June 17, 2024

In the News

Open to Debate: MOCK TRIAL: Murthy v. Missouri - Free speech, Government and Misinformation on Social Media Platforms

.....The Supreme Court will soon decide on a case whether government interference on social media is coercive and suppresses free speech. Those who argue legitimate cooperation say that where misinformation threatens public health or safety, they are justified to protect the public. Those argue coercion believe that increased content moderation could lead to authoritarian control over public discourse online. Now we debate: Mock Trial: Free Speech, Government, and Misinformation on Social Media Platforms.  

Plaintiff: Charles "Chip" Miller, Senior Attorney at the Institute for Free Speech  

Defendant:  Rylee Sommers-Flanagan, Founder and Executive Director of Upper Seven Law 

Cross-examiners: Nina Jankowicz, Matt Taibbi, and Eric Schurenberg

Emmy award-winning journalist John Donvan moderates  

Supreme Court

SCOTUSblog: Supreme Court rejects “Trump too small” trademark

By Ronald Mann

.....The court on Thursday unanimously rejected an attempt to force the Patent and Trademark Office to accept the registration “Trump too small” as a trademark for T-shirts mocking the former president. Steve Elster had argued that the provision of the Lanham Act that directs the PTO to refuse to register any mark that identifies “a particular living individual” violated his First Amendment rights. Although the justices splintered sharply on their reasoning, all agreed that the First Amendment permits the PTO to refuse to register the mark.

All nine justices agreed on the basic framework of analysis, which appears early in the principal opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas. Writing in that part of his opinion for six justices (all but Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson), Thomas explained that the restriction is viewpoint-neutral but not content-neutral.

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Justice Barrett's Concurrence In Vidal v. Elster Is a Repudiation of Bruen's "Tradition" Test

By Josh Blackman

.....I think Justice Barrett is already having second thoughts about the text, history, and tradition framework in Bruen…

Justice Barrett doubled-down on her disagreement with Justice Thomas in Vidal v. Elster. This case tells us far more about the Court's originalist jurisprudence than it does about trademark law. I can't remember ever seeing a unanimous decision with such a fractured lineup. To paraphrase the T-Shirt, Thomas's majority was too small.

The Courts

Bloomberg Law: Title IX Rule Expanding LGBTQ Rights Barred by Federal Court

By Mike Vilensky

.....A Biden Education Department Title IX rule that aims to strengthen protections for transgender students was blocked by a federal court in four states Thursday.

Judge Terry Doughty, of the US District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, issued a preliminary injunction against the rule in Louisiana, Mississippi, Idaho, and Montana…

Doughty said the attorneys general had shown they would suffer irreparable harm without a preliminary injunction because a “violation of a First Amendment constitutional right, even for a short period of time, is always irreparable injury.”

Bloomberg Law: Backing Diversity as First Amendment Expression Comes With Risks

By Khorri Atkinson

.....Invoking the First Amendment to defend initiatives aimed at boosting workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion has the potential to set precedent that provides legal ammunition to undercut other civil rights goals.

San Antonio Current: Former San Antonio man gets 18 months after guilty plea in super PAC scheme

By Sanford Nowlin 

.....A former San Antonio resident once dubbed "Mini Madoff" for his prior role in a high-profile bank fraud case received an 18-month federal prison sentence Thursday after pleading guilty to credit card fraud and falsifying Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.

Newsweek: I'm Suing the Biden Administration To Save Gen Z's Free Speech

By Brad Polumbo

.....In April, President Joe Biden signed into law a bipartisan bill enacting a de facto ban on TikTok. As a TikTok content creator whose content promoting individual liberty and free markets reaches a unique audience of millions on the platform, this unconstitutional law will strip me of my voice. That's why I'm teaming up with the Liberty Justice Center to file a lawsuit challenging this legislation as an unconstitutional violation of my First Amendment rights.

Courthouse News: Officials appeal decision blocking Florida’s ‘Stop Woke Act’ in universities

By Kayla Goggin

.....Florida officials asked a federal appeals court on Friday to toss out a decision by a lower court preventing enforcement of a law which would have restricted state university professors from expressing disfavored viewpoints on concepts related to race and sex in the classroom.

A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit in Miami had mixed reactions to arguments in the case brought against the Florida Board of Governors by a group of college professors and students. The plaintiffs sued in 2022 to challenge a provision of Florida’s Individual Freedom Act, also known as the Stop Wrongs Against Our Kids and Employees Act (Stop W.O.K.E. Act), which forbids professors from endorsing eight concepts related to race, color, national origin or sex during classroom discussions.

Free Expression

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): A Frightening View of Free Speech and Academic Freedom at Harvard

By Jonathan H. Adler

.....Professor Lawrence Bobo, Dean of Social Science and the W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University, has an article in the Harvard Crimson on the proper limits of faculty speech that has to be read to be believed.

He writes:

Washington Post: Stanford’s top disinformation research group collapses under pressure

By Joseph Menn

.....The Stanford Internet Observatory, which published some of the most influential analysis of the spread of false information on social media during elections, has shed most of its staff and may shut down amid political and legal attacks that have cast a pall on efforts to study online misinformation...

“Free speech wins again!” [Rep. Jim] Jordan posted on X on Friday, calling the Observatory part of a “censorship regime.”

Wall Street Journal: ‘The Indispensable Right’ Review: Why We Need Free Speech

By Tunku Varadarajan

.....In “The Indispensable Right,” Mr. Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, laments that America is living in an age of rage and that “rage rhetoric” is fueling un-American calls for censorship and the criminalization of speech. In such an inflamed atmosphere, the rights embedded in the First Amendment become ever more imperiled—and thus ever more important. This is what drives Mr. Turley’s effort to remind us of the amendment’s robust guarantees, as well as its defining role in American history.

Candidates and Campaigns

MSNBC: Small donors are banding together to make their campaign donations go further

By Ryan Teague Beckwith

.....BR50KLYN doesn't have a bank account, a website or even an X handle. It doesn't show up on campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission and has only a single, unpaid staffer. But the loose-knit group of Democratic donors can raise as much as $25,000 when it decides to support a candidate — enough to make a difference in an overlooked House race.

The money comes from an email list of more than 250 donors, who periodically receive a lengthy analysis of why a particular candidate is a good investment. Only a handful give the maximum — currently $3,300 per candidate in the general election for a federal race — while the rest give anywhere from $25 to a couple hundred dollars to each candidate.

The States

NY Daily News: NYC Campaign Finance Board backs expanding straw donor enforcement powers amid Adams campaign issues

By Chris Sommerfeldt

.....The head of New York City’s Campaign Finance Board voiced support Friday for a number of City Council bills that would expand the watchdog entity’s straw donor enforcement powers amid ongoing issues and investigations related to Mayor Adams’ campaign.

Neither the mayor nor his campaign have been accused of wrongdoing. Still, Adams’ 2021 campaign has come under multiple state and federal investigations into allegations that it received a plethora of “straw donations,” which are made by individuals who either draw them up in another unknowing person’s name or reimburses someone to submit the money for them.

That type of political financing is illegal because such donations end up exceeding caps on how much cash an individual can give and can also unlock public matching funds that campaigns aren’t entitled to.