Did Ford v. Wainwright or Town of Greece v. Galloway happen first?
Town of Greece v. Galloway Town of Greece v. Galloway, 572 U.S. ___ (2014) , is a United States Supreme Court case in which the court decided that the Town of Greece, New York may permit volunteer chaplains to open each legislative session with a prayer. The plaintiffs were Susan Galloway and Linda Stephens, represented by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. They argue that the prayers violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled against the town, and on May 20, 2013 the Supreme Court agreed to rule on the issue. On May 5, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of the Town of Greece, and that the town's practice of beginning legislative sessions with prayers does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Overbreadth doctrine In American jurisprudence, the overbreadth doctrine is primarily concerned with facial challenges to laws under the First Amendment. American courts have recognized several exceptions to the speech protected by the First Amendment (for example, obscenity, fighting words, and libel or defamation), and states therefore have some latitude to regulate unprotected speech. A statute doing so is overly broad (hence, overbreadth) if, in proscribing "unprotected" speech, it also proscribes "protected" speech. Because an overly broad law may deter constitutionally protected speech, the overbreadth doctrine allows a party to whom the law may constitutionally be applied to challenge the statute on the ground that it violates the First Amendment rights of others. See, e.g., "Board of Trustees of State Univ. of N.Y. v. Fox", 492 U.S. 469, 483 (1989), and "R. A. V. v. City of St. Paul", 505 U.S. 377 (1992). Overbreadth is closely related to vagueness; if a prohibition is expressed in a way that is too unclear for a person to reasonably know whether or not their conduct falls within the law, then to avoid the risk of legal consequences they often stay far away from anything that could possibly fit the uncertain wording of the law. The law's effects are thereby far broader than intended or than the U.S. Constitution permits, and hence the law is overbroad.