February 21, 2024

New from the Institute for Free Speech

Jenny Kim and Daniel Shuchman join the Institute’s Board of Directors

.....The Institute for Free Speech is pleased to announce that Jenny Kim and Daniel Shuchman have joined its Board of Directors.

Jenny Kim currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer and Partner for the Gober Group, where she specializes in lobbying laws, government ethics and conflict of interest laws, campaign finance laws, and tax-exempt laws at the U.S. federal, state, and local levels of government. Her deep understanding of campaign finance and disclosure laws will be extremely valuable to the Institute’s work.

Daniel Shuchman is a long-time champion of free expression. He is a New York-based private investor and philanthropist. Most recently, he managed investment funds at MSD Capital, L.P., the investment office of Michael S. Dell, for almost 20 years. He was a board member of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) from 2007-18, and Chairman of the Board from 2016-18. He is Chairman of Let Grow, a nonprofit group he co-founded, with Jonathan Haidt and Lenore Skenazy, dedicated to enhancing and promoting resilience, self-reliance, and independence in America’s kids.

“Jenny and Daniel are both thought leaders on free speech and have strong leadership skills and deep nonprofit experience,” remarked Institute for Free Speech President David Keating.

Please join us in welcoming Jenny Kim and Daniel Shuchman to the board.

Institute for Free Speech Hires Fellow Nathan Ristuccia as New Attorney

.....The Institute for Free Speech is pleased to announce that First Amendment Fellow Nathan Ristuccia has joined the full-time staff as an attorney.

“Nathan’s impressive and wide-ranging skill set has been a welcome addition to our legal staff over the past few months,” said Institute President David Keating. “We look forward to his continued contributions to our legal department.”

Nathan joined the Institute as a First Amendment Fellow in September 2023. He began his legal career as a clerk for the Hon. Victor J. Wolski, Judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims.

Prior to entering law, Nathan worked as a historian at the University of Chicago. He is the author of more than a dozen scholarly articles and an award-winning book: Christianization and Commonwealth in Early Medieval Europe: A Ritual Interpretation (Oxford University Press, 2018).

In 2022, Nathan graduated summa cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was an Articles Editor for the Georgetown Law Journal and a Bradley Fellow at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. He received the Francis E. Lucey, S.J. Award, presented annually to the student with the highest academic achievement in the graduating class. Nathan earned his Ph.D. and M.M.S. from the University of Notre Dame and his B.A. from Princeton University.

In the News

People United for Privacy: Progressive Activists Call for Privacy for Politicians, Exposure for Citizens

By Brian Hawkins

.....PUFP has long embraced the maxim, coined by former FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith, that transparency is for government, privacy is for people. But the Brennan Center for Justice is flipping that viewpoint on its head in a new report advocating for laws shielding sensitive information about elected officeholders, such as their home address, from public view.

The bulk of the report, “Intimidation of State and Local Officeholders,” concerns the threat of violence from political extremists to state and local officeholders...

While advocating for personal privacy protections for public officials, the Brennan Center is an enthusiastic supporter of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s DISCLOSE Act, which would publish the names and addresses of Americans who donate to nonprofit causes. The Brennan Center is correct to highlight the growing threat of political violence in today’s world, but private citizens who donate to nonprofit organizations also risk attacks, threats, and harassment for their giving and beliefs.

The Courts

Bloomberg Law: California Kids Gun Ads Case Won’t Get Full Ninth Circuit Review

By Joyce E. Cutler

.....A federal appeals panel refused Tuesday to grant a full-court review of its holding that a California law banning any firearm advertisement that “reasonably appears attractive to minors” was likely unconstitutional.

The California Attorney General’s office asked for an en banc hearing after the panel’s September ruling siding against the state and with gun rights groups that argued the law prohibiting the firearms industry from marketing guns to minors was overly broad, content-based restriction.

“The full court has been advised of the petition for rehearing en banc and no judge has requested a vote on whether to rehear the matter ...

