Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Supreme Court

FOUNDED: 1931

DESCRIPTION: Evangelical religious sect that engages in vigorous missionary work and holds unconventional Christian beliefs.

SIGNIFICANCE: Jehovah’s Witnesses were a party in more than thirty precedent-setting Supreme Court decisions. The sect’s litigation contributed to Court rulings expanding protection for free exercise of religion and of freedom of the press, speech, and assembly.

In 1931, a religious group known as Bible Students, influenced in part by Adventist teachings, adopted the name Jehovah’s Witnesses. Over the next two decades, their style of aggressive, unconventional evangelism resulted in numerous confrontations across the United States. This conflict resulted from their refusal to salute the US flag and from their unrelenting attack on organized religions. Between 1933 and 1951, there were 18,866 arrests of Jehovah’s Witnesses and about 1,500 cases of mob violence against them. The Jehovah’s Witnesses National Legal Department sustained a determined campaign of litigation to assert the right to exercise the sect’s beliefs freely. By 1950, it had won 150 suits in state supreme courts and more than thirty Supreme Court decisions.

Legal briefs filed by Jehovah’s Witnesses, usually written by their chief counsel Hayden Covington, were a strange mixture of Bible proof texts and constitutional arguments. They were, nonetheless, quite effective. In 1938, the first Jehovah’s Witnesses case to reach the Court, Lovell v. City of Griffin, raised a free press question. The Court ruled that requiring a permit from the government to distribute literature violated the prior restraint provision of the First Amendment. The Court’s 1940 landmark decision, Cantwell v. Connecticut, held that the Fourteenth Amendment made the free exercise clause binding on the states, that public officials did not have authority to determine what causes were religious, and that breach-of-the-peace laws must be narrowly drawn. Free speech cases brought by the Jehovah’s Witnesses set important precedents. The Court ruled that it is constitutional to regulate the time, place, and manner of expression but not its content in Cox v. New Hampshire (1941) and that “fighting words” are not protected speech in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942).

Perhaps the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ biggest setback was the 1940 ruling in Minersville School District v. Gobitis that schools could expel students who refused to salute the flag. Over the next few years, however, decisions in cases involving the sect were a bellwether indicating the Court’s move to stronger support for individual liberties. In West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), the Court reversed its flag salute decision. A few months earlier in Murdock v. Pennsylvania, the Court had reversed its ruling that towns could tax religious literature sold door-to-door. In a series of cases that year, the Court struck down ordinances that prohibited or limited the sect’s door-to-door solicitations and distribution of handbills on the street. In 1944, the Court upheld statutes that limited the time children could spend each day selling religious literature in Prince v. Massachusetts.

The principle of law developed in the Jehovah’s Witnesses cases was expressed by Justice Robert H. Jackson’s opinion in Barnette, “If there is any star in the constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.” The legal doctrines forged in these cases formed the foundation for modern interpretations of religious liberty and freedom of speech.

Although court cases involving Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Supreme Court became less common in the twenty-first century, the organization maintained its legal branch. In Watchtower Bible and Tract Society v. Village of Stratton (2002), the Court struck down a law in an 8-1 ruling requiring permits for door-to-door advocacy. Jehovah’s Witnesses’ legacy remains one of the most substantial contributions to the development of First Amendment jurisprudence in American history.

Bibliography

“First Amendment Law Review.” The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, vol. 21, no. 2, 2023, journals.law.unc.edu/firstamendmentlawreview/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2023/06/vol.-21-issue-2-final.pdf. Accessed 7 Apr. 2026.

Hudson, Jr., David L. “The Jehovah’s Witnesses and the First Amendment.” Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, 6 Dec. 2024, www.thefire.org/research-learn/jehovahs-witnesses-and-first-amendment. Accessed 7 Apr. 2026.

“Jehovah’s Witnesses in the United States.” Jehovah’s Witnesses, www.jw.org/en/news/region/united-states/jehovah-witness-facts. Accessed 7 Apr. 2026.

Newton, Merlin Owen. Armed with the Constitution: Jehovah’s Witnesses in Alabama and the U.S. Supreme Court, 1939-1946. U of Alabama P, 1995.

Rainey, Jane G. “Jehovah’s Witnesses.” Free Speech Center, 22 Jan. 2026, firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/jehovahs-witnesses. Accessed 7 Apr. 2026.

Stevens, Leonard A. Salute! The Case of the Bible vs. the Flag. Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1973.