Jehovah’s servants were ready to defend themselves and their God-given work if their arrests led to court trials. Sometimes they were not even represented by lawyers. For instance, back in 1938 Roland E. Collier, associated with the Orange, Massachusetts, congregation, obtained a permit to use a sound car in nearby Athol.

ON TO UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT

Various legal cases involving Jehovah’s witnesses eventually reached the Supreme Court of the United States. One of these was Lovell v. City of Griffin. Though God’s people often had been arrested for preaching the good news in Griffin, Georgia, on one occasion a number of them were placed under arrest for alleged violation of a city ordinance that forbade “the practice of distributing . . . literature of any kind, . . . without first obtaining written permission from the City Manager of the City of Griffin.” Brother G. E. Fiske comments: “There were several brothers over six feet tall and the officials asked if they would be willing to let them pick one to represent the group, and our overseers were willing. So they picked a small, slim sister because they thought she would be easy prey. But she [Alma Lovell] had studied the Order of Trial . . . Not one of the men had prepared as this little sister had, and when the case came up for trial, she spoke to the court for over an hour, giving a wonderful witness. However, the judge was not even interested and he had his feet up on the desk. When she sat down, the judge took his feet down and said, ‘Are you through?’ She said, ‘Yes, Your Honor.’ Then he pronounced them all guilty. The Society’s lawyer immediately appealed the case.” On March 28, 1938, the Supreme Court unanimously held that the ordinance in question was invalid on its face.

While engaging in the Kingdom-preaching work on April 26, 1938, Christian witness Newton Cantwell was arrested with his two minor sons while playing the phonograph record “Enemies” and distributing the book of the same name. The case was carried into Connecticut courts on the complaint of two Roman Catholics. Involved were an alleged breach of the peace and also supposed violation of a Connecticut statute prohibiting the solicitation of donations to charities or a religious cause without approval of the secretary of the state’s public welfare council. Convictions followed in Connecticut courts, and R. D. Cantwell writes: “The case was appealed by the Society and went to the United States Supreme Court . . . the conviction was reversed and the Connecticut statute requiring a permit to offer religious literature for sale, or accepting donations for a religious cause, was found to be unconstitutional as applied to Jehovah’s witnesses. Another victory for Jehovah’s people!”

But Jehovah’s witnesses lost an important case in the United States Supreme Court by a five-to-four decision on June 8, 1942. It was Jones v. City of Opelika. This case involved magazine street work and raised the question of whether Rosco Jones was properly found guilty of violating an Opelika, Alabama, ordinance for “selling books” without having obtained a license and paying the required tax.

A “FIELD DAY” FOR GOD’S PEOPLE

Then came May 3, 1943. It could well be called a “field day” for Jehovah’s witnesses. Why? Because twelve out of thirteen cases were then decided in their favor. Outstanding was Murdock v. Pennsylvania, a license tax case. This decision of the United States Supreme Court reversed its own position in the case of Jones v. City of Opelika. In the Murdock decision the Court held: “It is contended, however, that the fact that the license tax can suppress or control this activity is unimportant if it does not do so. But that is to disregard the nature of this tax. It is a license tax​—a flat tax imposed on the exercise of a privilege granted by the Bill of Rights. A state may not impose a charge for the enjoyment of a right granted by the federal constitution.” Concerning the Jones case, it was said: “The judgment in Jones v. Opelika has this day been vacated. Freed from that controlling precedent, we can restore to their high, constitutional position the liberties of itinerant evangelists who disseminate their religious beliefs and the tenets of their faith through distribution of literature.” The favorable Murdock decision did away with the flood in regard to license tax cases involving Jehovah’s people.

Their efforts have had an effect on the law. Fittingly, it has been said: “It is plain that present constitutional guaranties of personal liberty, as authoritatively interpreted by the United States Supreme Court, are far broader than they were before the spring of 1938; and that most of this enlargement is to be found in the thirty-one Jehovah’s Witnesses cases (sixteen deciding opinions) of which Lovell v. City of Griffin was the first. If ‘the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church,’ what is the debt of Constitutional Law to the militant persistency​—or perhaps I should say devotion—​of this strange group?”​—Minnesota Law Review, Vol. 28, No. 4, Mar., 1944, p. 246.