<Tr> <Th_colspan="2"> Laws applied </Th> </Tr> <Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> U.S. Const . amends . I, XIV; N.Y. Penal Law § § 160, 161 </Td> </Tr> <P> Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States holding that the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution had extended the reach of certain limitations on federal government authority set forth in the First Amendment--specifically the provisions protecting freedom of speech and freedom of the press--to the governments of the individual states . It was one of a series of Supreme Court cases that defined the scope of the First Amendment's protection of free speech and established the standard to which a state or the federal government would be held when it criminalized speech or writing . </P> <P> Following the Red Scare of 1919--20, a variety of leftists, either anarchists, sympathizers with the Bolshevik Revolution, labor activists, or members of a communist or socialist party, were convicted for violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918 on the basis of their writings or statements . Benjamin Gitlow, a member of the Socialist Party of America, who had served in the New York State Assembly, was charged with criminal anarchy under New York's Criminal Anarchy Law of 1902 for publishing in July 1919 a document called "Left Wing Manifesto" in The Revolutionary Age, a newspaper for which he served as business manager . His trial lasted from January 22 to February 5, 1920 . </P>

When the gitlow case get to the federal supreme court the court ruled