Editing Jehovah's Witnesses (section)

=== United States ===
{{Main|Jehovah's Witnesses in the United States}}
In the United States, legal challenges by Jehovah's Witnesses prompted a series of state and federal court rulings that reinforced judicial protections for civil liberties.{{sfn|Botting|1993|pages=1–14}}<ref>{{cite book |author=Shawn Francis Peters|pages=12–16|publisher=University Press of Kansas|title=Judging Jehovah's Witnesses|year=2000}}</ref> Among the rights strengthened by Witness court victories in the US are the protection of religious conduct from federal and state interference, the right to abstain from patriotic rituals and military service, the right of patients to refuse medical treatment, and the right to engage in public discourse.<ref>{{cite web |access-date=August 16, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120901075011/http://www.knocking.org/Jehovahs_Witness_History_Civil_Rights.html|archive-date=September 1, 2012|publisher=Knocking.org|title=Jehovah's Witnesses and civil rights|url-status=dead|url=http://www.knocking.org/Jehovahs_Witness_History_Civil_Rights.html}}</ref> Authors including [[William J. Whalen|William Whalen]], Shawn Francis Peters and former members [[Barbara Grizzuti Harrison]], Alan Rogerson, and William Schnell have claimed the arrests and mob violence in the 1930s and 1940s were the consequence of what appeared to be a deliberate course of provocation of authorities and other religious groups by Jehovah's Witnesses.<ref>{{cite book|first=Shawn Francis|last=Peters|isbn=978-0-7006-1008-2|page=82|publisher=University Press of Kansas|title=Judging Jehovah's Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights Revolution|url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/judgingjehovahsw0000pete|year=2000}}</ref>{{sfn|Rogerson|1969|page=59}} Harrison, Schnell, and Whalen have suggested Rutherford invited and cultivated opposition for publicity purposes in a bid to attract dispossessed members of society, and to convince members that persecution by the outside world was evidence of the truth of their struggle to serve God.<ref>{{cite book|author=Barbara Grizzuti Harrison|chapter=6 |title=Visions of Glory|year=1978}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=William J.|last=Whalen|location=New York |page=190|publisher=John Day Company|title=Armageddon Around the Corner: A Report on Jehovah's Witnesses |year=1962}}</ref>

In 1943, the Supreme Court ruled in ''[[West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette]]'' that requiring students to salute the flag was a violation of their [[First Amendment to the United States Constitution|First Amendment]] rights.{{sfn|Knox|2018|page=69}}