Which case began selective incorporation by applying the First Amendment to the states?

• A. Brown v. Board of Education
• B. Gideon v. Wainwright
• C. Gitlow v. New York (1925)
• D. Mapp v. Ohio

Answer: (C)

The key idea is selective incorporation—the idea that protections in the Bill of Rights are applied to state governments through the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause. Gitlow v. New York (1925) is the case that began this process by ruling that the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech and a free press apply to the states via due process. This established, for the first time, that state governments cannot fully ignore First Amendment rights, setting up a step-by-step approach to extending civil liberties to the states over time. Other famous cases later expanded incorporation in different areas—Brown v. Board of Education deals with equal protection and segregation, Gideon v. Wainwright extends the right to counsel to the states, and Mapp v. Ohio applies the exclusionary rule to the states—but Gitlow is the starting point for applying the First Amendment to state governments.