Free Expression

Reason: The Biden Administration Is Bent on Setting an Alarming Precedent by Prosecuting Julian Assange

By Jacob Sullum

.....WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been imprisoned in London for nearly five years, pending extradition to the United States so he can be prosecuted for violating the Espionage Act by publishing classified information. Since that amount of time behind bars is about the same as the four-to-six-year prison term that Justice Department lawyers have said Assange would be likely to serve if convicted, you might think the Biden administration would be ready to reconsider this case, especially since it poses an alarming threat to freedom of the press. Instead, the U.S. government's lawyers are back in London for yet another hearing, which Assange's attorneys describe as a last-ditch attempt to block his extradition.

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Journal of Free Speech Law: "Courting Censorship," by Prof. Philip Hamburger

By Eugene Volokh

.....The article is here; the Introduction:

"Has Supreme Court doctrine invited censorship? Not deliberately, of course. Still, it must be asked whether current doctrine has courted censorship—in the same way one might speak of it courting disaster.

The Court has repeatedly declared its devotion to the freedom of speech, so the suggestion that its doctrines have failed to block censorship may seem surprising. The Court's precedents, however, have left room for government suppression, even to the point of seeming to legitimize it.

This Article is especially critical of the state action doctrine best known from Blum v. Yaretsky. That doctrine mistakenly elevates coercion as the archetype or model of constitutionally accountable government conduct. Even in suits against government, the Blum test normally requires plaintiffs to prove that private action has been coercively converted into government action. In such ways, the Blum state action doctrine is not merely erroneous, but has signaled to government that it can get away with censorship as long as it keeps most of it privatized and not overtly coercive."

New York Post: 100+ Yale professors sign up to protect free speech — and save school from being a hot mess

By Rikki Schlott

.....As campuses explode with bigotry and illiberalism, Yale professors are banding together to form a coalition defending academic freedom and free speech.

They’re the latest to join a growing movement across the country. Faculty at Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton and the University of Chicago have all formed similar groups over the past year.

The latest initiative out of New Haven, called Faculty for Yale, has garnered the signatures of more than 100 professors who agree that “Yale must rededicate itself to its fundamental mission: to preserve, produce, and transmit knowledge.”

The group is calling for a reaffirmation of free speech principles, greater transparency from the administration and institutional neutrality.

Online Speech Platforms

Washington Post (Technology 202): Meta is downplaying “political content.” Here’s what that really means.

By Will Oremus

.....Meta announced earlier this month that it will stop recommending “political content” to most users on Instagram and Threads. The move, which will still allow users to see political content from people they follow, extends a policy first applied to Facebook in 2021. 

As my colleagues Taylor Lorenz and Naomi Nix reported, that came as a blow to activists, newshounds and journalists who had flocked to Threads as an alternative to Elon Musk’s X...

Glossed over in Meta’s announcement, however, was a crucial question: How exactly does the company define political content? …

In a statement to The Tech 202, Meta spokeswoman Claire Lerner offered a bit more detail. 

“Social topics can include content that identifies a problem that impacts people and is caused by the action or inaction of others, which can include issues like international relations or crime,” she said. She added that Meta will work continually to refine its definition over time. 

Any account that posts more than a given threshold of political content, which Meta has not specified, will be ineligible for recommendations. For other accounts, only their political posts will be excluded from recommendations.

The States

Miami Herald: Florida anti-free speech bill targets ‘liberal media’ but guess who’s really mad at it?

By Editorial Board

.....Last year, lawmakers, prodded by their hostility toward the “liberal media,” tried to pass a bill to make it easier to sue for defamation. Back then, it was conservative media owners who feared this “let’s own the libs” measure had adverse effects. Corporate media — a term of choice for Gov. Ron DeSantis, who supported the legislation — have resources to fight expensive lawsuits. Small local radio stations and online publications — and your local Rush Limbaughs who might get too loose with facts — do not. 

The measure is back this year in a different version. A strange coalition of liberal-leaning groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and libertarian Americans for Prosperity, founded by the billionaire Koch brothers, is fighting against it. Even the Better Business Bureau — the apolitical nonprofit known for rating businesses and publishing customer complaints — opposes it. House Bill 757 is an affront to free speech and probably unconstitutional, a mechanism for public figures to silence negative coverage with the threat of litigation. Sponsor Rep. Alex Andrade, R-Pensacola, says he wants to hold people accountable for publishing false information. But his bill clearly goes much further.