Civil Liberties and Civic Participation

This unit examines core individual rights under the Constitution—speech, religion, voting and candidacy, and implied privacy protections—and the constitutional limits on those rights. It builds on foundational government structure and powers introduced earlier and prepares students to analyze procedural protections and remedies in the following unit.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze landmark Supreme Court and Texas cases involving freedom of speech to identify governing tests, distinctions between protected and unprotected speech, and applicable government interests.
• Apply Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause frameworks to fact patterns to determine whether government actions violate religious liberty protections.
• Demonstrate practical civic engagement skills by outlining the legal steps to register to vote, run for or support a candidate, and evaluate constitutional constraints on campaign speech and political activity.
• Evaluate implied privacy claims by distinguishing fundamental privacy rights from other privacy interests, assessing applicable standards of review, and recommending constitutional remedies or limitations based on precedent.