{"id":6359,"date":"2022-06-15T21:27:19","date_gmt":"2022-06-15T18:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/?p=6359"},"modified":"2022-06-15T21:27:19","modified_gmt":"2022-06-15T18:27:19","slug":"jehovahs-witnesses-mark-20th-anniversary-of-supreme-court-ruling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/jehovahs-witnesses-mark-20th-anniversary-of-supreme-court-ruling\/","title":{"rendered":"Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses Mark 20th Anniversary of Supreme Court Ruling"},"content":{"rendered":"

While Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses have chosen to temporarily suspend their door-to-door ministry due to the pandemic, their activity was almost permanently banned by one U.S. village in the late 1990s \u2014 that is until the United States Supreme Court stepped in with a historic 8-1 decision on June 17, 2002, declaring the local ordinance unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

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Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses engage in their door-to-door ministry, which they do all over the world in hundreds of nations. (Photo courtesy of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As the 20th anniversary of that precedent-setting decision nears, some St. Croix residents wonder what their lives would be like if one of their neighbors had not knocked on their door and shared a life-changing message with them. Constitutional scholars marvel at the outsized impact the decision has had on the protection of free speech for all, agreeing with the late Justice Antonin Scalia\u2019s opinion in the case, \u201cThe free-speech claim exempts everybody, thanks to Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the case of Renika Jackman of St. Croix who learned more about God and the Bible thanks to someone knocking on her door. Now, she is ready to pay it forward. She reflected on the Stratton experience and said: \u201cMore people get to learn the truth about Jehovah, our God, the one true God.\u201d Thinking about the benefits of this decision Renika mentions: \u201cOther people come to learn about him and have a relationship with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2002 Supreme Court decision in Watchtower v. Village of Stratton, affirmed that a local village ordinance in Stratton, Ohio, requiring a permit to knock on doors violated the rights of any person who wanted to engage in free speech with their neighbor, including Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses who practice door-to-door evangelizing. The court overturned two lower court rulings that upheld the ordinance, and thus paved the way for all citizens to maintain open dialogue with their neighbors on any number of issues including environmental, civic, political, or educational.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking back on the two decades since the decision, it\u2019s clear to see the wide-ranging impact that Watchtower v. Stratton has had on free speech for all,\u201d said Josh McDaniel, director of the Religious Freedom Clinic at the Harvard Law School. \u201cThis is just the latest of some 50 Supreme Court victories by Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses that have helped establish and broaden First Amendment jurisprudence throughout the last century.\u201d<\/p>\n

The village of Stratton became a center of controversy in 1998 after the mayor personally confronted four Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses as they were driving out of the village after visiting a resident. Subsequently, the village enacted the ordinance \u201cRegulating Uninvited Peddling and Solicitation Upon Private Property,\u201d which required anyone wishing to engage in door-to-door activity to obtain a permit from the mayor or face imprisonment. Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses viewed this ordinance as an infringement of freedom of speech, free exercise of religion and freedom of press. Therefore, they brought a lawsuit in federal court after the village refused to modify their enforcement of this ordinance.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur motive for initiating the case was clear: We wanted to remove any obstacle that would prevent us from carrying out our scriptural obligation to preach the good news of the Kingdom,\u201d said Robert Hendriks, U.S. spokesman for Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses. \u201cMaking it a criminal offense to talk with a neighbor without seeking government approval is offensive to many people, but particularly to God who commanded Christians to preach the gospel.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Jackman continues to engage in a productive ministry through letter writing, phone calling and virtual visits, she is looking forward to knocking on doors again.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are thankful that we have the legal right to practice our ministry from door to door,\u201d said Hendriks. \u201cWhen the time is right and conditions are safe, we hope to visit our neighbors in person once again.\u201d<\/p>\n

This victory is one of more than 250 rulings in cases brought by Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in high courts around the world that have expanded the rights of people of all religious faiths. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to point to any organization, let alone a religious organization, that has had such a profound impact on the shaping of constitutional law over many decades in the Supreme Court,\u201d said Harvard professor McDaniel.<\/p>\n

For more information on the Stratton case, go to\u00a0www.jw.org<\/strong><\/em><\/a>\u00a0and type Stratton in the search field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses have chosen to temporarily suspend their door-to-door ministry due to the pandemic, their activity was almost permanently banned by one U.S. village in the late 1990s \u2014 that is until the United…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6360,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inside-jw-org","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6361,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6359\/revisions\/6361"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}