I
106TH CONGRESS
2D SESSION
H. R. 5078
To restore first amendment protections of religion and speech.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
JULY 27, 2000
Mr. PAUL introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee
on the Judiciary
A BILL
To restore first amendment protections of religion and
speech.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘First Amendment Res-
toration Act’’.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
Congress finds the following:
(1) The freedom to practice religion and to ex-
press religious thought is acknowledged to be one of
the fundamental and unalienable rights belonging to
all individuals.
(2) The Framers of the Constitution delib-
erately withheld, in the main body of that document,
any authority for the Federal Government to meddle
with the religious affairs or with the free speech of
the people. Then, as further and more specific pro-
tection for the people, they added the first amend-
ment, which includes the ‘‘establishment clause’’ and
the ‘‘freedom of speech clause’’ which are as follows:
‘‘Congress shall make no law respecting an estab-
lishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech . . .’’.
It is of utmost importance to note that the first
amendment is not a grant of authority to the Fed-
eral Government. To the contrary, it is a specific re-
striction upon the exercise of power by the Federal
Government.
(3) For over 150 years, the Court held to this
historically correct position in interpreting the first
amendment. During this period, scant mention was
made to ‘‘The Separation of Church and State’’.
(4) Then, beginning in 1947, and accelerating
through the 60’s, the Court abruptly reversed its po-
sition. This was done with no change in the law, ei-
ther by statute or by amendment to the Constitu-
tion. The Court invented the distorted meaning of
the first amendment utilizing the separation of
‘‘church and state’’ in 1947 in Everson v. Board of
Education when it announced: The First Amend-
ment has erected a wall between church and state.
That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We
could not approve the slightest breach. (Everson v.
Board of Education; 330 U.S. 1, 18 [1947]). Over
the past five decades, rulings of the United States
Supreme Court have served to infringe upon the
rights of Americans to enjoy freedom of speech re-
lating to religious matters. Such infringements in-
clude the outlawing of prayer in schools and of the
display of the Ten Commandments in public places.
These rulings have not reflected a neutrality toward
religious denominations but a hostility toward reli-
gious thought. They have served to undermine the
foundation of not only our moral code but our sys-
tem of law and justice.
(5) In making this abrupt change, the Court ig-
nored all historical precedent established previously
by the Court, the wording of the First Amendment,
and the intent of its framers. The rulings are legally
irrational and without foundation. Although the
Court presumed to rely upon the First Amendment
for its authority for these rulings, a review of that
Amendment reveals that said rulings could not pos-
sibly have been based upon its original intent. Con-
sequently, it is incumbent upon this Congress to re-
view not only the rulings of the Court which are in
question but the wording and history of the First
Amendment to determine the intent of its framers.
This abrupt change is found in the following court
cases:
(A) ‘‘A verbal prayer offered in a school is
unconstitutional, even if that prayer is both vol-
untary and denominationally neutral.’’ (Engel
v. Vitale, 1962, Abington v. Schempp, 1963,
Commissioner of Education v. School Com-
mittee of Leyden, 1971.)
(B) ‘‘Freedoms of speech and press are
guaranteed to students and teachers unless the
topic is religious, at which time such speech be-
comes unconstitutional.’’ (Stein v. Oshinsky,
1965, Collins v. Chandler Unified School Dis-
trict, 1981, Bishop v. Aronov, 1991, Duran v.
Nitsche, 1991.)
(C) ‘‘It is unconstitutional for students to
see the Ten Commandments since they might
read, meditate upon, respect, or obey them.’’
(Stone v. Graham, 1980, Ring v. Grand Forks
Public 
School 
District, 
1980, 
Lanner 
v.
Wimmer, 1981.)
(D) ‘‘If a student prays over his lunch, it
is unconstitutional for him to pray aloud.’’
(Reed v. Van Hoven, 1965.)
(E) ‘‘The Ten Commandments, despite the
fact that they are the basis of civil law and are
depicted in engraved stone in the United States
Supreme Court, may not be displayed at a pub-
lic courthouse.’’ (Harvey v. Cobb County.
1993.)
(F) ‘‘When a student addresses an assem-
bly of his peers, he effectively becomes a gov-
ernment representative; it is therefore unconsti-
tutional for that student to engage in prayer.’’
(Harris v. Joint School District, 1994.)
(G) By interpreting the establishment
clause to preclude prayer and other religious
speech in any public place, the Supreme Court
necessarily violates the free speech clause of the
very same first amendment.
