April 18, 2024

In the News

Legal Theory Blog: Knowles-Gardner on NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson

By Lawrence Solum 

.....Helen J. Knowles-Gardner (Institute for Free Speech) has posted The First Amendment to the Constitution, Associational Freedom, and the Future of the Country: Alabama’s Direct Attack on the Existence of the NAACP on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Supreme Court

Bloomberg Law: US Supreme Court Skeptical of Another Public Corruption Law

By Kimberly Strawbridge Robinson

.....The US Supreme Court appeared likely to side with a convicted Indiana mayor and continue to pare back the reach of federal corruption statutes.

The case argued Monday centers on the scope of 18 U.S.C. 666, which makes it a crime for certain state or local officials to “corruptly” accept anything of value over $5,000. The question for the justices is whether the law covers “gratuities” paid in recognition of past actions, or only quid pro quo bribery, meaning a tit-for-tat agreement.

The Courts

KERA News: Federal appeals court upholds block on Texas law restricting 'explicit' books

By Bill Zeeble

.....A federal appeals court this week declined to reconsider a ruling that blocked part of a Texas law requiring book sellers to rate their own works for sexual content before selling to schools in the state.

Tuesday’s decision from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals effectively keeps key portions of House Bill 900 — known as the Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources, or READER, Act — from going into effect.

Congress

Fox News: GOP bill cracks down on 'loophole' allowing foreign donors to pump dark money into US elections

By Andrew Mark Miller 

.....Senate Republicans are introducing a bill on Wednesday that aims to prevent foreign nationals from improperly influencing American elections in response to a report outlining how a foreign billionaire allegedly funneled almost $250 million into a liberal dark money network that poured almost $100 million into nationwide ballot campaigns.

The Prevent Foreign Interference in American Elections Act, being introduced by Tennessee GOP Sen. Bill Hagerty, states that it will "amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to further restrict contributions of foreign nationals."

The move comes after the Senate was briefed on a new report from Americans for Public Trust that shows Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss has sent more than $243 million to the Sixteen Thirty Fund which then invested $97.6 million in ballot campaigns across 25 states over the past decade. Those states included the key swing states of Michigan, Ohio, Colorado, and Nevada.

Free Expression

FIRE: Back into the FIRE: Hasen’s response to FIRE and Rohde: Don’t read the press clause out of the Constitution — First Amendment News 420

By Ronald K.L. Collins

.....It all started when I noticed an SSRN post of a forthcoming essay by Richard Hasen. In it, the UCLA School of Law professor took exception to some of what was offered up by FIRE in an amicus brief filed in the Ninth Circuit in TGP Communications v. Sellers. FIRE and Stephen Rohde thereafter weighed in with their responses to Hasen. 

Now, professor Hasen returns to the analytical scene with his rejoinder, which is set out below. 

In These Times: The War on Protest

By Adam Federman

.....Even if the felony charges are ultimately dropped — as lawyers say they routinely are in protest-related arrests — the threat keeps activists off the streets and siphons resources away from political organizing.

“I don’t think the goal is conviction, which is really sinister,” says Xavier T. de Janon, director of mass defense with the National Lawyers Guild.

The tactics have already changed the way movements organize. Activists in Georgia are now worried about the implications of participating in routine political activities, such as putting up flyers or circulating and signing Cop City-related petitions. The fears aren’t unfounded: Three activists swept up in the RICO indictment were initially arrested for posting flyers identifying the police officer who allegedly shot and killed Stop Cop City activist Manuel Esteban Paez Terán in January 2023. In September 2023, the city of Atlanta made the unusual decision to publish the full names and addresses of the more than 100,000 people who signed a Stop Cop City petition, effectively doxxing them. Afterward, according to Marlon Kautz — cofounder of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which has provided bail support and other resources to area activists since 2016 — many locals said ​“they would never sign another controversial petition again.”

The Media

Wall Street Journal: From NPR to NBC, Newsrooms Test Management’s Tolerance for Dissent

By Alexandra Bruell

.....Newsroom managers have faced all kinds of criticism—that their journalism is too skeptical of Donald Trump and his allies or not skeptical enough; too pro-Israel or too pro-Palestinian; and giving too much or too little ink to sensitive social issues.

To some extent, newsrooms reflect a broader rise in employee activism in American corporations over the past few years, which was partly inspired by the social reckoning over the killing of George Floyd in May 2020. 

But newsrooms have certain qualities that make them an ideal crucible for these sorts of tensions between managers and employees: The staffers, or “talent” in TV parlance, have big megaphones and often have brands that surpass those of their bosses; meanwhile, the product they are producing—journalism—lends itself to polarizing debate. 

