May 7, 2024

New from the Institute for Free Speech

Oklahoma Governor’s Task Force on Campaign Finance and Election Threats Recommends Campaign Finance Reforms

.....Earlier this year, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt’s Task Force on Campaign Finance and Election Threats invited Institute for Free Speech President David Keating and Chairman and Founder Bradley A. Smith to speak to the Task Force about weaknesses in the state’s current campaign finance laws.

In 2022, Oklahoma earned a disappointing 56 percent score on the Institute for Free Speech’s Free Speech Index. Due to changes in some of the campaign laws since then, the adjusted score would be even lower at 52 percent. The 2018 Institute for Free Speech Free Speech Index – Grading the 50 States on Political Giving Freedom gave the state a 19 percent score and “F” grade for its low contribution limits.

On April 3, 2024, Governor Stitt announced the recommendations from the Task Force to the public. The final report addressed several areas that Keating and Smith identified as weaknesses. The following Task Force recommendations at least partially responded to the Institute for Free Speech’s suggestions:

...

Watch a recording of the presentation here.

The Courts

Free Beacon: 13 Federal Judges Say They Will No Longer Hire Law Clerks From Columbia University, Citing ‘Virulent Spread of Antisemitism’ and ‘Explosion of Student Disruptions’

By Aaron Sibarium

.....Thirteen federal judges said Monday that they would no longer hire law clerks from Columbia College or Columbia Law School after the university allowed an encampment on its lawn to spiral into a destructive occupation of a campus building. The judges cited the "explosion of student disruptions" and the "virulent spread of antisemitism" at Columbia, which has now canceled its main graduation ceremony because of the unrest.

Led by appellate judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch, who spearheaded a clerkship boycott of Yale Law School in 2022 and Stanford Law School in 2023, as well as by Matthew Solomson on the U.S Court of Federal Claims, the judges wrote in a letter to Columbia president Minouche Shafik that they would no longer hire "anyone who joins the Columbia University community—whether as undergraduates or as law students—beginning with the entering class of 2024."

ABA Journal: Pro-Palestinian groups are Hamas propagandists, BigLaw firm's suit alleges; is First Amendment an issue?

By Debra Cassens Weiss

.....A May 1 lawsuit alleges that two pro-Palestinian groups are Hamas propagandists that are involved in campus protests in an effort to justify violence against Israel and Zionists.

Greenberg Traurig is among the law firms that filed the suit seeking damages for nine victims of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack, according to a May 1 press release from Greenberg Traurig.

Law.com, Bloomberg Law and the Washington Post (here and here) covered the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

The two groups targeted in the suit are American Muslims for Palestine and a group that it founded, National Students for Justice in Palestine.

The suit says American Muslims for Palestine, through the student group, “uses propaganda to intimidate, convince and recruit uninformed, misguided and impressionable college students to serve as foot soldiers for Hamas on campus and beyond.”

Washington Post: She worked in animal research. Now she’s blocked from commenting on it.

By Rachel Weiner

.....[F]our years after she graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Krasno started posting online about her experiences [working in a monkey research lab as a college student]. Eventually, she started tagging the school in those posts and then commenting on its pages.

Many of those comments disappeared. As she would later learn, it was not a mistake or a glitch. Both the university and the National Institutes for Health were blocking her comments. Now with support from free speech and animal rights organizations, she is suing both institutions...

Two courts have told her that it’s not a violation, that the blocking of keywords such as “animal testing” and related hashtags is a legal way of managing online conversations — the same way a local government can avoid chaotic town halls by deciding who speaks and on what topics. Both rulings are now on appeal and could go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Courts are just starting to dig into the parameters of free speech online,” said lawyer Stephanie Krent of the Knight First Amendment Institute, who argued the case in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit last week. Courts have said officials — including former president Donald Trump — can’t muzzle criticism online. But they haven’t said what the limits are when the government is allowed to moderate.

