Year in Review: 2024 was another banner year for First Amendment advocacy

Protect The 1st kicked off January with House passage of the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (PRESS) Act, which would establish a federal journalistic privilege to safeguard confidential news sources in legal proceedings, while offering reasonable exceptions for extreme situations.
 
This is not the first time the House has passed the PRESS Act. And it is not the first time the Senate has ignored the strong bipartisan support for shielding journalists and their sources from government intrusion. False concerns about the PRESS Act were raised at the 11th hour. When the 119th Congress gavels in on Jan. 3, it will mark another opportunity for advocates to push this commonsense legislation – which already exists in some form in 49 states – over the finish line. Protect The 1st will be advocating in public and on the Hill, supporting the PRESS Act every step of the way.
 
We saw movement on school choice, with the Educational Choice for Children Act favorably clearing the House Ways and Means Committee. It’s the furthest a school choice measure has ever made it in Congress. If passed, the bill would provide tax credits for charitable donations to Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs) that support needy children, paving the way for millions of families to access better educational opportunities that align with their intergenerational, First Amendment-protected expression of their values and needs.
 
Federal progress on school choice mirrors the national, bipartisan movement. Since the pandemic, 12 states have passed some form of universal school choice, with Alabama and Louisiana joining the ranks this year. South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas are edging closer to adopting similar measures. With support for school choice at an all-time high – 76 percent of voters according to RealClear Opinion Research – we’re likely to see the issue gain even greater prominence in 2025.
 
In 2022, Protect The 1st ranked 6th in the nation for filing amicus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2024, we kept up the momentum, commenting on or filing briefs in many critical First Amendment cases across the country.
 
In January, one such case was decided in favor of religious liberty: Young Israel of Tampa v. Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority (HART). The 11th Circuit found that HART’s policy prohibiting ads that “promote a religious faith or religious organization” was vague, reasoning that “HART’s policy, even if viewpoint neutral, is unreasonable due to a lack of objective and workable standards.”
 
In February, our Senior Legal Advisor Eugene Volokh filed a brief in X Corp. v. Bonta, opposing a California law that forced social media companies to disclose their content moderation practices. Volokh said the law’s “intent is to strongarm social media companies to restrict certain viewpoints – to combine law and public pressure to do something about how platforms treat those particular viewpoints, and not other viewpoints.” The Ninth Circuit accepted the reasoning in our brief, ruling that the California bill was “not narrowly tailored to serve the State’s purported goal of requiring social media companies to be transparent about their policies and practices.”
 
In May, we also filed an amicus brief before the U.S. Supreme Court in a pivotal case challenging Michigan’s Blaine Amendment, which prohibits state aid to private, religiously affiliated schools. Although the Supreme Court denied certiorari, we will continue to affirm the importance of educational choice and religious freedom, ensuring that all families have the right to educate their children in a manner consistent with their beliefs. In the meantime, Congress should kill state Blaine amendments – remnants of 19th century anti-Catholic sentiment – by enshrining recent Supreme Court precedents, Espinoza v. Montana and Carson v. Makin, into federal law.
 
We had more success on the issue of equal access to public funding in Loffman v. California Department of Education. The Ninth Circuit found that a California prohibition on distributing special education funds to religious schools violated the First Amendment.
 
The Supreme Court stayed busy this year, ruling on several critical First Amendment cases. Murthy v. Missouri could have been a major turning point in setting limits on government “jawboning” to pressure private actors like social media companies to restrict speech. Unfortunately, in this instance the Court punted, finding an insufficient connection between government action and the ultimate deplatforming decisions at issue.
 
On the other hand, the Court came through in a big way with NRA v. Vullo, where it found that a New York insurance regulator improperly coerced Lloyd’s of London to sever ties with that Second Amendment advocacy group. 
 
Debanking or otherwise deplatforming individuals or groups because of their beliefs remains a major threat to free speech; something we covered extensively this year. We also covered donor doxing, an increasingly common tactic in states that intimidate donors supporting a particular cause. As Chief Justice Roberts wrote in a 2021 repudiation of such a law in California, “compelled disclosure of affiliation with groups engaged in advocacy may constitute as effective a restraint on free­dom of association as [other] forms of governmental action.”
 
2025 promises to be a busy year in protecting speech, religious expression, and other freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. We couldn’t do all that we do without you!

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