Significance: This ruling established the usage of the First Amendment to overrule state laws that deprive citizens of their fundamental rights. Specifically, this decision stated that the constitutional freedoms of speech and the press could not be restricted by state laws.
Background: Benjamin Gitlow, a socialist, had been arrested in 1920 for publishing and distributing a pamphlet called the Left-Wing Manifesto, in which he promoted the establishment of socialism through strikes and other class actions. He was convicting of violating the New York Criminal Anarchy Law of 1902, which made it illegal for anyone to call for the violent overthrow of the government.
Decision: This case was argued on April 12, 1923; reargued on November 23, 1923; and decided on June 8, 1925, by a vote of 7 to 2. Justice Edward Sanford spoke for the Court, stating that the Fourteenth Amendment protects freedom of speech and the press in cases where that freedom has been unfairly taken away by the states. Nevertheless, the Court upheld Gitlow’s conviction, indicating that states could punish people who say things that might encourage violent or criminal acts that endanger others. Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis dissented, disagreeing with the majority’s ruling that words could be punished separately from action.
Excerpt from the Opinion of the Court: “It is a fundamental principle, long established, that the freedom of speech and of the press which is secured by the Constitution, does not confer [give someone] an absolute right to speak or publish, without responsibility, whatever one may choose. . . .
“[A] State may punish utterances endangering the foundations of organized government and threatening its overthrow by unlawful means. . . . Freedom of speech and press . . . does not protect disturbances to the public peace or the attempt to subvert [overthrow] the government. It does not protect publications or teachings which tend to subvert or imperil [endanger] the government or to impede [block] or hinder it in the performance of its governmental duties.”