CBS News: Trump held in contempt again for violating gag order as judge threatens jail time

By Graham Kates and Stefan Becket

.....The judge overseeing former President Donald Trump's criminal trial in New York held him in contempt of court for violating a gag order for the 10th time, warning on Monday that future infractions could bring jail time.

Judge Juan Merchan said Trump violated his order on April 22 when he commented on the political makeup of the jury.

"That jury was picked so fast — 95% Democrats. The area's mostly all Democrat," Trump said in an interview with the network Real America's Voice. "It's a very unfair situation, that I can tell you."

In his written order, Merchan said Trump's comments "not only called into question the integrity, and therefore the legitimacy of these proceedings, but again raised the specter of fear for the safety of the jurors and of their loved ones."

Congress

Just the News: Sen. Josh Hawley grills Interior Secretary Haaland about ‘dark money’ influence over policies

By Kevin Killough

.....Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., grilled Interior Department Secretary Deb Haaland Thursday on allegations that her department allows environmental groups inappropriate levels of influence over policies.

Haaland had come to testify at a fiscal year 2025 budget request hearing of the Senate Natural Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

In the course of the tense exchange, Hawley asked Haaland about the Wilderness Society, which he said was a “left-wing environmentalist pressure group” funded in large part by Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, “who has routed his money through all manner of dark money groups.”

Tablet: Not in Our Name

By The Editors

.....There is no exception for hate speech in the Constitution. It is not, according to the Constitution of the United States of America, illegal to misgender someone, or call them a dirty kike or a pig, or tell them you want them to be shipped back to Africa, or say that the State of Israel has “no right to exist,” or that all women are nasty hookers who play men for money. Those statements might rightfully earn you the disgust of those around you, as well as exclusion from any number of personal and professional opportunities, or access to private institutions and spaces. But they are not unlawful, and no governmental authority has the standing to penalize you for making or believing them—in the privacy of your home, in the public square, or on the open internet.

That includes Congress, which is made up of elected officials. Americans have radically lowered our standards for what we expect of this class of people, but we think we can all draw a line at a basic understanding of the Bill of Rights. The fact that a word or idea is annoying or upsetting to you—or us!—does not make it illegal.

This includes the phrase “From the river to the sea,” which the House of Representatives voted to condemn last month. This is wrong. No citizen of America, Jewish or not, should support the condemnation of speech by those whose conditional authority is entrusted to them by the people. You are American citizens! However noxious your beliefs, as long as they stay beliefs, they should be none of the business of the government.

Free Expression

New York Times: M.I.T. Will No Longer Require Diversity Statements for Hiring Faculty

By Anemona Hartocollis

.....The Massachusetts Institute of Technology said on Monday that it would no longer require candidates applying for faculty positions to write diversity statements, which have been denounced by conservatives and free-speech advocates as forcing a kind of ideological conformity.

In their statements, generally a page-long, candidates were required to explain how they would enhance the university’s commitment to diversity...

In announcing the change, M.I.T.’s president, Sally Kornbluth, said diversity statements constituted a form of compelled speech that do not work.

The Atlantic: Say Plainly What the Protesters Want

By Jill Filipovic

.....Here is a sadly typical example of the phenomenon I’m seeing: The Washington Post recently published an article headlined “They Criticized Israel. This Twitter Account Upended Their Lives.” The story, by the reporter Pranshu Verma, looked at the organization StopAntisemitism, which, according to the Post’s summary, “has flagged hundreds of people who have criticized Israel’s actions in Gaza. Many were swiftly fired.”

But that’s not actually an accurate description of the reality that the Post is reporting. The people featured in this article did not simply criticize Israel or its actions in Gaza. One woman was fired from her job at a branding firm for a video in which she declared that “radical solidarity with Palestine means … not apologizing for Hamas.” (Refusing to say a bad word about a U.S.-designated foreign-terrorist group is undoubtedly not the way her firm wanted to be branded.) Another person, a therapist, was caught on video ripping down a poster of Israeli hostages.

