Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said America's first freedoms are under pressure in the United States.

Alito made the remarks while delivering a commencement address to graduates at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Pennsylvania on Wednesday. Reporters in attendance were prevented from recording Alito's remarks, according to CBS.

"For most of my life, American people have been united in their strong respect for religious liberty," Alito said Wednesday, according to NewsWorks.org, the website of a radio station in the Delaware Valley. "But recently, things have started to change."

"The idea that speech can be banned if it expresses an idea that is offensive is spreading around the country," he added.

Alito reportedly urged the Catholic seminarians to "keep the flame" and quoted from his dissent in the Supreme Court's landmark case legalizing same-sex marriage, Obergefell v. Hodges.