Opinion: Each of the five protections of the First Amendment — the press, speech, assembly, petition and religion — is being undermined in today’s political climate.

A First Amendment controversy is brewing in Oklahoma over a college essay that led to an allegation of religious discrimination and an instructor put on leave. The matter involves an essay for a ...

The early correspondence of James Madison – who went on to become the fourth U.S president and played a key role in the drafting of the Constitution and Bill of Rights – wrestles with the tensions of ...

For Madison, religious freedom was not a tool for political domination. Rather, he saw it as a constitutional safeguard for ...

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion but not every practice is automatically protected. From prayer in public schools to vaccine exemptions and workplace dress codes, some acts of faith ...

The First Amendment is only 45 words long, yet 235 years of court battles have left Americans fiercely devoted to an idea ...

Louisiana can proceed with a law requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments, according to a federal court decision on Feb. 20, 2026. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals voted that it ...

Religious freedom, Congress unanimously declared in 1998, “undergirds the very origin and existence of the United States.” Presidents of both parties have called it a “fundamental human right,” a ...

In recent years, litigation on certain types of religious freedom lawsuits have been practically run of the mill: prayer on school premises, for example, and government funding for students at ...

Protections for religious freedom in the U.S. have grown in recent years with multiple states adopting laws to strengthen the constitutional right to freely exercise one’s religion. As of 2025, 30 ...