Archive.today link

Wall Street Journal: The Adults Are Still in Charge at the University of Florida

By Ben Sasse

.....At the University of Florida, we tell parents and future employers: We’re not perfect, but the adults are still in charge. Our response to threats to build encampments is driven by three basic truths.

First, universities must distinguish between speech and action. Speech is central to education. We’re in the business of discovering knowledge and then passing it, both newly learned and time-tested, to the next generation. To do that, we need to foster an environment of free thought in which ideas can be picked apart and put back together, again and again. The heckler gets no veto. The best arguments deserve the best counterarguments.

To cherish the First Amendment rights of speech and assembly, we draw a hard line at unlawful action. Speech isn’t violence. Silence isn’t violence. Violence is violence. Just as we have an obligation to protect speech, we have an obligation to keep our students safe. Throwing fists, storming buildings, vandalizing property, spitting on cops and hijacking a university aren’t speech.

Wall Street Journal: While U.S. Debates Free Speech, Pro-Hamas Rhetoric in France Is a Crime

By Matthew Dalton

.....Protests roiling U.S. universities have ignited a fierce debate over where to set the limit between acceptable criticism of Israel and speech that encourages antisemitism and violence.

In France, government authorities are stepping in to draw the line. Courts have ruled that public speech condoning the Oct. 7 attack or legitimizing Hamas as a resistance movement amounts to condoning terrorism—a crime under French law, punishable by up to seven years in prison. French prosecutors are investigating politicians on the far-left, union officials and hundreds of other people for allegedly condoning terrorism and inciting antisemitism since October. 

Online Speech Platforms

New York Times: R.F.K. Jr. Claims Censorship After Facebook and Instagram Briefly Block New Ad

By Rebecca Davis O’Brien

.....Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made censorship — specifically, claims that the government, news media and tech platforms have tried to stifle his message — a cornerstone of his independent presidential campaign.

This weekend, Mr. Kennedy got more fodder for his argument when Facebook and Instagram blocked a link to a new, sleekly produced 30-minute ad supporting his candidacy. The link appeared to have been blocked from Friday late afternoon until Saturday around midday.

Meta, which owns both platforms, called the episode a mistake. Andy Stone, a spokesman for Meta, said the link had been incorrectly flagged as spam. “It was mistakenly blocked, and it was corrected within a few hours” after the issue was discovered, Mr. Stone said.

Tony Lyons, a founder of American Values 2024, the super PAC that paid for the ad, said that the group planned to sue Meta in federal court, accusing the company of censorship and of violating First Amendment rights to free speech.

The States

Morrison Foerster: FARA-Like or FARA-Light? State Regulation of Foreign Influence

By Brandon L. Van Grack, Robert S. Litt, Haydn Forrest, and Nicholas W. Kennedy

.....On April 2, 2024, the Georgia State Senate sent Senate Bill 368, which creates a state law version of the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) for the State of Georgia, to Governor Brian Kemp for his signature. The Georgia Secretary of State has made several statements in support of the legislation and local media believes Governor Kemp will sign the bill into law.

SB 368 is not an outlier; it is a harbinger. Other states are considering, or have already implemented, their own foreign influence regimes. Alongside redoubled efforts to regulate foreign political contributions at the state level and nascent attempts to regulate foreign capital flows and investments, state legislatures are increasingly turning their attention to regulating foreign influence. Individuals and entities potentially covered by such regulations should monitor these efforts to avoid inadvertently being caught up in their scope.

College Fix: UNC to ban anonymous social media apps, prompting free speech concerns

By Andi Shae Napier

.....The University of North Carolina System plans to ban anonymous social media apps across its 16 campuses, arguing the technology companies have a “reckless disregard” for students’ wellbeing.

Other universities are considering similar bans, prompting concerns from free speech advocates.