May 16, 2024

In the News

Sacramento Bee: Yolo County settles free speech suit with Moms For Liberty over trans athlete presentation

By Jenavieve Hatch

.....Yolo County has settled with parents’ rights group Moms for Liberty over an incident that took place at a Davis library last summer...

During her presentation, [plaintiff Sophia] Lorey referred to trans women athletes as “men.” Library staff intervened. “We don’t want any transgender females being called male in sporting events with females,” a library official had said. “If that happens, it’s not following our code of conduct and we will ask the person who says it to leave immediately.”

When Lorey then referred to trans women athletes as “biological men,” the branch manager asked her to leave, and turned off the projector to end the presentation…

The conservative Christian group, Alliance Defending Freedom, and the nonpartisan Institute for Free Speech, filed a lawsuit in December on behalf of the Yolo County Moms for Liberty chapter and the California Family Council, alleging county library staff violated their First Amendment rights to free speech.

New from the Institute for Free Speech

Comments to the FEC on Proposed Directive Concerning Requests to Withhold, Redact, or Modify Contributors’ Identifying Information

By Bradley A. Smith and Gary Lawkowski

.....On May 15, 2024 , the Institute for Free Speech submitted comments to the Federal Election Commission in regards to the Agenda Document No. 24-19-A: Proposed Directive Concerning Requests to Withhold, Redact, or Modify Contributors’ Identifying Information.

Read a PDF of the comments here.

The Courts

CBS News: New York court rejects Trump's appeal of gag order in "hush money" trial

By Stefan Becket and Graham Kates

.....A New York court on Tuesday rejected former President Donald Trump's bid to lift the gag order limiting what he can say about those involved in his ongoing criminal trial, saying the order does not violate Trump's First Amendment rights…

In a five-page ruling on Tuesday, the appellate division, first department of the New York Supreme Court, found that Merchan "properly determined that [Trump's] public statements posed a significant threat to the integrity of the testimony of witnesses and potential witnesses in this case."

"We find that Justice Merchan properly weighed petitioner's First Amendment Rights against the court's historical commitment to ensuring the fair administration of justice in criminal cases, and the right of persons related or tangentially related to the criminal proceedings from being free from threats, intimidation, harassment, and harm," the ruling said.

WCPO: P.G. Sittenfeld to be released from prison while his appeal is pending

By Molly Schramm

.....Former Cincinnati city councilman P.G. Sittenfeld will be released from prison while his appeal is pending, according to court records filed Wednesday.

Sittenfeld has served roughly 4 1/2 months of his 16 month sentence for his public corruption conviction.

Sittenfeld has maintained that he did nothing illegal by accepting $20,000 in campaign donations from undercover FBI agents who were posing as developers and championing their project to redevelop a blighted downtown property into a boutique hotel because he was a pro-development politician…

Last Thursday, Sittenfeld's attorneys asked a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to throw out his conviction.

Ed. note: Listen to oral arguments in U.S. v. Sittenfeld here.

Congress

Washington Post: House Democrats launch probe of Trump’s dinner with oil executives

By Maxine Joselow

.....House Democrats are launching an investigation into Donald Trump’s meeting with oil executives last month at his Mar-a-Lago Club, where the former president asked the executives to steer $1 billion to his 2024 campaign and promised to reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental policies.

The probe comes after The Washington Post on Thursday first reported the fundraising dinner, where Trump said that giving $1 billion would be a “deal” because of the taxation and regulation the oil companies would avoid thanks to him, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.

In letters sent Monday evening, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee asked nine oil executives to provide detailed information on their companies’ participation in the meeting. The Democrats voiced concern that Trump’s request at the dinner may have been a quid pro quo and may have violated campaign finance laws, although experts say his conduct probably did not cross the threshold of being illegal.

Washington Examiner: Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss to be focus in House hearing on foreign influence in elections

By Gabe Kaminsky

.....[Swiss billionaire Hansjörg] Wyss, who routes his fortune through a Washington, D.C.-based private foundation with an affiliated advocacy and lobbying arm funding left-of-center causes, is under the spotlight as Republican lawmakers back proposals aiming to thwart what they say are “loopholes” allowing foreign nationals to exert influence over elections. The House Administration Committee, which oversees elections, will hold a hearing Thursday titled “American Confidence in Elections: Preventing Noncitizen Voting and Other Foreign Interference.”

Roll Call: Senate Rules advances three AI election bills

By Justin Papp

.....Senate Rules advanced three bills out of committee at Wednesday’s markup that would prohibit the distribution of deceptive AI in campaigns for federal office, require disclaimers when AI is used, and require the Election Assistance Commission to develop guidelines on the uses and risks of AI.

People United for Privacy: Senate Bills Exploit AI Concerns to Push Unrelated Speech Restrictions

By Brian Hawkins

.....On Wednesday, May 15, the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration [held] a Business Meeting to consider two AI-related bills, the “AI Transparency in Elections Act of 2024” (S. 3875) and the “Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act” (S. 2770). Don’t let the aspirational titles fool you. Both proposals take advantage of the interest in (and confusion about) the application of AI in advertising to enact policies that have no effect other than to chill speech while burdening speakers.

