Can U.S. states establish state religions? The first amendment says: 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. The tenth amendment says: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Since Congress can not establish a religion, and any power not delegated to U.S. by Constitution is reserved to the States, this seems to imply that the States can establish religions. Is this correct? If, say, Florida wanted to make Scientology the official religion of Florida, would the federal government have any right to prevent this?
No. The Fourteenth Amendment says: nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; The Supreme Court has determined that this clause incorporates much of the Bill of Rights. The logic is mildly tortured, but it's basically that "due process of law" means "due process of a law that is compatible with the fundamental rights of a free society." This logic is known as "substantive due process," because it reads in to "due process of law" requirements about what those laws can do (as opposed to procedural due process, which is about the actual procedures being used). It's pretty settled that the Bill of Rights, after the 14th Amendment, should apply to the states. There's another possible way to get there: the 14th Amendment says "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States," which Justice Thomas recently thought meant that the Second Amendment applies to the states in a concurring opinion. But as of now, substantive due process is the standard logic for it. Virtually all of the Bill of Rights is incorporated against the states. There are a couple things which aren't (like juries in lawsuits, and grand juries), but the Establisment Clause is incorporated (see Everson v. Board of Education, 330 US 1).
The US does give deference to organizations that claim to be &quot;religious&quot;, for example the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which &quot;Prohibits any agency, department, or official of the United States or any State (the government) from substantially burdening a person's exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability, except that the government may burden a person's exercise of religion only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person: (1) furthers a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.&quot; Or the Burwell v Hobby Lobby case based on that law &quot;allowing privately held for-profit corporations to be exempt from a regulation its owners religiously object to, if there is a less restrictive means of furthering the law's interest&quot;, or Scientology being allowed to not follow minimum wage, or how Title VII of the Civil Rights Act states &quot;This subchapter shall not apply to an employer with respect to the employment of aliens outside any State, or to a religious corporation&quot;. The greater the nexus between the conduct and the religious nature of the organization, the more deference is given. For instance, roles classified as &quot;ministry&quot;, such as a priest, will be given more leeway than a more secular role such as a construction worker who happens to be building a church. BTW, as far 501(c)(3) is concerned, there is deference in that classification, as religious organizations do not have the same burden of establishing charitable purpose that secular organizations do. Also, having your nonprofit be a church would mean that Immortals wouldn't be able to fight on the grounds.
The only applicable law is the local trespassing law. If he wants, the proprietor can demand that the patron leave, and if the patron does not leave, he can be arrested for trespassing. It uncontroversial that the First Amendment protects racist declarations.
Probably.* Congress has wide latitude to dictate the procedures of "inferior courts" -- the district courts and circuit courts of appeal. Those courts only exist because Congress created them, so Congress can generally set the terms on which they continue to exist. That power is limited in several important ways by the Constitution, including the terms and compensation of the judges, and standing to address cases, and then further limited by separation-of-powers principles. But the Rules of Civil Procedure and the Rules of Criminal Procedure are a good example of how Congress has already -- and largely unobjectionably -- imposed these types of demands on the judiciary. The rules are generally drafted by the judicial branch, but Congress approves them and gives them the force of law. In both sets of rules, you can already see some requirements on how decisions are worded: Criminal Rule 23 requires the court to "state its specific findings of fact" after a bench trial; Criminal Rule 32 requires the court to "set forth the plea, the jury verdict or the court's findings, the adjudication, and the sentence" in judgments of conviction; Civil Rule 52 requires the court to "find the facts specially and state its conclusions of law separately"; Civil Rule 58 requires that "every judgment and amended judgment ... be set out in a separate document"; Civil Rule 59 requires the court to "specify the reasons [for granting or denying a motion for a new trial] in its order"; and Civil Rule 72 requires magistrates to enter "a recommended disposition, including, if appropriate, proposed findings of fact." The rule you're proposing seems to go well beyond these requirements, but I don't see how it would run afoul of constitutional constraints. I could imagine an argument that this somehow encroaches on the courts' inherent authority, but I'm not really convinced that that authority protects against this. For more information, you can read the Congressional Research Service report on "Congressional Authority Over the Federal Courts." *This answer only applies to Article III courts, but even then does not apply to the Supreme Court, which is co-equal and generally has the authority to set its own rules. When it comes to Article I courts, though, Congress would probably have virtually unlimited discretion to impose the kinds of requirements that you're talking about, and even to say that the court has no jurisdiction to consider constitutionality at all. Congress might even get away with imposing these kinds of requirements on state courts through the Spending Clause
There is arguably a legal right to non-citizen nationality either by statute or under customary international law, but the U.S. Constitution does not afford such a right and Article I, Section 8 grants Congress broad authority over the governance of such territories and over immigration and naturalization (i.e. to define citizenship beyond the minimum established in the 14th Amendment).
It appears that the "leading" source of Freedom of Movement is the Privileges and Immunities Clause (Art. IV, S.2 , Cl. 1) of the US Constitution, that "The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States". See Crandall v. State of Nevada, 73 US 35: "We are all citizens of the United States, and as members of the same community must have the right to pass and repass through every part of it without interruption, as freely as in our own states" (quoted from an earlier case); US v. Wheeler, 254 U.S. 281 In all the states, from the beginning down to the establishment of the Articles of Confederation, the citizens possessed the right, inherent in citizens of all free governments, peacefully to dwell within the limits of their respective states, to move at will from place to place therein, and to have free ingress thereto and egress therefrom citing the Privileges &amp; Immunities clause as the constitutional foundation. However, this article, sect. IB notes a number of additional constiutional sources: Various Justices at various times have suggested no fewer than seven different sources: the Article IV Privileges and Immunities Clause, the Fourteenth Amendment Privileges and [sic] Immunities Clause, a conception of national citizenship said to be implicit in the structural logic of the Constitution itself, the Commerce Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and each of the Due Process Clauses. Edwards v. California, 314 U.S. 160 relates freedom of movement to the Commerce Clause, Aptheker v. Sec’y of State, 378 U.S. 500 points us to the Due Process clause. The argument hasn't apparently been made based on the First Amendment, since there are better arguments.
In Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488 (1961), the US Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a similar provision in Maryland's constitution violated the First Amendment and could not be enforced. So presumably the North Carolina provision is similarly unconstitutional and unenforceable. It's not clear why it wasn't removed in 1971. I found references to a 2009 incident in which an avowed atheist named Cecil Bothwell was elected to the Asheville, NC city council. Opponents apparently threatened to mount a legal challenge to his eligibility under the Article VI provision. It's not clear if they actually tried to do so, but in any event, Bothwell served his full four-year term and was then re-elected for another.
From what I read, it appears that the final quoted statement is not saying another authority does this so much as the Archivist does not do it. Which would mean that the when the state notifies the Archivist and says "We ratified the amendment" the Archivist accepts that the state did all required steps to ratify the amendment and doesn't need to tick a check box list of steps. Or to put anotherway, the lawful Ratification of a Constitutional Amendment in a State is determined by the state's own institutions and not the Federal Government's. Once the state says it's ratified, the Feds assume it was done so following the states own processes and was not done in an underhanded fashion.