December 5, 2023

New from the Institute for Free Speech

Moms for Liberty Sues to Stop Government Censorship

.....The government censoring Americans for voicing their opinions is a clear violation of First Amendment rights.

Yet, that’s what the staff of the Yolo County Public Library did at an event organized by the local chapter of Moms for Liberty.

Yesterday, the Institute for Free Speech and the Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Moms for Liberty (M4L) and several other California civic organizations and individuals, challenging the unconstitutional actions of Yolo County Public Library officials. The suit argues that the library’s policies and practices violate First Amendment free speech rights by discriminating based on viewpoint.

The case stems from a “Forum on Fair and Safe Sports for Girls” event organized by M4L in August to discuss the issue of biological males competing in female sports. M4L paid to reserve public space in the library for the event. However, Library Regional Manager Scott Love invited disruptive protesters to the event and then shut down the Forum almost immediately after it began.

The Courts

Carolina Journal: Earls seeks 4th Circuit injunction denied by lower court in First Amendment case

.....State Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls is asking a federal Appeals Court to issue an injunction that would block the North Carolina Judicial Standards Commission from proceeding with an investigation against her. Without an injunction, the commission could consider Earls’ case on Friday.

US District Judge William Osteen issued two orders — nine days apart — denying Earls’ request for an injunction. Now Earls seeks relief from the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals while she appeals her case to that Richmond, Virginia-based court.

Fox News: Father sues school district for refusing to display straight pride flag alongside Progress Pride flag

By Hannah Ray Lambert

.....A Colorado father is suing the state's largest school district, claiming staff refused to let him display a "straight pride" flag alongside the Progress Pride flags on view throughout his children's Denver school.

Nathan Feldman argues his children are being barred from exercising their freedom of speech in a case of viewpoint discrimination.

Free Expression

Politico Magazine: Can Free Speech on Campus Survive the Israel-Hamas War?

By Bianca Quilantan

.....The First Amendment is imperiled at college campuses across the country.

That’s according to Eugene Volokh, a free speech expert and law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, who is deeply concerned about the fallout over demonstrations on the Israel-Hamas war.

“I’m worried that there is pro-Palestinian speech being suppressed. I’m worried that there’s some pro-Israeli speech being suppressed,” he said in an interview with POLITICO Magazine. “I also think that there are some things that are being too much tolerated.”…

Volokh, who helms the popular “Volokh Conspiracy” blog now housed at the libertarian Reason Magazine, said he thinks college officials should more often just keep their mouths shut.

“It’s not our job to opine on, or to even express horror, at horrible things,” he said.

Wall Street Journal: A Free-Speech Advocate Says That Colleges Are Doing It Wrong

By Emily Bobrow

.....A campus visit from an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer helped inspire Lukianoff to specialize in First Amendment law at Stanford Law School. Yet when he interned at the ACLU of Northern California in 1999, he noticed a reduced interest in free-speech cases. He recalls praising the ACLU’s notorious support for the rights of neo-Nazis to march in 1977 in Skokie, Ill., and says he was told, “We don’t defend harassment here.” As a freshly minted lawyer in 2000, he was startled to discover that the First Amendment, once embraced wholeheartedly by the left, was increasingly seen as a tool of the right.

FP: Evidence Is Growing That Free Speech Is Declining

By Jacob Mchangama

.....As documented in a new report by the Future of Free Speech Project, these dramatic erosions of freedom of expression in democracies are not novel or isolated events. They are part of a broader and global free-speech recession that has afflicted open democracies.

The report analyzes free speech trends in 22 open democracies across the globe from 2015 to 2022, a period with pivotal global events including devastating terrorist attacks, the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and disinformation campaigns by authoritarian states such as Russia and China.

The trends are as clear as they are alarming. 78 percent of the developments identified by experts in the surveyed countries pointed to increased speech restrictions. Except for 2015, every year witnessed a majority of speech-restrictive developments (as opposed to speech-protective developments), most of them laws, with a noticeable surge in 2022. National security, national cohesion, and public safety were the most cited reasons for suppressing free expression.

Washington Post: Ousted propaganda scholar Joan Donovan accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

By Joseph Menn

.....A prominent disinformation scholar has accused Harvard University of dismissing her to curry favor with Facebook and its current and former executives in violation of her right to free speech.

Joan Donovan claimed in a filing with the Education Department and the Massachusetts attorney general that her superiors soured on her as Harvard was getting a record $500 million pledge from Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s charitable arm.

The States

Center Square: WA GOP files ethics complaint against SoS Hobbs over social media monitoring

By Sue Lani Madsen

.....Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs is facing a complaint filed with the Washington State Executive Ethics Board. The complaint arises out of a contract with an international cybersecurity firm to monitor private citizens’ communications on social media.

The Washington State Republican Party, in filing the complaint on Wednesday, objected to the use of public funds to surveil critics of the majority party.

“It is a violation of state laws and ethics rules on the use of public resources,” party Chair Jim Walsh said in a news release. “More importantly, it is an intimidation tactic to chill free speech and what the Washington State Constitution calls ‘absolute freedom of conscience’ – a value often associated with freedom of religion but, in fact, much broader.”

Los Angeles Times: Mayor Karen Bass spells out new ethics rules for the nonprofit Mayor’s Fund

By Dakota Smith and David Zahniser

.....The Los Angeles Mayor’s Fund, a nonprofit started under former Mayor Eric Garcetti, was at one time a fundraising machine, pulling in more than $60 million during Garcetti’s two terms in office.

Good-government experts regularly voiced concerns. They argued that the nonprofit’s operations, while providing needed funding for community programs, also gave off the appearance of a pay-to-play system within the mayor’s office.

Now, Mayor Karen Bass and the leaders of the nonprofit are making changes that could address some of that past criticism.