Editing Thurgood Marshall (section)

=== First Amendment ===
According to Ball, Marshall felt that the rights protected by the [[First Amendment to the United States Constitution|First Amendment]] were the Constitution's most important principles and that they could be restricted only for extremely compelling reasons.<ref name="Ball-1998" />{{Rp|page=316}} In a 1969 opinion in ''[[Stanley v. Georgia]]'', he held that it was unconstitutional to criminalize the possession of [[Obscenity|obscene material]].<ref name="Tushnet-2006" />{{Rp|page=335}} For the Court, he reversed the conviction of a Georgia man charged with possessing pornography, writing: "If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch."<ref name="Ball-1998" />{{Rp|page=317}} In ''[[Amalgamated Food Employees Union Local 400 v. Logan Valley Plaza]]'', he wrote for the Court that protesters had the right to picket on private property that was open to the public—a decision that was effectively overruled (over Marshall's dissent) four years later in [[Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner|''Lloyd Corporation v. Tanner'']].<ref name="Ball-1998" />{{Rp|pages=323–324}} He emphasized equality in his free speech opinions, writing in ''[[Chicago Police Dept. v. Mosley]]'' that "above all else, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its messages, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content".<ref name="Tushnet-1997a" />{{Rp|page=1513}} Making comparisons to earlier civil rights protests, Marshall vigorously dissented in ''[[Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence]]'', a case in which the Court ruled that the government could forbid homeless individuals from protesting poverty by sleeping overnight in [[Lafayette Park (Washington, D.C.)|Lafayette Park]]; although Burger decried their claims as "frivolous" attempts to "trivialize" the Constitution, Marshall argued that the protesters were engaged in constitutionally protected [[symbolic speech]].<ref name="Williams-1998" />{{Rp|page=378}}<ref name="Ball-1998" />{{Rp|pages=326–327}}

Marshall joined the majority in ''[[Texas v. Johnson]]'' and ''[[United States v. Eichman]]'', two cases in which the Court held that the First Amendment protected the right to burn the American flag.<ref name="Ball-1998" />{{Rp|pages=332–333}} He favored the total [[separation of church and state]], dissenting when the Court upheld in ''[[Lynch v. Donnelly]]'' a city's display of a [[nativity scene]] and joining the majority in ''[[Wallace v. Jaffree]]'' to strike down an Alabama law regarding prayer in schools.<ref name="Ball-1998" />{{Rp|page=|pages=343–346}} On the issue of the [[Free Exercise Clause|free exercise of religion]], Marshall voted with the majority in ''[[Wisconsin v. Yoder]]'' to hold that a school attendance law could not be constitutionally applied to the [[Amish]], and he joined Justice [[Harry Blackmun]]'s dissent when the Court in ''[[Employment Division v. Smith]]'' upheld a restriction on religious uses of [[peyote]] and curtailed ''[[Sherbert v. Verner]]''<nowiki/>'s [[strict scrutiny]] standard.<ref name="Ball-1998" />{{Rp|pages=351–353}} In the view of [[J. Clay Smith Jr.]] and Scott Burrell, the justice was "an unyielding supporter of civil liberties", whose "commitment to the values of the First Amendment was enhanced from actually realizing the historical consequences of being on the weaker and poorer side of power".<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Smith |first1=J. Clay Jr |author-link=J. Clay Smith Jr. |last2=Burrell |first2=Scott |date=Summer 1994 |title=Justice Thurgood Marshall and the First Amendment |url=https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/arzjl26&id=473&div=&collection= |journal=[[Arizona State Law Journal]] |volume=26 |issue=2 |pages=461–478}}</ref>{{Rp|page=477}}