Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

-The First Amendment, United States Constitution

The right to petition your government is guaranteed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. We the People provides a new way to petition the Obama Administration to take action on a range of important issues facing our country. We created We the People because we want to hear from you. If a petition gets enough support, White House staff will review it, ensure it’s sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response.

HERE'S HOW IT WORKS:

The idea of petitioning the White House or the government isn’t new, but this online platform is. Since the White House has never featured anything like this, we expect to make some adjustments to improve the platform based on how people use the system and your feedback. We may change the signature threshold so that the workload for responding to petitions in a timely fashion is manageable. You can always view the current signature thresholds on the Terms of Participation page.

As we make adjustments to how the system works, we’ll keep you posted on those changes using the White House blog, and you can see all blog posts related to We the People. And if you have any specific suggestions to improve We the People please let us know.