The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech June 6, 2023 Click here to subscribe to the Daily Media Update. This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected]. New from the Institute for Free Speech Professor Sues to Challenge State-Mandated Ideology .....The First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech protects Americans’ right to express themselves. It also forbids the state from forcing anyone to adhere to a specific belief system. Yet, Bakersfield College has done exactly that, compelling Professor Daymon Johnson and his fellow faculty members to adhere to a state-mandated ideology. The Institute for Free Speech represents Professor Johnson in a federal lawsuit seeking to block enforcement of unconstitutional, repressive rules and practices that prevent Bakersfield College (“BC”) faculty from exercising basic rights to free speech and academic freedom. BC administrators investigate and punish faculty who criticize or question their preferred views, including state-mandated, administration-approved “anti-racism” ideology... To read the complaint in the case, Johnson v. Watkin, click here. Supreme Court Roll Call: Supreme Court to decide ‘Trump too small’ trademark dispute By Michael Macagnone .....The Supreme Court will decide a case about an effort to cash in on a phrase about “diminutive” aspects of former President Donald Trump, a trademark dispute that could open public officials to more money-making criticism that uses their names. The justices on Monday agreed to hear an appeal from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office of a lower court ruling that allowed a trademark for “Trump too small.” The case started with Steve Elster, who in a 2018 trademark application said he intended to “convey that some features of President Trump and his policies are diminutive” and sell it on T-shirts. A federal law gives some legal protections to the holder of a trademark, and for decades has prohibited the registration of trademarks that include the name, portrait or signature of a living person except by written consent. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found a trademark law’s restriction on the use of a person’s name without their consent violates the First Amendment when it chills criticism of public figures or government officials. The Biden administration, in a petition urging the Supreme Court to accept the case, wrote that trademark registration is a government benefit that doesn’t relate to free speech. “No one doubts that political speech is ‘at the heart’ of what the First Amendment protects,” the brief said. “But as explained above, [the trademark law] is not a restriction on speech; it is a viewpoint-neutral condition on a government benefit.” The Courts Carolina Journal: ACLU, Institute for Justice join debate over NC Supreme Court’s Ace Speedway case .....The N.C. Supreme Court issued orders Monday allowing attorneys from both the ACLU and Institute for Justice to file briefs supporting Ace Speedway in its legal fight against the state’s top health official. State Health and Human Services Secretary Kody Kinsley is urging the high court to reverse the state Court of Appeals. A unanimous appellate panel ruled in August 2022 that speedway owners could pursue a lawsuit against Kinsley over a forced shutdown in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. The lawsuit accused Kinsley’s predecessor, Mandy Cohen, of shuttering Ace for three months because of critical comments one speedway owner made about Gov. Roy Cooper’s COVID response. “The freedom to speak without risking retaliatory enforcement is ‘one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation,’” wrote attorneys with the ACLU of North Carolina’s Legal Foundation. “This appeal calls on this Court to secure North Carolinians’ rights to meaningfully criticize and demand accountability from their government.” Denver Post: Denver woman challenges longstanding Colorado law requiring anti-abortion activists to give patients space at clinics By Shelly Bradbury .....A Denver woman is mounting a new legal challenge to a longstanding Colorado law that prohibits anti-abortion activists from approaching within eight feet of people outside abortion clinics. The law was crafted in 1993 by Colorado lawmakers to curb so-called “sidewalk counseling” — last-minute, one-on-one appeals by protesters to people seeking abortions outside the doors of an abortion provider. A divided U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law in 2000, with the majority of justices rejecting arguments that it violated anti-abortion protesters’ First Amendment rights. But the U.S. Supreme Court justices last year opened the door for a new free speech challenge when the court stripped away the constitutional right to abortion, attorneys for plaintiff Wendy Faustin argued in a lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado. A single line in the historic 213-page Dobbs opinion cites the court’s prior ruling on the Colorado law as one that “distorted First Amendment doctrines.” Faustin’s attorneys argue that she should be allowed to closely approach people as they go into abortion clinics in metro Denver in order “‘to forge, in the last moments before another of her sex is to have an abortion, a bond of concern and intimacy that might enable her to persuade the woman to change her mind and heart,’ and she simply cannot do this by shouting from eight feet away,” the lawsuit reads, borrowing from the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinion in the 2000 ruling, which was decided 6-3 in Colorado’s favor. Common Dreams: Progressive Groups Sue Mississippi Over 'Unconstitutional' Anti-Protest Law By Brett Wilkins .....Progressive advocacy groups are suing Mississippi officials over a new state law requiring permission to hold public protests near state government buildings in the capital city of Jackson. A lawsuit filed last week by JXN Undivided Coalition, Mississippi Votes, Mississippi Poor People's Campaign, Black Voters Matter, and a trio of activists challenges S.B. 2343, which is set to take effect on July 1. The legislation required prior approval from Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell or Capitol Police Chief Bo Luckey for public demonstrations on the grounds of or near state government buildings including the Capitol Complex, Governor's Mansion, state Supreme Court, and other edifices. DHS Federalist: DHS Cybersecurity Agency Labels Private Thoughts ‘Critical Infrastructure’ To Justify Censoring You By Samuel Boehlke .....A cybersecurity agency within the Department of Homeland Security has been engaging in censorship and then justifying it under the guise of “critical infrastructure security,” Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry testified this week before the House Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Called to testify based on findings in his ongoing lawsuit, Louisiana and Missouri v. Biden et al., Landry said DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has classified American “thoughts, ideas, and beliefs” as “critical infrastructure.” To “control” these “cognitive assets,” Landry added, CISA and “numerous federal agencies” then use private entities to orchestrate what amounts to unconstitutional government censorship: The government flags dissenting beliefs for Big Tech companies to silence in an attempt to bypass the First Amendment. Online Speech Platforms Wall Street Journal: The Big Tech Censorship Machine Is Running in 2024 By Jed Rubenfeld .....Meta slapped 180-day suspensions last week on the Instagram accounts of people working for Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign—before a single message had been posted from those accounts. This came shortly after LinkedIn shut down Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s account, apparently for expressing disfavored opinions on China and climate change. This censorship should worry anyone who cares about democracy in America. It isn’t only antidemocratic; it’s a thumb on the scale that could easily tip a tightly contested election. The Media Racket News: "Cover Those Nazi Symbols, Please?" By Matt Taibbi .....The New York Times just released a story called “Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History,” about whether or not it means anything that some Ukrainian soldiers have been photographed wearing Nazi Death’s Head or “Totenkopf” symbols. One passage stands out: In November, during a meeting with Times reporters near the front line, a Ukrainian press officer wore a Totenkopf variation made by a company called R3ICH (pronounced “Reich”). He said he did not believe the patch was affiliated with the Nazis. A second press officer present said other journalists had asked soldiers to remove the patch before taking photographs. The institutional obstacles to getting clear information about the war in Ukraine are formidable, from embedding rules barring journalists from entering “red zones” (and requiring escorts in “yellow” areas), to casualties undercounted by officials on both sides, to open use of planted stories, to harassment of voices who go against official messaging. Journalists asking soldiers to remove Nazi patches is a new level of insanity. With the line between propagandist and reporter all but dissolved, how long before embeds are offered NATO uniforms? Who thinks this is a good idea? Candidates and Campaigns Fortune: Here’s what it might look like if A.I. is deployed to sway elections—And what we can do to stop it By Archon Fung and Lawrence Lessig, for The Conversation .....Could organizations use artificial intelligence language models such as ChatGPT to induce voters to behave in specific ways? Sen. Josh Hawley asked OpenAI CEO Sam Altman this question in a May 16, 2023, U.S. Senate hearing on artificial intelligence. Altman replied that he was indeed concerned that some people might use language models to manipulate, persuade and engage in one-on-one interactions with voters. Altman did not elaborate, but he might have had something like this scenario in mind. Imagine that soon, political technologists develop a machine called Clogger – a political campaign in a black box. Clogger relentlessly pursues just one objective: to maximize the chances that its candidate – the campaign that buys the services of Clogger Inc. – prevails in an election. While platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube use forms of AI to get users to spend more time on their sites, Clogger’s AI would have a different objective: to change people’s voting behavior. The States Providence Journal: New bill could bring big changes to RI political donations. Here's what's proposed. By Patrick Anderson .....A Republican-led effort to double the amount of money an individual donor can give to a political candidate each year is advancing in the Democrat-dominated General Assembly. Legislation introduced by North Smithfield Republican Brian Newberry would raise the $1,000 annual individual contribution limit to $2,000 while making a number of other changes to campaign-finance law. Among those changes is doubling the size of a contribution, to $200, that a candidate can receive without reporting the name of the donor. (Under current law, candidates can report all donations of less than $100 in the aggregate.) The bill would also allow primary candidates for statewide office to qualify for public matching funds – something now only available to general election candidates. And it would limit candidates' ability to list services they've received as "accounts payable" without reporting them as expenditures or contributions. Finally, it would set a definition of "fair market value" for campaign items. The bill is slated to be voted out of the House Elections Committee on Tuesday on the way to full House vote. Read an article you think we would be interested in? Send it to Tiffany Donnelly at [email protected]. For email filters, the subject of this email will always begin with "Institute for Free Speech Media Update." The Institute for Free Speech is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that promotes and defends the First Amendment rights to freely speak, assemble, publish, and petition the government. Please support the Institute's mission by clicking here. 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