The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech June 16, 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]. Ed. note: The Daily Media Update will return Tuesday, June 20. Supreme Court FIRE: FIRE to Supreme Court: Tell New Jersey criticism doesn’t require consent By Daniel Ortner .....Imagine having to obtain approval from a person you want to criticize before opening your mouth. What if you had to receive written permission from a restaurant owner before you could post a negative Yelp review? The result would be an echo chamber of gushing five-star reviews. Consumers would never learn of the burned meals or rude servers. New Jersey does something similar with a law concerning primary ballot slogans, and the results are what you would expect. New Jersey allows primary candidates running for any political office to speak directly to voters — at the critical moment when they cast their ballots — by including a slogan of their choice next to their name on the ballot. This provides a candidate with an opportunity to make a powerful final impression on voters, and these last-minute messages can be crucial in the often crowded primary fields. But the state requires written consent from any person or New Jersey-incorporated association mentioned in the candidate’s slogan… Last month, FIRE filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to take this case and clarify the standard for determining whether a law is considered content- or viewpoint-based. The Courts Courthouse News: Twitter users suspended for Covid tweets argue to reinstate case against feds By Kevin Koeninger .....Twitter users who gained popularity for criticizing officials during the Covid-19 pandemic argued Thursday before an appeals court panel to reinstate First Amendment claims against the federal government for viewpoint suppression. Mark Changizi, Michael Singer and Daniel Kotzin claim they were censored by Twitter at the urging of President Joe Biden, the surgeon general and other federal officials who sought to silence their contrarian views on the government's response to the outbreak of Covid-19. The three men sued the Department of Health and Human Services in 2022 and alleged Twitter only began to suspend or ban accounts like theirs when the federal government threatened regulatory action to stamp out what it viewed as misleading and erroneous information about the pandemic. Ed. note: Read our joint amicus brief with the Manhattan Institute in support of Plaintiffs-Appellants and Reversal here. Tennessee Lookout: Shelby County Schools sued after banning “School Board Five” from meetings By Holly McCall .....Five Memphis education advocates have filed suit against the Shelby County Board of Education and the district’s chief safety and security officer, alleging their First and 14th Amendment rights have been violated after they were banned from attending school board meetings. Tikeila Rucker, Rachael Spriggs, Damon Curry-Morris, Amber Sherman and Lajuana Abraham — also know as the “School Board Five” — were prohibited from school board meetings following a May 9 meeting focused on the search for a new superintendent of Shelby County schools. The lawsuit states Memphis Police told the group they were barred “forever” from any Shelby County Board of Education property — including all schools — and would face criminal trespassing charges if they violated the order. Group members have been critical of the superintendent search, which began after former superintendent Joris Ray resigned in August 2022 amid an investigation of claims he abused his power. FCC Holtzman Vogel: Regulating Robocalls: New FCC Rules Take Effect July 20 By Michael Bayes, Andrew Pardue, and Jared Bauman .....The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently announced that new rules for non-telemarketing artificial or prerecorded voice calls (i.e., “robocalls”) go into effect on July 20, 2023. The new rules limit the number of robocalls that may be placed to a particular landline phone number to three during any consecutive 30-day period unless the caller obtains prior consent to place more, and impose stricter requirements for obtaining consent. As a result, virtually all nonprofit and political organizations will need to make adjustments to their robocalling programs before July 20. Donor Privacy People United for Privacy: Donor Privacy Helped Secure the Fight for Black Equality By Brian Hawkins .....As we celebrate Juneteenth, the federal holiday commemorating African-American slaves in Texas learning of their freedom a year after the Emancipation Proclamation, it’s worth noting how anonymous giving has been an essential component of the long struggle for racial justice. From the fight against slavery to the movement for equal rights, black social activism has relied on Americans being able to privately support these causes without fear of retribution. Online Speech Platforms Washington Post (Technology 202): Meta rolls back covid misinformation rules By Cristiano Lima .....Meta is rolling back its policies against covid misinformation globally, ending the rules in countries like the United States where the pandemic is no longer considered a national emergency while keeping them in place where officials say the threat remains high. The tech giant’s oversight board in April recommended that it “maintain” its rules against misleading coronavirus content until global health authorities removed the pandemic’s emergency status, a step the World Health Organization took two weeks later in May. The board criticized the Facebook and Instagram parent company at the time over its “insistence” on taking “a single, global approach” to the issue rather than developing a “localized” policy that took into