Right to petition in the United States


In the United States the right to petition is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which specifically prohibits Congress from abridging "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances".
Although often overlooked in favor of other more famous freedoms, and sometimes taken for granted, many other civil liberties are enforceable against the government only by exercising this basic right.
According to the Congressional Research Service, since the Constitution was written,
the right of petition has expanded. It is no longer confined to demands for “a redress of grievances,” in any accurate meaning of these words, but comprehends demands for an exercise by the government of its powers in furtherance of the interest and prosperity of the petitioners and of their views on politically contentious matters. The right extends to the "approach of citizens or groups of them to administrative agencies and to courts, the third branch of Government. Certainly the right to petition extends to all departments of the Government. The right of access to the courts is indeed but one aspect of the right of petition."

Historic roots

The American right of petition is derived from British precedent. In Blackstone's ''Commentaries, Americans in the Thirteen Colonies read that "the right of petitioning the king, or either house of parliament, for the redress of grievances" was a "right appertaining to every individual".
In 1776, the Declaration of Independence cited King George's failure to redress the grievances listed in colonial petitions, such as the Olive Branch Petition of 1775, as a justification to declare independence:
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Historically, the right can be traced back to English documents such as Magna Carta, which, by its acceptance by the monarchy, implicitly affirmed the right, and the later Bill of Rights 1689, which explicitly declared the "right of the subjects to petition the king".

First use

The first significant exercise and defense of the right to petition within the U.S. was to advocate the end of slavery by petitioning Congress in the mid-1830s, including 130,000 such requests in 1837 and 1838. In 1836, the House of Representatives adopted a gag rule that would table all such anti-slavery petitions. John Quincy Adams and other Representatives eventually achieved the repeal of this rule in 1844 on the basis that it was contrary to the right to petition the government.

Scope

While the prohibition of abridgment of the right to petition originally referred only to the federal legislature and courts, the incorporation doctrine later expanded the protection of the right to its current scope, over all state and federal courts and legislatures and the executive branches of the state and federal governments. The right to petition includes under its umbrella the legal right to sue the government, and the right of individuals, groups and possibly corporations to lobby the government.
Some litigants have contended that the right to petition the government includes a requirement that the government listen to or respond to members of the public. This view was rejected by the United States Supreme Court in 1984:
Nothing in the First Amendment or in this Court's case law interpreting it suggests that the rights to speak, associate, and petition require government policymakers to listen or respond to communications of members of the public on public issues.

See also Smith v. Arkansas State Highway Employees, where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Arkansas State Highway Commission's refusal to consider employee grievances when filed by the union, rather than directly by an employee of the State Highway Department, did not violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The Supreme Court has largely interpreted the Petition Clause as coextensive with the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment, but in its 2010 decision in Borough of Duryea v. Guarnieri it acknowledged that there may be differences between the two:

Restrictions

The law of South Dakota prohibits sex offenders from circulating petitions, carrying a maximum potential sentence of one year in jail and a $2,000 fine.
Circulation of a petition by a prisoner in Federal Bureau of Prisons is a prohibited act under, and is punishable by solitary confinement.
The term "Petition" as used in both of these regulations is restricted to those petitions which are directed at the executive or legislative branches of government, and does not include documents filed in a court of law, which are also referred to as "petitions", such as petitions for coram nobis, mandamus, habeas corpus, prohibition, and certiorari, among others. While these are commonly referred to as a "petition" they are forms of civil action against the government that may result in the courts issuing a writ directing the government to act, or refrain from acting, in a specified manner.
The right of government employees to address grievances with their employer over work-related matters can be restricted to administrative processes under Supreme Court precedent. In Pickering v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court decided that the court must balance the employee's right to engage in speech against the government's interest in being efficient and effective in the public services it performs. Later Supreme Court precedent—Connick v. Myers, Garcetti v. Ceballos, and Borough of Duryea v. Guarnieri—has established that public employees must show they spoke as a citizen on a matter of public concern when suing their employer under the First Amendment's Speech or Petition Clauses.