How the Bill of Rights is Being Ignored in the U.S.

Posted on by Claudia Morales

In order to protect the liberties of American citizens, the Bill of Rights was incorporated into the Constitution to prevent the government from abusing their authority. However, several of these rights are being ignored.

Freedom of Speech

The First Amendment claims that there should be no law that prohibits the “Abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, or interfering with the right to peaceably assemble”.  This amendment is critical in allowing citizens to express themselves. However, this year amidst the protests that involved the Black Lives Matters Movement, this amendment was not applied in a particular case. The American Civil Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of journalists who were attacked by the Minneapolis and Minnesota police. The journalists were covering the protests, but were wrongfully arrested, injured, and harassed. According to Forbes, the ACLU will file similar lawsuits in other states where journalists have found themselves in these situations.

State’s Rights

The Tenth Amendment claims that the powers that are not delegated to the United States are reserved to the States. This allows the states to decide whether they want to integrate a particular law by enforcing it. For example, this amendment plays a role in legalizing marijuana. There are some states that only allow marijuana for medical purposes while others, like Colorado and Washington, allow it to be used for recreational purposes. On the other hand, the state of Oregon is facing a difficult situation while trying to handle the recent protests. They filed a second lawsuit against the Trump Administration’s deployment of federal officers in Oregon. The state of Oregon claims this is a violation of the tenth amendment.  KOIN 06 mentioned how  Oregon State Representatives claimed that, “The purpose of this lawsuit is to stop the federal government . . . from depriving Portlanders of the right to be policed solely by those the Constitution permits, and who are accountable to Portlanders and Oregonians”. The state of Oregon wants to be in control on how to handle the protests regarding George Floyd’s death and not be solely governed by the federal officers.

Religious Freedom

When Congress passed The Affordable Care Act in 2010, which is known as Obamacare,  it required insurers to cover at least one form of contraceptives. Furthermore, employers were obligated to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives to their employees. Since then multiple lawsuits have been filed claiming that this contradicted some businesses and religious organization’s beliefs. One of highest profile cases involving this issue was Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania.  In 2017 the Health and Human Services department integrated a broader religious exemption to protect religious non-profits, which included the Little Sisters of the Poor, a group run by Catholic nuns. They were no longer obligated to provide contraceptives that they morally objected to provide. However, the lawsuits did not end there because the Pennsylvania court interfered and the case was ultimately brought to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court recently ruled in July 2020 that the Trump administration has the authority to provide exceptions to this regulation, although, according to Politician Compare, Biden is still leading  Trump  in the polls. Therefore, depending on the 2020 election if Biden wins the presidency his administration could overturn this.

The Right Against Unreasonable Searches

The fourth amendment grants citizens the right for them to be secure in homes and against unreasonable searches. It has been through cases like Roe v. Wade and Kelly v. Johnson that emphasized the right to privacy guaranteed by the fourth amendment. Furthermore, this right includes protection against government intrusion like collecting private information through a variety of databases due to suspicions and the right not to have personal information to be disclosed.  However, since 2014 the National Security Agency (NSA) has made headlines due to the controversial actions of Edward Snowden. Snowden leaked classified information from the NSA in 2013 while he was working for the CIA. This led to the public knowledge of global surveillance programs that were being conducted by the NSA and sparked numerous discussions about national security and individual privacy rights.

The Suppression of Democracy

Posted on by Arundhati Oommen

There are 7.4 billion people who walk this earth. Each and every one of them a mental mosaic of individual perspectives, life experiences, instinct, intellect, and power. Every sentence that has ever spilled off your lips was conceived by you, delivered by you. The transmission and collaboration of our world celebrates both the power of personal belief and the collage of opinions that can be created in a supportive environment. An environment nurtured through democracy.

Right to expression is a fundamental human right. As Thomas Jefferson wisely put it: “The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution.”

The very document that signifies the birth of America, the constitution, begins with “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union…” We the people. Not we the government. We the people. Our ideas come together to evolve and gain new insight and further propel our nation forward. Creating a more perfect union as a whole.

The press is the sole institution with the ability to converse with the people and the organized government, providing the transfer of knowledge, opinions, and facts from one end of America to the other. The press are protectors of the people, though exposure can be a dangerous game… “Two Reuter’s journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, were detained and jailed in Myanmar on Dec.12, 2017. At the time of their arrests, they had been working on an investigation into the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim men and boys in a village in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.”(Reuters Sept.3, 2018) These journalists had exposed this massacre of men and children, and in turn were immediately arrested and thrown in jail for seven years. This comes just as the U.N. announced the government of Myanmar should be tried for genocide against Rohingya Muslims. Although they had been arrested, these journalists sparked a conversation. Without any knowledge of this horrific massacre nobody would have been aware of what horrors had befallen these men and children. This is one of the stories with a less gruesome ending. All around the world, journalists are being gunned down. Shot in the head. Assassinated. And why?   Because the press is a monumental obstacle to untethered rogue dictators.

Attempting to silence the press is equivalent to a blatant disregard of the United States Constitution. Press represents people, and to silence the press is to close the people of America off of knowledge, new ideas, and the facts of the government they themselves elected. A ruthless subversion of democracy.

Realize that the press is not our adversary, government officials who believe in a totalitarian utopia are the enemy of the press. These are the people who consistently issue death threats, order assassinations, and aggressively turn a blind eye to the facts. Many simply believing that every single supplier of their information about the world around them is indeed out to get them. As the great George Orwell put it: “In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy any writer or journalist has to face.” Ramifications of this notion cause us to segregate what we believe is the truth versus genuine facts and information provided by our press. We become uninformed and believe fact less erroneous assumptions due to our closemindedness about the world around us, effectively leading a fictitious life.

We say history repeats itself, round and round again. Someone too greedy and power hungry, Taking advantage of the people. Silencing one by one those who speak. We say silence is submission, condemn those who stand up and call us out. Call them outspoken, treasonous, lying. Labeled with the worst we can think of. And yet, every single one of us has the means to be unyielding. A platform to speak the truth. From social media to the world stage, someone will always be watching. You will be heard. We are all journalists; you have a voice. Use it.