Five States in the United States Still Have Blasphemy Laws on Books

[struggle4progress]

3. A 300-year-old law comes from a time difficult for any of us to understand; and since it predates

our Constitution by about a century, it is irrelevant to modern US legal practice

The last US imprisonment on blasphemy charges was almost two hundred years ago, before the fourteenth amendment; the last US prosecution, nearly a hundred years ago, was ultimately dropped

Today, there must exist multiple potential defenses to a threatened use of an of the few remaining statutes, perhaps depending on jurisdiction: this might include desuetude, selective prosecution, and violation of a fundamental right, such as freedom of speech or freedom of religion