Death Row, Religious Freedom, Legislative Censure, and Free Speech

Last week the Supreme Court handed down two nearly unanimous decisions in cases involving the First Amendment. One was an 8-1 decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts in Ramirez v. Collier, in which the Court sided with a death row inmate who claimed he had the right to have the religious leader of his choice touch him and pray audibly for him in the execution chamber. The other opinion was 9-0 in Houston Community College v. Wilson, where the Court held that a legislative censure issued by a community college board did not violate the free speech rights of the respondent, another trustee on the board, in an opinion written by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

First Amendment experts Michael McConnell of Stanford Law School and Eugene Volokh of UCLA Law join host Jeffrey Rosen to discuss the opinions’ impact on how we interpret and understand religious freedom and freedom of speech in America.

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