Then according to this, it would seem the States had every right to decide as they wished on matters of speech, religion, etc., but not the federal government. Then I wonder, well, what was the purpose of the Supreme Court? It was supposed to act as a balance of power for Congress, I’m guessing, and rule on what laws were issued by them? I’m also guessing the way the SCOTUS reviews these cases that come from states were not intended? Like SCOTUS deciding to hear the case on the ban against homosexual marriage? I’m a little confused now.
Your statement was arguably true before the ratification of the 14th Amendment. But even though the states still have the the 10th Amendment protected power to regulate our 1st Amendment protected rights regardless that activist justices want everybody to believe otherwise, Sec. 5 of 14A gives Congress the power to make federal laws which limit state powers to regulate such rights. (My reservation about what Sec. 5 actually does is that activist justices have taken the country on unconstitutional tangents concerning our rights to the extent that, at this point in time, I'm not aware of specific examples of such 14A-based federal laws.)
And although 10A protected state power to address religious issues, for example, might sound like a bad thing to citizens who have been indoctrinated to wrongly think that the Founding States had intended for our 1A protected rights to be absolute, this is the same power by which a state can authorize the teaching of religious beliefs in public schools for example. And imo it is up to local majority voters to decide if such things will be taught in local public schools as long as local policy does not infringe on anybody's 14A-protected rights.
If a given cummunity is 100% a particular faith for example, then why can't local public schools, if they are paid to operate entirely by the local taxpayers, teach the faith of the community in their schools?
And where federal funding of local schools is a concern, please bear in mind that Congress has no Article I, Section 8 authority to tax and spend for public school purposes.
Finally, here is my Supreme Court "license" to interpret the Constitution, just in case anybody is wondering what my credentials are.
"3. The Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning; where the intention is clear, there is no room for construction and no excuse for interpolation or addition." --United States v. Sprague, 1931.