March 26, 2024

Supreme Court

USA Today: 'Cancel culture': Supreme Court rejects case on dust-up between Catholic student and Native American

By Maureen Groppe and Andrew Wolfson

.....The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear the case of a former Kentucky high school student and supporter of Donald Trump who said he'd been the victim of "cancel culture" after a video of his interaction with an elderly Native American man went viral in 2019.

That decision leaves in place a lower court's dismissal of a massive libel lawsuit filed by Nicholas Sandmann against Gannett, the parent company of USA TODAY, and other media organizations for their coverage of the incident.

Sandmann argued he was defamed by their reports on his confrontation with Native American rights activist Nathan Phillips at the Lincoln Memorial in January 2019. 

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Abridging, Not Coercing, Is The First Amendment's Yardstick for Speech Violations

By Jim Lindgren

.....Philip Hamburger, a professor at Columbia, is the CEO of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which represents most of the individual plaintiffs in Murthy v. Missouri.

Hamburger wrote the following post in response to a post at Volokh by Ilya Somin:

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Abridgement, Coercion, and Freedom of Speech: Reply to Philip Hamburger

By Ilya Somin

.....Columbia law Prof. Philip Hamburger has put up a detailed post responding to my earlier argument that courts should focus on coercion in Murthy v. Missouri, the case where two state governments and other plaintiffs argue that various federal agencies violated the First Amendment by pressuring social media platforms into barring various posts from their sites. I appreciate Prof. Hamburger's thoughtful post. But I remain unpersuaded.

Prof. Hamburger relies heavily on the use of "abridging" in the Free Speech Clause, in contrast to the use of "prohibiting" in the Free Exercise Clause:

The Courts

Washington Post: Musk tried to ‘punish’ critics, judge rules, in tossing a lawsuit

By Will Oremus and Taylor Telford

.....A federal judge in California on Monday threw out the entirety of a lawsuit by Elon Musk’s X against the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), ruling that the lawsuit was an attempt to silence X’s critics.

“X Corp.’s motivation in bringing this case is evident,” U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer wrote in a 52-page ruling. “X Corp. has brought this case in order to punish CCDH for CCDH publications that criticized X Corp. — and perhaps in order to dissuade others who might wish to engage in such criticism.”

Donor Privacy

People United for Privacy: Nonprofit Donors Should Have Their Data Protected, Too

By Luke Wachob

.....In an effort to protect personal privacy, the Biden administration recently issued an Executive Order prohibiting the sale of Americans’ sensitive personal data to “countries of concern,” such as China and Russia.

“The sale of Americans’ data raises significant privacy, counterintelligence, blackmail risks and other national security risks—especially for those in the military or national security community. Countries of concern can also access Americans’ sensitive personal data to collect information on activists, academics, journalists, dissidents, political figures, and members of non-governmental organizations and marginalized communities to intimidate opponents of countries of concern, curb dissent, and limit Americans’ freedom of expression and other civil liberties,” the White House explained in its announcement.

Bloomberg Law: Paxton Blocked in Texas from Investigating Transgender Group

By Ryan Autullo

.....A Texas judge on Monday continued to block an investigation from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) into a nonprofit’s work helping families with transgender children.

PFLAG Inc. would suffer immediate and irreparable harm if it had to give Paxton’s lawyers potentially sensitive information about its members, state District Judge Amy Clark Meachum said from her bench in Austin. Meachum, in issuing a temporary injunction, said PFLAG is likely to prevail at trial.

Meachum set a trial date for June 10.

The injunction carries more legal significance in disrupting Paxton’s probe than a restraining order a judge issued earlier this ...

National Taxpayers Union Foundation: Recent Minibus Keeps Key Budget Riders to Protect Donor Privacy

By Tyler Martinez

.....An Obama-era scandal continues to need effective redress each budget year. In the lead up to the 2012 elections, the IRS Exempt Organizations office was caught targeting many nonprofits based on their public policy positions. Caught red handed, the IRS did what it does best—propose a rule that will effectively authorize its agents’ abuses. (We see the same tactic now with the IRS supervisor signature scandals and the IRS’s proposed rule to fix the issue by cutting taxpayer protections.) 

But the IRS was not alone. The Securities and Exchange Commission, for example, was looking to demand the donor lists of nonprofits and trade associations. And in 2011 and 2016, the Obama White House seriously considered issuing an executive order expanding reporting requirements for prospective government contractors in the bidding process. This generated bipartisan opposition in Congress, including from then-House Minority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), then-Senators Joe Lieberman (D-CT), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), and Rob Portman (R-OH), over fears of politicizing the government-contracting process. 

The Obama administration was looking for many tools to demand the donor lists of nonprofits, so Congress needed to act quickly to stop the administrative state from going further. The answer was annual appropriations riders that prohibited certain agencies from spending money on these donor list demands. The minibus continues these protections. 

Free Expression

AP News: UK court says Assange can’t be extradited on espionage charges until US rules out death penalty

By Sylvia Hui and Jill Lawless

.....A British court ruled Tuesday that Julian Assange can’t be extradited to the United States on espionage charges unless U.S. authorities guarantee he won’t get the death penalty, giving the WikiLeaks founder a partial victory in his long legal battle over the site’s publication of classified American documents.

Candidates and Campaigns

Washington Post: Deepfake Kari Lake video shows coming chaos of AI in elections

By Reis Thebault

.....Hank Stephenson has a finely tuned B.S. detector. The longtime journalist has made a living sussing out lies and political spin.

But even he was fooled at first when he watched the video of one of his home state’s most prominent congressional candidates.

There was Kari Lake, the Republican Senate hopeful from Arizona, on his phone screen, speaking words written by a software engineer. Stephenson was watching a deepfake — an artificial-intelligence-generated video produced by his news organization, Arizona Agenda, to underscore the dangers of AI misinformation in a pivotal election year…

By Saturday, the videos had generated tens of thousands of views — and one very unhappy response from the real Lake, whose campaign attorneys sent the Arizona Agenda a cease-and-desist letter. The letter demanded “the immediate removal of the aforementioned deep fake videos from all platforms where they have been shared or disseminated.” If the outlet refuses to comply, the letter said, Lake’s campaign would “pursue all available legal remedies.”

The Hill: Texas man running for president under name Literally Anybody Else

By Miranda Nazzaro

.....A Texas man is hoping a legal name change and a long-shot presidential bid will get his argument across that some voters want “literally anybody else” but former President Trump or President Biden to serve another White House term.

A teacher and Army veteran in North Richland Hills, Texas — formerly named Dustin Ebey — told WFAA88 he legally changed his name to “Literally Anybody Else” and is running for president under that name. He told the outlet he is hoping the name will send a message.

The States

National Review: Trump’s Stormy Daniels Hush-Money Trial Set to Begin April 15, Judge Rules

By James Lynch

.....Former president Donald Trump’s “hush-money” case will go trial in New York on April 15, a judge ruled on Monday, refusing to delay the trial further as Trump’s team had requested.

National Review: DeSantis Signs Bill Limiting Social-Media Use for Minors under 16 into Law

By David Zimmerman

.....Florida governor Ron DeSantis on Monday signed a bill imposing strict social-media restrictions for minors younger than 16 years old, a move that will likely face legal challenges from the technology industry.

The bill, once it becomes law on January 1, will ban children under 14 from accessing social-media accounts and require parental permission for children ages 14-15. It will also prohibit minors from accessing “pornographic or sexually explicit” websites, as well as require anonymous and standard age verification for young users.