of a nonpublic Catholic school in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. The issue was whether or not the state would pay extra money to the teachers if they covered secular material using public school supplies. Lemon was the name of a taxpayer representing a group of taxpayers while Kurtzman was the superintendent of schools in Pennsylvania. The Supreme Court ruled that providing an extra salary to a nonpublic religious school was a violation of the Establishment Clause because of issues involving separation of Church and state. As a result, the Lemon test was created, which lists the requirements for legislation concerning religion. The government must stay secular, cannot advance or inhibit religion, and cannot get excessively involved in religion activity, according to the Lemon test.
3. The second case I have selected is Reno v. ACLU. The First Amendment Clause violated in this case is known as the Free Speech Clause. This clause states that Congress cannot diminish or prohibit the freedom of speech or of the press.
4. The issue being argued here involved restricting explicit content on the Internet to protect minors. Essentially, all nine justices decided to strike down the Communications Decency Act, which was set up by the U.S. Congress. The Supreme Court ruled that the CDA was a violation of our freedom of speech. The argument was that it was not fair to restrict content for adults as well as children and that adults should be allowed to view whatever content they wish.
5. One political institution that may limit the impact of Supreme Court decision includes political parties and Congress. Even though members of a political party and staffers for legislatures have the freedom to burn flags or post indecent material on the Internet, these two institutions can prohibit their members and staffers from doing so.