Free speech & press: how each Justice has voted
First Amendment speech, press, protest, commercial speech, defamation and obscenity. 466 cases since 1946 in the Supreme Court Database (plus OT2025 from our records). The chart shows each sitting Justice's share of votes on the liberal side over a rolling three-term window; gaps mean too few votes.
No Justice shows a statistically detectable change on this issue between the first and second halves of their tenure.
first vs second half of tenure, relative lean, permutation test; shift if Benjamini-Hochberg q < 0.1 across all tests; >= 12 votes in each half, >= 6 terms. "Lean" compares each vote with the Court's majority in the same case (+ more liberal, − more conservative), so it is not driven by which cases the Court chose to hear. Justices with short tenures or few votes on an issue are not tested.
| Justice | Votes | Liberal side | Lean vs Court | Opinions written |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ketanji Brown Jackson | 11 | 82% | +0.36 | 4 |
| Sonia Sotomayor | 50 | 72% | +0.20 | 16 |
| Elena Kagan | 45 | 64% | +0.13 | 9 |
| Neil M. Gorsuch | 25 | 52% | +0.04 | 6 |
| John G. Roberts Jr. | 63 | 41% | 0.00 | 17 |
| Brett M. Kavanaugh | 23 | 43% | 0.00 | 7 |
| Amy Coney Barrett | 17 | 47% | 0.00 | 5 |
| Samuel A. Alito Jr. | 60 | 37% | -0.07 | 21 |
| Clarence Thomas | 126 | 31% | -0.17 | 49 |
| Case | Jr. | Thomas | Jr. | Sotomayor | Kagan | Gorsuch | Kavanaugh | Barrett | Jackson |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (OT2009, conservative outcome) | C✎ | C✎ | C | L | — | — | — | — | — |
| 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis (OT2022, conservative outcome) | C | C | C | L✎ | L | C✎ | C | C | L |
L = liberal side, C = conservative side (Supreme Court Database coding); ✎ = wrote an opinion; — = not on the Court.
Source: Supreme Court Database (Spaeth et al.) votes through OT2024; OT2025 from our decision records. Direction coding follows the Supreme Court Database, which classifies, e.g., pro-defendant, pro-civil-liberties and pro-regulation outcomes as liberal; it is a convention, not a judgment.