The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech September 25, 2024 Click here to subscribe to the Daily Media Update. This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected]. In the News Adweek: Oklahoma Station Seeks Restraining Order Against State Department of Education By Kevin Eck .....A hearing has been set for a restraining order KFOR is seeking against Oklahoma State Department of Education Superintendent Ryan Walters and OSDE Press Secretary Dan Isett. The Oklahoma City NBC affiliate claims the Oklahoma State Department of Education, specifically Walters and Isett, are saying the 75-year broadcast station is not a legitimate news organization. The station said its journalists have been refused access to public State Board of Education meetings, and placed in an overflow room. KFOR journalists have been excluded from press conferences held by Walters following those board meetings. KFOR and The Institute for Free Speech filed a motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction on Monday. New from the Institute for Free Speech Free Speech Arguments: Can Public Libraries Remove Books Based on Viewpoint? (Little v. Llano County) .....Little, et al. v. Llano County, et al., argued en banc before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on September 24, 2024. Argued by Jonathan F. Mitchell (on behalf of Llano County, et al.), Henry Charles Whitaker (on behalf of Amici Curiae States supporting Llano County), and Matthew Borden (on behalf of Little, et al.). Amicus Brief: Americans for Prosperity v. Meyer .....More people, more speech, and more time: Arizona’s Proposition 211 expands on previous donor disclosure laws in nearly every way. That’s why the Institute for Free Speech filed an amicus brief in Americans for Prosperity v. Meyer urging the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to reverse the district court’s decision dismissing a First Amendment challenge to Arizona’s Proposition 211. The Institute argues that Proposition 211 imposes sweeping disclosure rules unlike anything seen before, expanding on previous laws in almost every way. The law “covers more people, more speech,” and applies for a longer period of time than prior disclosure requirements. By broadening all aspects of an ordinary disclosure rule, the brief notes that Proposition 211 “accomplishes a shift in kind, not merely degree.” As a result, “that shift in kind turns a series of individually problematic provisions into a cataclysmic First Amendment violation.” Congress Fox News: Campaign finance wars are over and the winner turned defeat into victory By Sean Cooksey .....From the time he was a junior senator, he has been the single greatest champion of free speech in political campaigns in America. And while McConnell may have lost a few fights during his tenure, I believe he ultimately won the campaign finance wars… To understand McConnell’s dogged commitment to the cause of free speech, one need look no further than his battle against the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA). Pushed by Republican Sen. John McCain and Democrat Sen. Russ Feingold, the bill imposed a raft of new campaign finance regulations and restrictions on political speech. The Courts Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Free Speech Unmuted: I Know It When I See It: Free Speech and Obscenity Laws By Eugene Volokh .....Jane Bambauer and I discuss the various rules the Court applies in obscenity cases and the forthcoming Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton decision, which deals with "obscene-as-to-minors" material (not to be confused with child pornography). Fun fact: Associate Justice Potter Stewart, who wrote the "I know it when I see it" line in a 1964 obscenity opinion, later concluded that any such obscenity test would be unconstitutionally vague. The Oklahoman: Oklahoma historian asks court to toss defamation lawsuit filed by Pennsylvania senator By Josh Dulaney .....An Oklahoma historian who criticized a Pennsylvania state senator’s academic research is in a court battle after the elected official accused him of defamation. This month in Oklahoma City federal court, attorneys for James P. Gregory Jr., who is also a museum curator pursuing his doctorate at the University of Oklahoma, asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit filed by Republican Sen. Doug Mastriano, who is a decorated veteran and author of numerous books and articles on military history and strategy, according to the lawsuit. Online Speech Platforms New York Times: How Meta Distanced Itself From Politics By Sheera Frenkel and Mike Isaac .....On Facebook, Instagram and Threads, political content is less heavily featured. App settings have been automatically set to de-emphasize the posts that users see about campaigns and candidates. And political misinformation is harder to track on the platforms after Meta removed transparency tools that journalists and researchers used to monitor the sites. Inside Meta, Mr. Zuckerberg, 40, no longer meets weekly with the heads of election security as he once did, according to four employees. He has reduced the number of full-time employees working on the issue and disbanded the election integrity team, these employees said, though the company says the election integrity workers were integrated into other teams. He has also decided not to have a “war room,” which Meta previously used to prepare for elections. Instead, Meta said it will be running an election operations center closer to the November vote. The company ran that center during the presidential debates and primaries. Last month, Mr. Zuckerberg sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee laying out how he wanted to distance himself and his company from politics. New York Times: Mark Zuckerberg Is Done With Politics By Theodore Schleifer and Mike Isaac .....As recently as June at the Allen and Company conference — the “summer camp for billionaires” in Sun Valley, Idaho — Mr. Zuckerberg complained to multiple people about the blowback to Meta that came from the more politically touchy aspects of his philanthropic efforts. And he regretted hiring employees at his philanthropy who tried to push him further to the left on some causes. In short — he was over it. His preference, according to more than a dozen friends, advisers and executives familiar with his thinking, has been to wash his hands of it all. Washington Post: Musk decries government ‘censorship.’ His X has been more compliant. By Cristiano Lima-Strong .....X owner Elon Musk is the world’s wealthiest flag-bearer for free speech, but under his leadership the social media platform is acceding to government requests to take down or withhold user content at a significantly higher rate than it did in the years leading up to his 2022 purchase. The site acted on 71 percent of the legal requests it received to remove content in the first half of this year, up 20 percent from the last time it reported the figure in 2021 and more than double the rate in preceding years, according to a new transparency report X published Wednesday and a Washington Post review of past disclosure data. The States Axios: Half of U.S. states seek to crack down on AI in elections By Ivana Saric .....As the 2024 election cycle ramps up, at least 26 states have passed or are considering bills regulating the use of generative AI in election-related communications, a new analysis by Axios shows. Bloomberg Law: Employers Banned From Pushing Politics Under Emerging State Laws By Chris Marr .....More than a half dozen states including New York have recently enacted bans on what unions and worker advocates often call “captive audience meetings.” Three face litigation from business groups claiming the laws infringe on employers’ First Amendment rights to communicate freely with their workers. The captive audience laws add another wrinkle to the decades-old legal questions over how actively employers engage with workers on both politics and unions. The matters are often intertwined, and that’s particularly true in an election year when the vocally pro-union President Joe Biden is set to be replaced by either his second-in-command Kamala Harris or his Republican predecessor Donald Trump. Under Biden’s administration, the National Labor Relations Board’s chief lawyer Jennifer Abruzzo has taken the position that captive audience meetings violate federal labor law. Management-side lawyers say that contradicts decades of case law. Read an article you think we would be interested in? Send it to Tiffany Donnelly at [email protected]. For email filters, the subject of this email will always begin with "Institute for Free Speech Media Update." The Institute for Free Speech is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that promotes and defends the political rights to free speech, press, assembly, and petition guaranteed by the First Amendment. Please support the Institute's mission by clicking here. 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