What rights would be violated by laws restricting your gestures in US? What rights would be violated by laws restricting your gestures in the US? Examples: A law forbidding the US Military salute A law forbidding &quot;dabbing&quot; (making &quot;a gesture in which a person drops their head into the bent crook of a slanted, upwardly angled arm, while raising the opposite arm out straight in a parallel direction&quot;)
In the United States, the First Amendment generally protects your right to communicate using gestures. Probably the most common example of efforts to outlaw specific gestures involves the &quot;middle finger,&quot; which is a symbolic &quot;fuck you&quot; to its target. The U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged in W. Va. State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 632 (1943), that symbolic gestures can be &quot;a form of utterance&quot; protected by the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, and it addressed the middle finger specifically in a decision last year. In Mahanoy Area Sch. Dist. v. B.L., 141 S. Ct. 2038, 2046 (2021), a school suspended a student from its cheerleading team because she posted a picture to social media showing her and a friend &quot;with middle fingers raised&quot; (and bearing the caption &quot;Fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer fuck everything.&quot;). But the Supreme Court held that this violated her right to free speech, as her post &quot;did not involve features that would place it outside the First Amendment’s ordinary protection. That decision aligned neatly with decades of lower-court decisions holding the same. E.g., Bad Frog Brewery v. N.Y. State Liquor Auth., 134 F.3d 87 (2d Cir. 1998); Sandul v. Larion, 119 F.3d 1250, 1255 (6th Cir. 1997) (&quot;Sandul's action was not fighting words and therefore was speech protected by the First Amendment.&quot;). Of course, First Amendment protectiosn are not absolute, so although the government almost certainly could not criminalize dabbing itself, it would be easier for a governmental body to prohibit it during its public meetings, easier still for a government employer to justify disciplining a working for dabbing, and easier still for a public school to justify disciplining a student for dabbing.
Everything is allowed unless the law says it isn’t Common law systems like the USA are ‘exceptions based’ - the law permits everything except what it prohibits. So, your question is backwards - rather than looking for laws that allow it, you need to look for laws that prohibit, restrict or regulate it. There are laws that regulate this but none that prohibit it.
Most people would refer to this as &quot;defense of others.&quot; In North Carolina, though, the relevant statute, G.S. 14-51.3, formally refers to this as &quot;Use of force in defense of person.&quot; The statute allows a defense against criminal and civil liability for non-deadly force used &quot;against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that the conduct is necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the other's imminent use of unlawful force.&quot; Note, however, that the statute does not allow you to invoke the defense when the victim &quot;is a law enforcement officer ... was lawfully acting in the performance of his or her official duties and ... identified himself or herself in accordance with any applicable law.&quot; This raises the question of whether the officer in this case was &quot;lawfully acting in the performance of his official duties&quot; when the relative intervened. If he was, the defense would likely be unavailable.
It's less that the first amendment does not apply to minors and more that the first amendment does not apply to the parents' conduct. The first amendment to the U.S. constitution reads (emphasis added): Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Thus the first amendment applies to the conduct of the federal government (and has its reach extended to state governments through Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296 (1940)). The parents' conduct, while perhaps objectionable morally, does not violate the children's rights under the first amendment, as they are neither the state nor the federal government.
Law The origin of the phrase is from the Supreme Court of the United States in the case Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919). It specifically rules on the limitation of freedom of speech (first amendment): The original ruling is this: The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. [...] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. As pointed out by @phoog, this does not saying anything about the lawfullness of shouting "fire", it says that if your speech creates a clear and present danger, the first amendment will not protect you, even if the danger does not result in actual harm. Commentary If these instances are correct then it would seem clear that Freedom of Speech is being honored as it's the result of speech, not the speech itself, that could be an offense. You seem to think that it should be illegal, but only if it results in a panic that endangers people. If people ignore you, you think it should be protected by your first amendment rights. That's not how the law works. The law tries, among other things. To establish norms for human behaviour. For example, you will be punished for driving an automobile while intoxicated, even of this does not result in you running over somebody. In the words of the supreme court: If your actions "are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger", the congress has the right to prevent you from doing so, despite the first amendment.
A law which punishes a specific person – a "bill of attainder" – is unconstitutional. Private laws, which benefit an individual, are legal. An example is Private Law 112-1, which says Notwithstanding any other provision of law, for the purposes of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101 et seq.), Sopuruchi Chukwueke shall be deemed to have been lawfully admitted to, and remained in, the United States, and shall be eligible for adjustment of status to that of an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence under section 245 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1255) upon filing an application for such adjustment of status. Nothing prevents such a bill from being made law, where the benefit is a grant of citizenship. Of course, it has to be signed by the president, or else congress must override his veto.
The First Amendment forbids the government from abridging your freedom of speech. There is no (federal) law against your private employer doing so. A good summary is https://www.americanbar.org/publications/insights_on_law_andsociety/15/winter-2015/chill-around-the-water-cooler.html
In general this is protected by the first amendment. It is not in general a problem describing how one can one can do something illegal. But there are special cases to be careful with. You might want to do some research into the limits on free speech. It would be hard to provide an answer that fully covers all your different cases and you would need to be more specific about what illegal activity you want to describe. In describing how to do something illegal, you might accidentally share information that you are not allowed to share. When you post things online, this can be considered as publishing or exporting. Therefore certain export restrictions might apply. Also, It is illegal to publish bomb making manuals, with the knowledge or intent that this information be used to commit a federal crime of violence. See https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/842. There are restrictions on publishing material relating to cryptography without having an export license. Granted, this isn't necessarily related to publishing things that are illegal, but just to give an idea about how publishing/exporting knowledge can causes problems. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) sets restrictions on what you can publish about arms. What you publish can't be “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action.” See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio. One might imagine that you could get into trouble if someone interprets what you do as inciting or producing a lawless action. It might sound obvious, but you want to make sure that you have the right to share the information that you have. The information that you are providing might be copyrighted in some way.