The AI Transparency in Elections Act of 2024 is worth particular attention for its cynicism. On its surface, S. 3875 requires political and issue advertisements depicting federal candidates that use AI-generated “text, images, audio, video, or other media” to display a disclaimer informing viewers of the use of AI. While the mandatory disclaimer is controversial enough, the legislation quietly expands the electioneering communications window in federal law to an absurd degree.

Washington Post: Senators studied AI for a year. Critics call the result ‘pathetic.’

By Cat Zakrzewski

.....For much of the last year, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer and a bipartisan group of his colleagues have been huddling with tech CEOs, civil rights leaders and top researchers to develop an “all hands on deck” plan to address the urgent threats posed by artificial intelligence.

On Wednesday, the Senate AI Gang, as the group is known, unveiled the fruits of that effort, celebrating a sprawling 31-page road map that calls for billions of new funding in AI research as the “deepest” AI legislative document to date. But consumer advocates are furious about the final product, saying that the document is far too vague about how it will protect people from AI’s harms and that the senators’ initiative is sucking up the oxygen from other efforts to aggressively regulate the technology.

CFTC

Politico: Wall Street regulator moves to ban election betting, escalating fight over new market

By Declan Harty

.....The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is charged with regulating the vast and complex derivatives markets, voted 3-2 on Friday to issue a new rule proposal that would ban so-called event contracts that effectively act as wagers on political elections. The plan would also prohibit those contracts related to sporting events and even awards ceremonies like the Oscars.

Free Expression

Election Law Blog: The Law of Assembly on Campus

By Tabatha Abu El-Haj

.....Democratic politics involves far more than voting in elections. Yet, while we spend endless hours preoccupied with largely fabricated problems with elections, few pay any attention to the law of protest and assembly or its inadequacies. When we do, the question is essentially, “when would it be legal to disband the inconvenience and disruption that is protest?” This past week, I had the pleasure of engaging in an informal discussion with John Inazu (Wash U.), Ashutosh Bhagwat (UC Davis) and Tim Zick (William and Mary) about the legal and constitutional dimensions of recent campus protests and the problem with this narrow conception of the question. Beyond those issues that John identifies in his linked blog, our conversation discussed the problems with policing protests and the role of universities and colleges in our democracy.

Vox: Make “free speech” a progressive rallying cry again

By Eric Levitz 

.....[T]here is reason to believe that progressives would be better equipped to resist the present crackdown on pro-Palestinian advocacy had social justice activists not previously popularized an expansive conception of harmful speech.

Even if this were not the case, the campus left would still be well-advised to tolerate a wider array of political expression. Effectively advancing social justice requires a morally valid conception of what such justice entails and an empirically accurate understanding of how various policies and political tactics would function in practice. No political faction should be certain that they possess either of these things. And the more insulated any ideological orthodoxy is from critique, the more vulnerable it will be to persistent errors.

Candidates and Campaigns

New York Times: Mike Pence Sought Public Funds as 2024 Presidential Bid Collapsed

By Shane Goldmacher

.....Former Vice President Mike Pence sought public financing for his failed presidential primary campaign, a highly unusual move that if successful would make him the first Republican in more than a decade to receive such funds, according to Federal Election Commission documents that have not previously been disclosed...

In a sign of the program’s increasingly irrelevant status, no Democrat or Republican used the program in 2020.

The last major-party candidate to take advantage of the program in a primary was Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor who ran for president in 2016 as a Democrat and received just over $1 million in public funds. The last major-party candidate to receive matching funds in a general election was John McCain in his 2008 Republican campaign.

The States

Courthouse News: North Carolina moves to take away legal protections for wearers of face masks

By Sydney Haulenbeek

.....The North Carolina Senate Wednesday passed a bill rolling back protections for mask-wearers despite concerns that it would criminalize wearing masks, even for health reasons, in public.  

The bill, House Bill 237, eliminates a provision passed after the start of the Covid pandemic that explicitly allowed the public to wear masks for health reasons. Prior to that, North Carolina had a public ban on wearing masks and hoods “to conceal the identity of the wearer” that had been on the books since the 1950s. 

Various exceptions exist, including masks for costumes and celebrations. But lawmakers are working to specify penalties against people who are using masks to hide their identities while committing crimes, and target protesters who are causing traffic issues with sit-ins on highways. The bill also increases penalties for convicted criminals who were wearing a mask to conceal their identity and increases the class level of their conviction. 

Courthouse News: Arizona House votes to regulate deepfakes

By Joe Duhownik

.....The Arizona House of Representatives advanced two bipartisan-supported bills Wednesday that aim to regulate deepfake technology...

Senate Bill 1078 prohibits the use of fake voice recordings with intent to defraud or harass, and establishes the crime as a class 5 felony. It passed unanimously…

Senate Bill 1336 prohibits the nonconsensual dissemination of deepfake images of a person nude or engaging in sex acts, and establishes the crime as either a class 4 or class 6 felony, depending on intent, method of dissemination and impact to the victim. Republicans unanimously supported the measure, but the Democratic vote was split down the middle.