December 7, 2023

In the News

Washington Times: Moms for Liberty sues California library for shutting down forum on transgender athletes

By Valerie Richardson

.....Moms for Liberty has filed a federal free-speech lawsuit against Yolo County, California, after being shut down by librarians for “misgendering” transgender athletes at a forum on fairness and safety in women’s sports.

The Aug. 20 event at the Mary L. Stephens branch library in Davis was canceled minutes after it had started over objections to former college athlete Sophia Lorey referring to male-born athletes who identify as female as “men.”

The Courts

Daily Wire: Douglas Mackey’s Meme-Related Prison Sentence Halted By Federal Court

By Brandon Drey

.....A federal court on Monday halted the prison sentence for Douglas Mackey, who was convicted earlier this year of election interference for posting memes that mocked Hillary Clinton voters to cast their ballot via text during the 2016 presidential election.

Mackey was accused of a “scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote” after a Twitter account he ran under the handle “Ricky Vaughn” posted memes in the lead-up to the election. In October, Judge Ann M. Donnelly of Federal District Court in Brooklyn sentenced Mackey to 7 months in prison, a $15,000 fine, and two years probation.

However, Judge Omar Williams of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reportedly overruled the appellate court in granting a motion for bond pending appeal, according to Mackey.

Washington Examiner: Did Jack Smith's search warrant sweep Twitter data from millions of people?

By Kaelan Deese

.....Millions of Twitter accounts that interacted with former President Donald Trump's online profile appear to be under the purview of special counsel Jack Smith's search warrant from January of this year, according to a government transparency suit.

The court-authorized warrant on Twitter, which the tech company fought and even attempted to warn Trump about, sought "all information from ... the [Trump] account, including all lists of Twitter users who have favorited or retweeted tweets posted by the account, as well as all tweets that include the username associated with the account (i.e. 'mentions' or 'replies')." The highly specific request potentially implicates millions of users on the platform, now known as X, just because they liked or retweeted a Trump post.

Congress

New York Times: It’s Time to Fix America’s Most Dangerous Law

By David French

.....There is a land mine embedded in the United States Code, one that Donald Trump, if re-elected president, could use to destroy our republic. But it’s not too late for Congress to defuse the mine now and protect America.

I’m talking about the Insurrection Act, a federal law that permits the president to deploy military troops in American communities to effectively act as a domestic police force under his direct command.

Reason: Congress Shouldn't Encourage College Presidents To Censor Even More Speech

By Robby Soave

.....If critics want to charge that university administrators are hypocrites for only sticking to principle when the scrutinized speech is anti-Jewish, they can do so—but of course, both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel activism has been suppressed on campuses.

In any case, pressuring university presidents to come down harder on legal speech is not a very good idea. Anyone who has paid close attention to the happenings on college campuses for the last two decades (or more) should be wary of empowering administrators to engage in censorship. Universities do not need any encouragement on that front, least of all from Congress. Hypocrites should be denounced when they fail to protect speech—however odious—not when they stick to the First Amendment.

Free Expression

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Should Universities Ban "Advocacy of Genocide"?

By Eugene Volokh

.....This question has been in the news recently, in light of the recent House Committee hearings on "Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism." A few thoughts on my part:

[1.] There's no "advocacy of genocide" exception to the First Amendment, or to the contractual promises of student free speech that many private universities rightly implement.

[2.] Indeed, as I've argued before, it is important that students be free to debate what is proper to do in war, and what wars are just. War involves mass killing, in some wars by the millions. I think some such killing is atrocity and some is just. But different people draw the lines differently, and that is a matter that is quite rightly up for debate.

The Atlantic: There Is No Right to Bully and Harass

By David Frum

.....[T]he days of dressing up ritualized violence as “speech”—and demanding protections for stalking, harassing, bullying, impeding, intimidating, deplatforming, and even actual violence—must end.

Everybody should be free to express his or her opinion about the Middle East as an opinion. Everybody should be equally free to express opinions about other people’s opinions, including by exercising the freedom to peacefully boycott or to lawfully refuse to hire. But what the great majority of tolerant and law-abiding citizens are abruptly discovering is that some progressives define their rights as including the power to threaten, coerce, and harm others. This is not behavior that a free and democratic society can accept if it hopes to survive as a free and democratic society. If the public condemnation of their violent behavior comes as a shock to people incubated in progressive spaces, the shock will be a salutary one.

Archive.today link

The States

Maine Beacon: Anti-super PAC campaign says they have enough signatures to get on the Maine ballot

By Dan Neumann

.....A ballot campaign led by campaign-finance activist Lawrence Lessig to limit contributions to super PACs says it has collected enough signatures to qualify for the Maine ballot in 2024...

Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School who briefly ran for president during the 2016 election on a platform of overhauling campaign finance laws, says the campaign is about challenging the constitutionality of super PACs.

If successful, Lessig expects Maine’s law would be legally challenged in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. That could set up a challenge to the 2010 decision by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in SpeechNow.org v. FEC, which ruled that contribution limits on what individuals could give and what SpeechNow could accept violate the First Amendment.

NBC News: Iowa court affirms hate crime conviction of man who left anti-gay notes at homes with Pride flags

By The Associated Press

.....The Iowa Supreme Court affirmed the hate crime conviction Friday of a man who posted hand-written notes at homes with rainbow flags and emblems, urging them to “burn that gay flag.”

The majority rejected the claim by Robert Clark Geddes that his conviction for trespassing as a hate crime violated his free speech rights. But a dissenting justice said a hate crime conviction wasn’t appropriate since it wasn’t clear if the people displaying the symbols were actually associated with the LGBTQ community.

As the court noted, the rainbow flag has come to symbolize support for LGBTQ rights. The majority said the state statute in question does not criminalize speech, but rather conduct with a specific intent — trespassing because the property owners or residents had associated themselves with a protected class.