account the pandemic’s progression on a regional basis. Wall Street Journal (LTE): Who Decides What’s Allowed on Social Media? By Floyd Abrams .....Jed Rubenfeld’s “The Censorship Machine Is Running in 2024” (op-ed, June 6), advocating legislation barring social-media platforms from determining not to carry certain speech during a political campaign, runs directly into a First Amendment barrier. That is the consequence of having the government decide what views social media must carry. Racist political advocacy, which is protected under the First Amendment but hardly speech that must be carried by social media today, would have to be carried under such legislation. Potentially false statements about candidates couldn’t be “censored” by being rejected by social media, even though any newspaper would be protected by the First Amendment in doing so. The Supreme Court put it well in its unanimous ruling in Miami Herald v. Tornillo (1974). The Media Daily Caller: Left-Wing Megadonor Teams Up With Tech Giants To Tell Americans What News They Should Trust By Will Kessler .....Left-wing megadonor Craig Newmark worked with several technology giants to launch a project that gives guidelines readers can use to determine what news stories should be trusted, according to its website. The Trust Project lists eight “trust indicators” that are designed to inform readers about which news stories to trust, according to the website. The project’s funders include tech giants Microsoft, Google and Facebook, as well as Newmark, who is a prolific donor to journalism schools and left-wing media groups such as Mother Jones and ProPublica. The seventh trust indicator, titled “Diverse Voices,” instructs readers to “look for voices less commonly heard in society, often because of race, class, generation, gender, sexual orientation, ideology or the region they live in,” according to the website. It recommends readers ask whether there is “evidence that the journalist pays attention to diversity” and if communities are “included only in stereotypical ways, or completely missing.” Candidates and Campaigns New York Post: AI ‘deepfakes’ poised to wreak havoc on 2024 presidential election: experts By Thomas Barrabi .....An onslaught of high-quality, AI-generated political “deepfakes” has already begun ahead of the 2024 presidential election – and Big Tech firms aren’t prepared for the chaos, experts told The Post. The rise of generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT and photo-focused Midjourney have made it easy to create false or misleading posts, pictures or even videos – from doctored footage of politicians making controversial speeches to bogus images and videos of events that never actually occurred. Striking examples of AI-generated misinformation have already circulated on the web – including a deepfake video of President Biden verbally attacking transgender people, false pictures of former President Donald Trump resisting arrest and viral photos of Pope Francis wearing a Balenciaga puffer jacket. The result, according to experts, is uncharted territory for tech firms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google-owned YouTube and TikTok, who are set to face an unprecedented swell of high-quality deepfake content from US social media users and nefarious foreign actors alike. The States New Jersey Monitor: Governor Murphy appoints new campaign finance watchdog board By Nikita Biryukov .....Gov. Phil Murphy appointed four commissioners to the state’s campaign finance watchdog Thursday, ending an 11-week stretch of inactivity that began when the last members of the Election Law Enforcement Commission board resigned in March over legislation they said defanged the agency. Willamette Week: Oregon Senate Passes Bill Banning Politicians From Accepting More Than $100 a Year in Cash From One Donor By Sophie Peel .....The Oregon Senate passed a bill Thursday afternoon that bans any political candidate or committee from accepting more than $100 annually in cash from any one source. The clause that bans cash contributions over $100 was added as an amendment by the House Committee on Rules to an existing voting bill passed earlier in the session. That bill, with the cash contributions amendment, was reapproved Thursday afternoon by a resounding 22-0 vote... Republican lawmakers, including Senate Minority Leader Tim Knopp (R-Bend) and House Minority Leader Vikki Breese-Iverson (R-Prineville), drafted that bill in response to WW’s reporting in May that Rosa Cazares and Aaron Mitchell, the co-founders of embattled cannabis chain La Mota, gave tens of thousands of dollars in political contributions to top Democrats in stacks of cash. Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): "Hamtramck Council Approves Banning LGBTQ+, Other Flags on City Property" By Eugene Volokh .....This seems to be constitutional, and I wouldn't even describing it, as the [Detroit News] article title does, as "banning" certain flags "on city property." The resolution is limited to "City flagpoles"; if a private person wants to carry a flag on a city street, or display it at some booth at a festival in a city park, the resolution wouldn't forbid that. Nor is it really a "ban" in a meaningful sense: Rather, it's the city defining the content of its own speech. Whenever a government entity decides what to say, it has to decide what not to say, but that isn't generally a ban, just a deciding to put up a permanent monument to the Union dead in a city park isn't a "ban" on monuments to the Confederate dead or the Soviet dead or the French dead. Read an article you think we would be interested in? Send it to Tiffany Donnelly at [email protected]. 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