Associational Rights
While the United States Constitution's First Amendment identifies the rights to assemble and to petition the government, the text of the First Amendment does not make specific mention of a right to association. Nevertheless, the United States Supreme Court held in NAACP v. Alabama that the freedom of association is an essential part of the Freedom of Speech because, in many cases, people can engage in effective speech only when they join with others. The Supreme Court has found the Constitution to protect the freedom of association in two cases (NAACP v. Alabama, 1958 and Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 1984).
1. Intimate Associations. A fundamental element of personal liberty is the right to choose to enter into and maintain certain intimate human relationships. These intimate human relationships are known as "intimate associations." The paradigmatic "intimate association" is the family.
2. Expressive Associations. Expressive associations are groups that engage in activities protected by the First Amendment—speech, assembly, petitioning government for a redress of grievances, and the free exercise of religion.
Associational Rights were first attached to the First Amendment of the Constitution by the U.S. Supreme Court in NAACP vs. State of Alabama U.S. (1958). The State of Alabama attempted to shut down the NAACP and the state of Alabama demanded a member list, which the NAACP refused.
This case was sent to the U.S. Supreme Court five (5) times because Alabama Courts would not follow or honor Federal law or obey remand orders from the U.S. Supreme Court.
In NAACP the U.S. Supreme Court said,
"It is beyond debate that freedom to engage in association for the advancement of beliefs and ideas is an inseparable aspect of the 'liberty' assured by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which embraces freedom of speech."
"This Court has repeatedly held that a governmental purpose to control or prevent activities constitutionally subject to state regulation may not be achieved by means which sweep unnecessarily broadly, and thereby invade the area of protected freedoms." The power to regulate must be so exercised as not, in attaining a permissible end, unduly to infringe the protected freedom."
". . . Even though the governmental purpose be legitimate and substantial, that purpose cannot be pursued by means that broadly stifle fundamental personal liberties when the end can be more narrowly achieved."
The U.S Supreme Court in NAACP also said,
"Novelty in procedural requirements cannot be permitted to thwart review in this Court applied for by those who, in justified reliance upon prior decisions, seek vindication in state courts of their federal constitutional rights."
Again, in a second Associational Rights case, the U.S. Supreme Court in Roberts v. United States Jaycees, (1984) said,
“The void-for-vagueness doctrine reflects the principle that "a statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that [persons] of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application violates the first essential of due process of law....
...The requirement that government articulate its aims with a reasonable degree of clarity ensures that state power will be exercised only on behalf of policies reflecting an authoritative choice among competing social values, reduces the danger of caprice and discrimination in the administration of the laws, enables individuals to conform their conduct to the requirements of law, and permits meaningful judicial review.