First Amendment to the United States Constitution
1805 amendment limiting government restriction of civil rights
The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prevents Congress from making laws respecting an establishment of religion; prohibiting the free exercise of religion; or abridging the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom of peaceable assembly and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights. In the original draft of the Bill of Rights, what is now the First Amendment occupied third place. The first two articles were not ratified by the states, so the article on disestablishment and free speech ended up being first.
The Bill of Rights was proposed to assuage Anti-Federalist opposition to Constitutional ratification. Initially, the First Amendment applied only to laws enacted by the Congress, and many of its provisions were interpreted more narrowly than they are today. Beginning with Gitlow v. New York (1925), the Supreme Court applied the First Amendment to states—a process known as incorporation—through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The First Amendment applies only to state actors.
With regard to religious freedom, the Court has frequently cited Thomas Jefferson's call for "a wall of separation between church and State", a metaphor for the separation of religions from government and vice versa as well as the free exercise of religious beliefs that many Founders favored.
The public source identifies “First Amendment to the United States Constitution” as 1805 amendment limiting government restriction of civil rights. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around First, Amendment and United.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q12616. VIAF identifies the subject as 179830264. The Library of Congress control number is n81096440. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1791 and 1925.
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This entry incorporates text from “First Amendment to the United States Constitution” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.