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Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey
"The lawmaking" by "government"?
That covers non-American laws and governments. I'm sure you can choose a more precise way to tell me your interpretation of the bill of rights, but that wont change the fact that the wording very plainly does not include states' legislatures.
It says, "Congress shall not..." It doesn't say, "No congress shall..." It doesn't say, "No law shall..."
In no place in the US Constitution does it say anything about any state having a congress. It references state legislatures, but no state congress. It says, "No state shall, without the consent of Congress..." a lot in Article I, Section 10.
It's interesting, at least, that the first amendment starts with "Congress..." and not, "The Congress..." as is the usage in the Constitution (at least most of the time... I scanned it quickly looking for the word congress and noted that it was always "the Congress" with the definite article and capital C.)
At any rate, I don't read the amendment as talking about any Congress but the Congress laid out in the document, i.e. the US Congress.
The Constitution supersedes. That is elsewhere in the Constitution. This is why you hear about SCOTUS striking down or upholding state laws from time to time. It does so based on constitutional principles (or at least their interpretation of them, some of which SCOTUS has egregiously bastardized, like Dred Scott and Wickard v. Filburn).
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