What does freedom of assembly mean?

Freedom of assembly is the right of the people to gather peacefully in groups, whether for political protest, religious worship, labor organizing, social meetings, or community celebration. The First Amendment, ratified on December 15, 1791, protects the right of the people peaceably to assemble together with the related right to petition the government for redress of grievances. The Supreme Court extended this protection against state and local governments in DeJonge v. Oregon (1937), which struck down Oregon's prosecution of a man who attended a peaceful Communist Party meeting in Portland.

The protection covers a wide range of gatherings: civil rights marches such as the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom that drew 250,000 people, anti-war demonstrations during the Vietnam era, labor pickets, religious revival meetings, town hall forums, and protest movements as varied as Tea Party rallies and Black Lives Matter marches. National Socialist Party of America v. Skokie (1977) and Collin v. Smith (1978) confirmed that even deeply unpopular groups, including a neo-Nazi party seeking to march in a heavily Jewish suburb, retain the right to assemble.

The right is not unlimited. Government may impose content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions, requiring permits for large parades, restricting protests near hospitals or polling places on Election Day, and limiting demonstrations on private property under the Court's analysis in Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner (1972). The Cox v. New Hampshire (1941) decision upheld a permit system for parades because it was narrowly tailored to public safety concerns. Cox v. Louisiana (1965) struck down a sit-in ban as too vague. Riots, blocking traffic, and trespass on private property fall outside protection because the assembly must be peaceable, the constitutional adjective the framers carefully chose.

The protection applies regardless of the participants' message or popularity. The Civil Rights Movement made repeated use of this right during the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1960 Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins, the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade, and the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights march, and television coverage of peaceful demonstrators meeting violent state responses helped pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The right also protects intimate association under NAACP v. Alabama (1958), which prevented Alabama from compelling the NAACP to disclose its membership lists. Naturalization candidates should understand that joining a peaceful protest, a place of worship, or a community meeting is an exercise of constitutional liberty in the United States, not an act subject to government approval.