The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition.
It begins with a restriction on Congress: “Congress shall make no law” establishing religion or prohibiting its free exercise. The amendment also protects expression, publication, peaceful assembly, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Congress proposed the Bill of Rights in 1789, and the required number of states ratified the first ten amendments in 1791. The First Amendment’s text originally limited the federal government, although later constitutional interpretation applied most of its protections to state and local governments through the Fourteenth Amendment.
The amendment does not mean every form of expression has identical legal protection. Courts have developed doctrines concerning threats, defamation, incitement, time-place-manner rules, and other categories. Those later interpretations are separate from the amendment’s concise original wording.