August 27, 2024

The Courts

Courthouse News: Kennedy loses appeal in lawsuit over anti-vaccine YouTube video removal

By Michael Gennaro

.....A Ninth Circuit panel ruled Monday that a federal court was right to deny Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s request for a preliminary injunction against Google after it took down two of his YouTube videos for violating the site's medical misinformation policy.

Deadline: Judge Halts Missouri AG’s Elon Musk-Triggered Investigation Of Media Matters

By Ted Johnson

.....A federal judge has halted the Missouri attorney general‘s investigation of the progressive watchdog group Media Matters for America over its report last year that major sponsors’ advertisements were appearing next to extremist content on Elon Musk‘s X.com.

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): "Let's Go Brandon" T-Shirts Can Be Barred from Middle School on Grounds of Vulgarity

By Eugene Volokh

.....Before we get to Brandon, let's detour to Bethel School Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser (1986). Matthew Fraser gave this nomination speech for a friend who was running for high school vice-president:

Associated Press: Jury sides with Pennsylvania teacher in suit against district over Jan. 6 rally

By Michael Rubinkam

.....A Pennsylvania school district violated a teacher’s constitutional rights by falsely suggesting he took part in the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, a federal jury has concluded.

After an 11-day trial, jurors found the Allentown School District retaliated against Jason Moorehead when it suspended him after the deadly insurrection in the nation’s capital and asserted he “was involved in the electoral college protest that took place at the United States Capitol Building.”

Although Moorehead was in Washington, D.C., to attend Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally, he said he never got closer than a mile to the Capitol and was not among the rioters who stormed the building. He has never been charged with a crime.

Congress

People United for Privacy: The DISCLOSE Act is Back

By Luke Wachob

.....Everything old is new again. The Democratic Party’s 2024 platform calls for the muzzling of groups of Americans who refuse to sacrifice their privacy when exercising their First Amendment right to voice opinions about elected officials. 

“Democrats will end ‘dark money’ by requiring full disclosure of contributors and ban 501(c)(4) organizations from spending on elections,” the platform vows. The term “501(c)(4)” is a reference to a section of the federal tax code regulating advocacy nonprofits, organizations like the ACLU, NRA, Human Rights Campaign, and National Right to Life Committee, among countless others.

The platform bemoans that these groups “can run ads on issues attacking or supporting a candidate right until Election Day without disclosing who’s paying for that ad.” Inaccurate at best, this claim ignores that ads discussing federal candidates near an election must include disclaimers identifying the entity sponsoring the communication. 

Free Expression

City Journal: Free Speech Is Not Enough

By Wilfred M. McClay

.....Free speech is one of the chief ways that we test the truth of our assertions. The most important defenses of free speech have never claimed that the truth is relative or unknowable or personal or tribal. Instead, as in John Milton’s Areopagitica, they praise the refining fire of contrary opinion as the best way to complete the incompleteness of our knowledge. We saw, too clearly, how damaging was the effort of our public-health authorities during the Covid years to suppress arguments challenging their mistaken directives. It was a reminder of why we cannot allow ourselves to become thoughtlessly deferential to the putatively superior wisdom of censors and anointed experts.

But the restoration of free speech, as well as the ethos that supports its flourishing, is not the full cure to what ails higher education in America. 

Candidates and Campaigns

Newsweek: Donald Trump Backs 'Unconstitutional' Punishment for Burning American Flags

By Anezka Pichrtova

.....Donald Trump has once again argued that people should be jailed for burning the American flag despite the constitution protecting free speech.

"I want to get a law passed. Everyone tells me, oh sure, it's very hard. You burn an American flag, you go to jail for one year. Got to do it, we got to do it. They say, 'Sir, that's not constitutional.' We'll make it constitutional," said Trump during a National Guard address in Detroit on Monday August 26.

Online Speech Platforms

Politico: Zuckerberg says he regrets caving to White House pressure on content

By Lara Korte

.....Mark Zuckerberg says he regrets that Meta bowed to Biden administration pressure to censor content, saying in a letter that the interference was “wrong” and he plans to push back if it happens again.

Meta’s CEO aired his grievances in a letter Monday to the House Judiciary Committee in response to its investigation into content moderation on online platforms. Zuckerberg detailed how senior administration officials leaned on the company to censor certain posts about Covid-19, including humor and satire, and “expressed a lot of frustration” when the social media platform resisted.

“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction — and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.”

New York Times: Telegram Becomes Free Speech Flashpoint After Founder’s Arrest

By Adam Satariano, Paul Mozur, and Aurelien Breeden

.....Telegram, founded in 2013 by the Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov, has grown into one of the world’s largest online communication tools and is central to everyday life in countries like Russia, Ukraine and India for messaging, getting independent news and exchanging views.

The company’s growth — it now has more than 900 million users — has been driven partly by a commitment to free speech. Telegram’s light oversight of what people say or do on the platform has helped people living under authoritarian governments communicate and organize. But it has also made the app a haven for disinformation, far-right extremism and other harmful content.

Many were shocked when reports emerged on Saturday across French news media that Mr. Durov had been arrested in France on charges related to the spread of illicit material on the service. A French judicial official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, confirmed on Sunday evening that Mr. Durov was in police custody. As word spread online over the weekend, news of his detention became a flashpoint in a continuing debate about free speech on the internet.

The States

Wall Street Journal: Google and California’s New People’s Dailies

By The Editorial Board

.....Talk about a danger to democracy. Google and Democrats in Sacramento last week struck a $180 million compact to fund state-backed news organizations. It’s hard to see this as anything other than progressives enlisting Big Tech to amplify their views and entrench their political dominance.

Local newsrooms have been struggling amid a decline in advertising revenue and subscribers in the internet age. This means less news about local events and less scrutiny of local officials. But the worst response would be to have government finance what would amount to state-sanctioned newsrooms.

Enter Democrats, who this month advanced legislation modeled on laws in Australia and Canada that would require large internet platforms to pay publishers a share of their advertising revenue. Google and others threatened to sue and remove links to California news sites if the law passed.

MPR News: Candidate’s gym membership termination upheld by Minnesota appeals court

By Ellie Roth

.....Life Time Fitness terminated Hugh McTavish’s membership in 2022 after the third-party candidate refused to remove campaign leaflets he had left on cars parked at the gym’s Bloomington facility.

McTavish sued Life Time for breach of membership contract and alleged Life Time violated his First Amendment rights. The Court of Appeals left intact a lower court ruling in Life Time’s favor.

Courthouse News: Arizona ‘fake electors’ use anti-SLAPP defense, claim First Amendment privilege

By Joe Duhownik

.....Donald Trump allies including Rudy Giuliani and Arizona Republican leaders argued Monday that an indictment accusing them of conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election should be dismissed under Arizona’s newly amended anti-SLAPP statute, barring prosecutions intended to inhibit free exercise of First Amendment rights.

Fourteen of the 16 remaining defendants in Arizona’s “fake electors” case told a Maricopa County judge that the signing and certification of a document assigning Arizona’s 11 electoral votes to Donald Trump rather than President Joe Biden in 2020 was an expression of the defendants’ First Amendment freedoms to petition the government. 

“There’s a difference between a group of people committing fraud and a group of people expressing an unpopular political belief,” Michael Columbo, attorney for Republican state Senator Jake Hoffman, told Maricopa Superior Court Judge Bruce Cohen Monday afternoon.