In the United States, numerous cases involving Jehovah’s Witnesses are now landmark decisions of First Amendment law. In all, Jehovah’s Witnesses brought 23 separate First Amendment actions before the U.S. Supreme Court between 1938 and 1946.^{[citation needed]} Supreme Court Justice Harlan Fiske Stone once quipped, “I think the Jehovah’s Witnesses ought to have an endowment in view of the aid which they give in solving the legal problems of civil liberties.”^[28]

The most important U.S. Supreme Court legal victory won by the Witnesses was in the case West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette (1943), in which the court ruled that school children could not be forced to pledge allegiance to or salute the U.S. flag. The Barnette decision overturned an earlier case, Minersville School District vs. Gobitis (1940), in which the court had held that Witnesses could be forced against their will to pay homage to the flag.

The fighting words doctrine was established by Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire(1942). In that case, a Jehovah’s Witness had reportedly told a New Hampshire town marshal who was attempting to prevent him from preaching “You are a damned racketeer” and “a damned fascist” and was arrested. The court upheld the arrest, thus establishing that “insulting or ‘fighting words’, those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace” are among the “well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech [which] the prevention and punishment of…have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem.”

On January 15, 1951, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision of a lower court in convicting two Jehovah’s Witnesses lecturers of disorderly conduct of conducting public speeches in a city park of Harford County in Maryland without permits. The Supreme Court stated that the initial conviction was based on the lack of permits that were unconstitutionally denied, therefore convictions were not able to stand. The initial conviction was declined for review by the Maryland Court of Appeals under its normal appellate power, and further declined to take the case on certiorari, stating that the issues were not “matters of public interest” which made it desirable to review. Chief Justice Fred Vinsondelivered the opinion of the Court, stating that rarely has any case been before this Court which shows so clearly an unwarranted discrimination in a refusal to issue such a license. It is true that the City Council held a hearing at which it considered the application. But we have searched the record in vain to discover any valid basis for the refusal.^[29]

On March 9, 1953, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned and remanded the Supreme Court of Rhode Island‘s affirmation of the conviction of a Jehovah’s Witnesses member for holding a religious meeting in a city park of Pawtucket. The opinion of the court was that a religious service of Jehovah’s Witnesses had been treated differently from the religious services of other denominations. The court stated that the city had not prohibited church services in the park, as Catholics and Protestants could conduct services there without violating the ordinance.^[30]

In 2002, Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to get government permits to preach door-to-door in Stratton, Ohio. The case was heard in the U.S. Supreme Court (Watchtower Society v. Village of Stratton — 536 U.S. 150 (2002)). The Court ruled in favor of Jehovah’s Witnesses, holding that making it a misdemeanor to engage in door-to-door advocacy without first registering with the mayor and receiving a permit violates the first Amendment as it applies to religious proselytizing, anonymous political speech, and the distribution of handbills.