October 29, 2024

New from the Institute for Free Speech

Federal Judge Rules Sheridan County (WY) School Board Violated First Amendment

.....Harry Pollak can finally criticize Sheridan County school officials without fear of censorship.

That long-awaited victory came late Friday, when the Judge Alan B. Johnson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming granted summary judgment in Pollak v. Wilson, et al. The case, led by attorneys from the Institute for Free Speech, began after a concerned parent sued the Sheridan County School District No. 2 Board of Trustees for violating his First Amendment rights by censoring his criticism of a school official during a public meeting.

In February 2022, Pollak attempted to address the board to respond to statements made by the superintendent at a previous meeting. However, the board chair cut him off, claiming that mentioning the superintendent violated the board’s rule against discussing “personnel matters.” The chair ordered Pollak to stop speaking, and the superintendent called the police to escort him out of the building.

Now, over two years later, Pollak’s right to speak has finally been vindicated.

Last Friday’s order held that while boards may restrict discussion of genuine personnel matters, using such policies to broadly exclude all speakers who mention individual employees is “unreasonable and unconstitutional.” The court also held that the board chair, Susan Wilson, violated the First Amendment by invoking the personnel rule to stop him from making critical comments.

The Courts

National Review: Musk’s Lottery Is Legal

By John Fund

.....The same progressive academics who brought us the unconstitutional McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law have their underwear in a twist over Elon Musk’s advocacy of free speech. Yesterday, Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner, who was elected with the help of left-wing financier George Soros, announced he is suing Musk…

The only people eligible to win the lottery or collect the bonus are those who are already registered voters. That means that Musk is NOT paying individuals to register to vote. He is paying them to sign the petition.

Hans von Spakovsky, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a former member of the Federal Election Commission, says Musk is clearly not violating the federal statute that makes it a felony violation for anyone who “knowingly and willfully . . . pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting.”

Von Spakovsky says that what Musk is doing isn’t different from what pollsters, political consultants, and campaigns routinely do every election with focus groups:

Read the lawsuit here.

Tallahassee Democrat: Florida social media restriction, porn age verification law accused of speech violations

By Douglas Soule

.....A Florida law that would restrict minors' social media access has been challenged in court a couple of months before it is set to take effect.

"Like adults, minors use these websites to engage in an array of First Amendment activity on a wide range of topics," wrote NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, in a legal complaint filed Monday in the Tallahassee division of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida.

"The government may have a role in empowering parents with tools and information to make their own judgments about what speech is appropriate for their own minor children," they continued.

"But when the government has crossed the line into deciding for itself which constitutionally protected speech minors may access, courts have invalidated such efforts as inconsistent with the First Amendment."

Congress

RealClearPolicy: Bipartisan Censorship Is Still Censorship

By Hannah Cox

.....Benjamin Franklin claimed, “nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” I’d like to add one more thing to that list: politicians fear-mongering over the nation’s kids in order to get massive power grabs passed.

The tired trope has been playing out yet again as Congress continues to debate the passage of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) — legislation Democrats, and unfortunately some Republicans, claim is necessary to protect kids online. In reality, the bill would do nothing of the sort. It’s a trojan horse that would empower unelected bureaucrats at the FTC (which is currently under the rule of socialist, Lina Khan) with the power to censor speech online.

Online Speech Platforms

Wall Street Journal: X Algorithm Feeds Users Political Content—Whether They Want It or Not

By Jack Gillum, Alexa Corse, and Adrienne Tong

.....New X users with interests in topics such as crafts, sports and cooking are being blanketed with political content and fed a steady diet of posts that lean toward Donald Trump and that sow doubt about the integrity of the Nov. 5 election, a Wall Street Journal analysis found.

Washington Post: On Elon Musk’s X, Republicans go viral as Democrats disappear

By Drew Harwell and Jeremy B. Merrill

.....The top political accounts on X have seen their audiences crumble in the months before the election, a signal of the platform’s diminishing influence and usefulness to political discourse under billionaire owner Elon Musk, a Washington Post analysis found.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle have struggled to win the attention they once enjoyed on the platform formerly known as Twitter, according to The Post’s review of months of data for the 100 top-tweeting congressional accounts, including senators, representatives and committees, equal parts Democrat and Republican.

But some of their tweets are still going mega-viral — virtually all of them from Republicans, the analysis shows. The Republicans have also seen huge spikes in follower counts over the Democrats, and their tweets have collectively received billions more views.