Jonathan Turley: NPR Editor Resigns After Suspension for Exposing Bias and Intolerance

.....It appears that National Public Radio has solved the problem of the intolerance for opposing views, detailed in an article by award-winning editor Uri Berliner: he is now out of NPR. Berliner resigned after NPR suspended him and various other journalists and the CEO lashed out at his discussing their political bias. For those of us in higher education, it is a chillingly familiar pattern. Editors, journalists, and listeners at the public-supported outlet will now be able to return to the echo-chambered coverage without the distracting voice of a dissenter.

Candidates and Campaigns

Washington Examiner: Democrats probing Leonard Leo share wealthy donor funding groups behind ‘ethics’ campaign

By Gabe Kaminsky

.....“Congressional oversight of the influence of money on the public policy process will always be imperfect because the overseers themselves are reliant on special interests, but Sheldon Whitehouse raises this to a whole new level,” said Peter Flaherty, CEO of the National Legal and Policy Center, an ethics watchdog group. “Whitehouse and Senate Democrats certainly appear to have conflicts of interest when it comes to investigating Leonard Leo or Harlan Crow.”

News of the donations underscores how some Democratic lawmakers place hypocrisy targets on their backs by investigating certain financial ties at the campaign and tax-exempt level, according to Richard Painter, the ex-chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush. To Painter, now a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, subpoenas shouldn’t be “fishing expeditions in which members of Congress go after each other’s big donors or the nonprofit organizations they support.”

The States

WITF: Dark money transparency, campaign finance reporting bills pass Pa. House

By Ben Wasserstein

.....With millions of dollars having already been spent this election cycle, the Pennsylvania House passed two bills Tuesday dealing with the transparency behind a candidate’s support.

The first bill requires campaign finance reports for all candidates for state office be available six weeks before an election. The second bill requires 501(c) corporations to report the amount spent advocating for a candidate.

Each passed with bipartisan support going 190-11 and 127-74, respectively.

AZ Mirror: Hobbs signs bill to allow university students to opt out of funding campus clubs

By Leah Britton

.....Last week, Gov. Katie Hobbs signed a bill allowing students at Arizona’s state universities to opt out of having their student activity fees support campus groups they don’t like. 

The new law will require all three of the state’s public universities to give every student the opportunity to choose which clubs or organizations they don’t want their fees to support.

If students don’t select any specific clubs to withhold their funding from, the university is free to allocate the funds to any program open to all students on campus. 

Rep. Alexander Kolodin, a Scottsdale Republican, said that he introduced House Bill 2178 to give Jewish students the option to not have their student activity fees go towards pro-Palestinan groups on campus. Kolodin, who is Jewish, said those groups use their platform on campus to call for “the annihilation of (Jewish) people” 

“Our bill is an attempt to balance the first amendment rights of the students who participate in clubs like Students for Justice in Palestine with the rights of (Jewish) students … not to be compelled to help them speak,” Kolodin told the House Education Committee in January when it considered the measure.

People United for Privacy: Arizona “Transparency” Law Leaves Nonprofits in the Dark

By Brian Hawkins

.....Arizona’s so-called “Voters’ Right to Know Act” continues to confuse and confound would-be speakers and their attorneys trying to make sense of the law’s complicated morass. In November 2022, Arizona voters approved Proposition 211, a measure requiring nonprofits that engage in public advocacy in the form of “campaign media spending” to abide by complex regulations and disclose the “original source” of their supporters. The term “campaign media spending” is defined with stunning breadth and covers nearly every form of direct or indirect communication that mentions an elected official. While the initiative was marketed by its funders as a transparency measure, enforcement and interpretation has been opaque for nonprofits forced into compliance. One such nonprofit is Opportunity Arizona.

Opportunity Arizona is a 501(c)(4) organization devoted to grassroots advocacy for progressive causes. On February 23, the group’s attorneys filed an advisory opinion request with the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission, the agency charged with enforcing Prop 211, seeking clarity on what types of routine public communications by the organization will trigger the law’s disclosure requirements.

Carolina Journal: Student suspended for using term ‘illegal alien’ in English class

By Brianna Kraemer

.....A 16-year-old student at Central Davidson High School in Lexington, North Carolina was suspended for three days last week after using the term ‘illegal alien’ during a vocabulary assignment in his English class. 

Leah McGhee’s son has a teacher who assigned vocabulary words during class last Tuesday, including the word ‘alien.’ McGhee says her son made an effort to understand the assignment and responded to his teacher, asking, “Like space aliens or illegal aliens without green cards?”