First Amendment Freedoms

#freedomtoread #firstamendmentfacts 

1. The Bill of Rights guarantees protection of five freedoms: speech, religion, press, assembly, and the right to petition the government. 
2. The right to speak —and to publish — under the First Amendment has been interpreted widely to protect society from government attempts to suppress ideas and information. 
3. The Supreme Court has held conclusively that the right to receive information is a natural result of the right to speak.
4. First Amendment freedoms are not age-dependent; they’re guaranteed to you the day you’re born. 
5. While librarians have discretion to determine whether a book belongs in the adult or children’s section, the government lacks authority to “childproof” public libraries, restricting adults’ access to information based on what authorities deem suitable for children.
6. Censorship is the suppression of ideas and information that some individuals, groups, or government officials find objectionable.
7. The American Library Association affirms the rights of individuals to form their own opinions about material they choose to read. 
8. There are no citizenship requirements for First Amendment protection; if you’re in the US, you have freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition.
9. Intellectual freedom is the right of people to think for themselves. It respects individual dignity and self-rule. This freedom allows people to form ideas and opinions by questioning the world around them.
10. Libraries do not advocate the ideas found in their collections; the presence of books and other resources in a library does not indicate endorsement of their contents by the library.

Learn for Yourself