76th Annual Seigenthaler‑Sutherland Cup National First Amendment Moot Court Competition

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, prohibits Congress from making any law 'respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.' Originally a restraint only on the federal government, its protections were extended to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause in a line of cases beginning with Gitlow v. New York (1925). Foundational twentieth-century decisions — Schenck v. United States (1919), Near v. Minnesota (1931), New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), and Tinker v. Des Moines (1969) — built the modern doctrinal architecture distinguishing protected speech from narrow categories such as incitement, true threats, defamation, and obscenity. The Seigenthaler-Sutherland Cup, hosted at the First Amendment Center, asks competitors to engage with the cutting edge of this doctrine. Recent Supreme Court terms have produced consequential rulings on compelled speech and public accommodations (303 Creative v. Elenis, 2023), social media platform regulation (Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton, 2024), government 'jawboning' of online speech (Murthy v. Missouri, 2024), and the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses (Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, 2022; Carson v. Makin, 2022). These decisions have unsettled longstanding tests — including Lemon — and opened new questions about the application of traditional speech doctrine to algorithmic curation, artificial intelligence, and the regulatory authority of states over digital platforms. Today's First Amendment disputes sit at the intersection of technology, pluralism, and contested conceptions of governmental neutrality. Lower courts are grappling with student speech off-campus after Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. (2021), the scope of public-forum doctrine on government social media accounts (Lindke v. Freed, 2024), and the constitutionality of state laws targeting drag performances, library content, and campus protest. Moot court problems in this competition typically synthesize multiple doctrinal threads, requiring advocates to reason from text, precedent, and competing theories of original meaning and evolving application.