In the early twentieth-century case "Near v. Minnesota," the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment of The Bill or Rights, originally intended to protect the rights of citizens of the United States only from federal encroachment, also protected the citizens of the states by virtue of the adoption of Reconstruction's Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments with their due process and equal protection clauses.
Described as the Incorporation Doctrine, it has come to embrace the individual's protections against the states', as well as the federal government's, trespasses on the natural rights the Bill of Rights, perhaps unwisely, attempted to codify.
Good question. Easy answer.
In the early twentieth-century case "Near v. Minnesota," the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment of The Bill or Rights, originally intended to protect the rights of citizens of the United States only from federal encroachment, also protected the citizens of the states by virtue of the adoption of Reconstruction's Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments with their due process and equal protection clauses.
Described as the Incorporation Doctrine, it has come to embrace the individual's protections against the states', as well as the federal government's, trespasses on the natural rights the Bill of Rights, perhaps unwisely, attempted to codify.