Oh goodness, this is just silly. Any high school civics student can understand what Justice Thomas is saying about originalism even though the author of this article plainly cannot. All you need to do is actually read the First Amendment. Notice those first 5 words? "Congress shall make no law"? Notice that it does not say that "States shall make no law"? Notice that it does not say that "School boards shall make no law"? It's pretty clear who the First Amendment was aimed at. Congress. And it's pretty clear that our Constitutional understanding has never changed, since that word, "Congress" is still the only word in the First Amendment that tells us to whom the right of free speech runs against. And, as Sen. Leahy, repeatedly reminds us on the Senate floor, the First Amendment has never been amended. It still says, "Congress". Not school boards. So that is really not too hard to understand, from an originalist's point of view is it? You just read the text.

And as for the article's claim that the First Amendment was somehow magically amended at the time of the adoption of the 14th Amendment, just after the Civil War (despite the inconvenient fact that the 14th Amendment makes no reference to the First Amendment or to the Bill of Rights), well, that claim is simply daft. Even the most liberal members of the Supreme Court have never claimed that. As late as the 1920's and 1930's, the Court was handing down decisions repeating the common understanding (because it tracks the actual language of the Constitution) that the First Amendment only applies to Congressional enactments. It is only with the Warren Court, nearly a century after the adoption of the 14th Amendment, that the claim that the later Amendment amends the earlier one was propounded by the Supreme Court. That is of course the prevailing view of Constitutional jurisprudence now, but you can hardly charge an originalist with inconsistency for simply following the understanding -- based on the actual language of the Constitution -- that prevailed for all of our nation's history except the last few decades.