In the 1925 case gitlow v. new york, the supreme court ruled that espionage act of 1917 made illegal.

 In the 1925 case Gitlow v. New York, the Supreme Court ruled that rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights must also be guaranteed by the states.

"Gitlow v. New York, case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 8, 1925, that the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protection of free speech, which states that the federal “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech,” applied also to state governments. The decision was the first in which the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause required state and federal governments to be held to the same standards in regulating speech."