New York Post: YouTube, Google accused of censorship as Joe Rogan’s Trump interview nearly impossible to find in search: ‘No sensible explanation’

By Taylor Herzlich

.....Podcaster Joe Rogan’s highly-watched interview with former President Donald Trump has racked up more than 35 million views but fans searching for it on YouTube may have a hard time finding it — leading to accusations of censorship against the Google-owned site.

A search on YouTube using the terms “Joe Rogan Trump” or “Joe Rogan Donald Trump” did not bring up Friday’s three-hour sit-down at the top of the list. The Spotify interview also was notably absent from YouTube’s trending page on Monday.

Instead, users were offered results of videos from traditional media outlets, like The Hill, MSNBC and Fox News, and their coverage of the interview.

Candidates and Campaigns

Reason: A Look Back at the Panic Over Big Money in Politics

By Walter Olson

.....Perhaps I'm being too bold in saying that the panic over money in politics is now dead. But if you want to revisit that controversy from a point at which it was very much alive, Ann Southworth's Big Money Unleashed is a reasonably illuminating new book. It offers insight into what veteran campaign finance lawyers were thinking as they looked back a few years after the Supreme Court's 2010 case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

In Citizens United, the high court laid out a clear and straightforward application of the First Amendment: You are entitled to speak your mind at your own expense about political candidates, so long as your speech is not a quid pro quo trade of favors. What's more, that liberty applies to associations and businesses, not just individuals.

Then-President Barack Obama declared that the decision "strikes at our democracy itself." Misconceptions were launched about the origins of legal personhood for corporations that continue to be spread to this day. Whole organizations were founded with names like End Citizens United.

From this book's title, I was braced for another diatribe about The Case That Ruined Everything. Happily, that isn't what I found. In the aftermath of the decision, Southworth, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, decided to interview dozens of lawyers on the front lines of constitutional campaign finance litigation, both "reformers" (as she calls those favorably disposed to regulation) and "challengers" (as she calls those who want the courts to invalidate many such rules). Allowing them anonymity to encourage candor, she asked them how they saw their work, what they thought of the other lawyers and groups, and much more.

The States

Cowboy State Daily: Freedom Caucus Wants Lawsuit Over Misleading Political Mailers Thrown Out

By Leo Wolfson

.....The Wyoming Freedom Caucus doesn’t believe it’s done anything wrong in sending out controversial political mailers and text messages this election season.

On Friday, the campaign arm of the group submitted a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed against it in July by two state legislators accusing the group of sending out deliberately false mailers and text messages.

In their filing, the Wyoming Freedom political action committee argues that state Reps. Cody Wylie, R-Rock Springs, and J.T. Larson, R-Rock Springs, are attempting “to punish and censor criticism” of their voting records.

“At their worst, a reasonable person would take WY Freedom PAC’s statements as a prompt to investigate the legislative records of the plaintiffs, and there is nothing bad about that — to the contrary, it’s the very stuff of American democracy,” the motion says...

[Attorney Stephen] Klein argues that the rhetoric used in the mailers represent a common form of political speech deeply rooted in American history.

“The rhetoric at issue is quintessential free speech that should be answered only with speech, not litigation,” he said.

Chicago Tribune: State legislators announce plans to introduce campaign finance reform legislation

By Nell Salzman and Ikram Mohamed

.....Armed with signs of blown-up checks of billionaire investments in Chicago’s upcoming school board elections, aldermen, congressmen and parents gathered outside the Illinois Network of Charter Schools office Monday morning to denounce large donations made by out-of-state billionaires and introduce a proposal for campaign finance reform…

Though no specific legislation language was proposed Monday morning, Kent Redfield, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois Springfield, said any bill would likely be thrown out if it were to pass, citing a recent law imposing a $500,000 limit on out-of-state judicial campaign contributions that was challenged in federal court.

Just because someone is not from Illinois doesn’t mean they can’t exercise their First Amendment rights to give money, Redfield said. But the race for school board looks different than most nationwide, he said, with the entire school board resigning in early October and Mayor Brandon Johnson’s close alignment with CTU, which buoyed him to office.

The Hour: Judge: No more urging drivers to honk for Trump, Biden in Westport; Other lawn signs are protected

By Daniel Tepfer

.....There will be no more honking for Trump or Harris on Maple Street, according to a judge's ruling Thursday settling a dispute between Westport neighbors. Following the ruling by Superior Court Judge Dale Radcliffe, both sides claimed victory.

In 2020, according to testimony, Stahursky, desiring to show his support for former president Donald Trump, put up a sign on his front yard stating “Honk for Trump.”

Bernstein, a supporter of President Joe Biden, testified that the sign provoked numerous motorists on the street to honk their horns at all hours.