These rulings of the Court constitute de facto legis-
lation or Constitution-amending. This is a serious
violation of the doctrine of separation of powers, as
all legislative authority bestowed by the people
through the Constitution is bestowed upon the Con-
gress and the Congress alone.
(6) A fundamental maxim of law is, whenever
the intent of a statute or a constitution is in ques-
tion, to refer to the words of its framers to deter-
mine their intent and use this intent as the true in-
tent of the law.
(7) The intent of the First Amendment was and
is clear on these two points: The Federal Govern-
ment was prohibited from enacting any laws which
would favor one religious denomination over another
and the Federal Government has no power to forbid
or prohibit any mention of religion, the Ten Com-
mandments or reference to God in civic dialog.
(8) In its rulings to prohibit Americans from
saying prayers in school or from displaying the Ten
Commandments in public places, the Court has re-
lied heavily upon the metaphor, ‘‘Separation of
Church and State’’. Note that this phrase is no-
where to be found in the First Amendment or any
other place in the Constitution.
(9) The metaphor, ‘‘Separation of Church and
State’’, was extracted, out of context, from a letter
from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists in
reply to a letter from them expressing concern that
the Federal Government might intrude in religious
matters by favoring one denomination over another.
Jefferson’s reply was that the First Amendment
would preclude such intrusion.
(10) The Court, in its use of Separation of
Church and State, has given to this phrase a mean-
ing never intended by its author; it took it out of
context and inverted its meaning and intent. The
complete text of Jefferson’s letter is found in Jeffer-
son, Writings, Vol. XVI, pp. 281–282, to the Dan-
bury Baptist Association on January 1, 1802.
(11) Justice William Rehnquist made an exten-
sive study of the history of the First Amendment. In
his dissent in Wallace v. Jaffree (472 U.S. 38, 48,
n. 30 [1984],) he stated: ‘‘There is simply no histor-
ical foundation for the proposition that the Framers
intended to build the ‘wall of separation’ that was
constitutionalized in Everson. . . . But the greatest
injury of the ‘wall’ notion is its mischievous diver-
sion of judges from the actual intentions of the
drafters of the Bill of Rights. . . . [N]o amount of
repetition of historical errors in judicial opinions can
make the errors true. The ‘wall of separation be-
tween church and state’ is a metaphor based on bad
history. . . . It should be frankly and explicitly
abandoned. . . . Our perception has been clouded
not by the Constitution but by the mists of an un-
necessary metaphor. ‘‘It would come as much of a
shock to those who drafted the Bill of Rights, as it
will to a large number of thoughtful Americans
today, to learn that the Constitution, as construed
by the majority, prohibits the Alabama Legislature
from endorsing prayer. George Washington himself,
at the request of the very Congress which passed the
Bill of Rights, proclaimed a day of public thanks-
giving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging
with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of
Almighty God. History must judge whether it was
the Father of his Country in 1789, or a majority of
the Court today, which has strayed from the mean-
ing of the Establishment Clause.’’
(12) As Justice Rehnquist states, the greatest
injury of the ‘‘wall’’ notion is its ‘‘mischievous diver-
sion of judges from the actual intentions of the
drafters of the Bill of Rights. . . . ’’ It is necessary
to review not only Jefferson’s intent in his use of
this ‘‘wall’’, but his involvement or noninvolvement
in the drafting of the First Amendment, and the in-
tent of the framers of the First Amendment.
(13) Jefferson was neither the author of nor a
coauthor of the First Amendment. He cannot be
considered as a source of legal authority on this sub-
ject. The Court, if it had wished to rely upon Jeffer-
son to determine the true and original intent of the
First Amendment, could have served themselves and
the American people well by referring to Jefferson’s
admonition to Judge William Johnson regarding the
determination of the original intent of a statute or
a constitution: ‘‘On every question of construction,
carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitu-
tion was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in
the debates, and instead of trying what meaning
may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against
it, conform to the probable one in which it was
passed.’’ (Thomas Jefferson, Memoir, Correspond-
ence, and Miscellanies, From the Papers of Thomas
Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, editor [Bos-
ton: Gray and Bowen, 1830, Vol. IV., p. 373,] to
Judge William Johnson on June 12, 1823).
(14) The principal authors of the First Amend-
ment, the record reveals, were Fisher Ames and El-
bridge Gerry of Massachusetts, not Thomas Jeffer-
son. Others who participated were John Vining of
Delaware, Daniel Carroll and Charles Carroll of