November 18, 2024

In the News

Daily Iowan: State Rep demands UIHC fellow’s termination for online post. Free speech experts disagree.

By Emma Jane

.....David Keating, president of the Institute for Free Speech, described Sharma’s tweet as obnoxious, but he maintained that it’s protected under the First Amendment.

“If the state representative is a believer in free speech, he should withdraw the letter,” Keating said, referencing Nordman.

Keating also urged Wilson not to fulfill Nordman’s demand for Sharma’s termination.

“My hope is the adults will just ignore the letter and go about their business trying to provide a good education for the students,” Keating said.

WRAL: UNC system leaders want to standardize how campuses respond to student protests

By Destinee Patterson

.....David Keating, president of the Institute for Free Speech, said UNC polices are good, but could be more clear. He said details "about the time, place and manner of protests, and how that gets reviewed and approved" would help students and administrators.

Supreme Court

Reuters: US Supreme Court rejects challenge to Alaska campaign finance law

By Nate Raymond

.....The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear a challenge based on constitutional free speech protections to a voter-approved measure in Alaska that required greater public disclosure of certain political donations as the justices passed up a chance to further curtail campaign finance regulation.

The justices turned away an appeal by several Alaskan residents and advocacy groups, represented by a conservative legal group, of a lower court's ruling upholding the law narrowly approved as a ballot initiative in 2020.

The Courts

Los Angeles Times: Elon Musk’s X sues to block California law that aims to combat election deepfakes

By Queenie Wong

.....X, the social media app owned by Elon Musk, has sued California in an attempt to block a new law requiring large online platforms to remove or label deceptive election content.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court this week, targets a law that aims to combat harmful videos, images and audio that have been altered or created with artificial intelligence. Known as deepfakes, this type of content can make it appear as if a person said or did something they didn’t. The law is scheduled to take effect Jan.1.

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Florida's Lawsuit Against FEMA Over Discrimination Against Trump Supporters

By Eugene Volokh

.....You can read the Complaint (filed yesterday) in Moody v. Criswell (S.D. Fla.); there are all sorts of interesting federal civil rights litigation and federal courts issues, such as parens patriae, the scope of § 1985(3) liability, the intracorporate conspiracy doctrine, and more. And of course the case raises the factual question of whether the discrimination was the work of a rogue employee (as FEMA seems to argue) or was endorsed by higher ups (as the employee has claimed, and as Florida is asserting). An excerpt from the Complaint:

Center Square: Small business group joins suit against Illinois law restricting employer speech

By Jim Talamonti

.....An Illinois trade organization has joined a legal challenge to a new law that restricts employers’ free speech rights in the workplace.

The Schaumburg-based Technology and Manufacturing Association represents more than 800 small businesses in Illinois. The group has joined a lawsuit against Illinois Department of Labor Director Jane Flanagan, whose agency is charged with enforcing the Worker Freedom of Speech Act. The lawsuit, filed on Aug. 8 by the Liberty Justice Center, claims that the law revokes free speech across the state.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed Senate Bill 3649, the Worker Freedom of Speech Act, into law on July 31. The law is scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 2025.

Congress

ACLU: ACLU Urges Senate to Oppose Bill That Will Threaten Political Speech on College Campuses

By Jenna Leventoff

.....The American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to the Senate today strongly urging them to continue to block S. 4127, the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which threatens to censor political speech critical of Israel on college campuses under the guise of addressing antisemitism.

Online Speech Platforms

Forbes: Google Pulls Political Ads In EU, Says It Can’t Comply With New Rules

By Emma Woollacott

.....A year before it's required to abide by tough new rules, Google has decided to stop serving political advertising in the EU.

The upcoming Regulation on Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising, due to come into force next October, is simply too difficult to comply with, the company said.

"For example, the TTPA defines political advertising so broadly that it could cover ads related to an extremely wide range of issues that would be difficult to reliably identify at scale," said Annette Kroeber-Riel, Google’s vice president of government affairs and public policy for Europe.

"There is also a lack of reliable local election data permitting consistent and accurate identification of all ads related to any local, regional or national election across any of 27 EU Member States,” Kroeber-Riel added. “And key technical guidance may not be finalized until just months before the regulation comes into effect."

Google believes it's done all it can in terms of regulating political advertisers, bumping up transparency requirements to include identity verification and in-ad disclosures that clearly show who paid for each ad.

It's also laid out disclosure requirements for the use of synthetic or digitally altered content in election ads, maintained a dedicated Political Ads Transparency Report and restricted how advertisers can target election ads…

"We know political ads are a valuable resource for voters to find information and for candidates to share their message, so we regret that we have to take this step," said Kroeber-Riel.

Nonprofits

Semafor: Progressive donors and funders fear Trump investigations

By Ben Smith and Shelby Talcott

.....Some of the largest donors to Kamala Harris and to progressive causes worry they could face investigations and retaliation from the Trump Administration next year — and are preparing for the possibility.

At least one of the groups receiving LinkedIn Co-founder Reid Hoffman’s vast contributions has consulted lawyers about the possibility of an investigation, a person close to the group said.

And leaders of progressive nonprofit organizations were brought togetherThursday at the East 62nd Street mansion that houses the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation by that group’s leader, Elizabeth Alexander, and the president of the JPB Foundation, Deepak Bhargava.

One focus was how to present a common front in the face of politicized investigations, a person briefed on the gathering said.

Candidates and Campaigns

Bloomberg: Political Ads Can’t Buy the Presidency

By Mark Glassman, Jeremy Cf Lin, and Laura Bliss

.....Money doesn’t win US elections, but it often helps. In bids for the Senate, the candidate who spends the most is typically the victor. That pattern held this year: In 21 of 33 Senate races, the candidate who spent the most on advertising—generally the major expenditure for a campaign—was the winner.

The link between spending and winning has always been weaker in presidential contests. In the eight weeks through Election Day, Democrats poured almost $1 billion into advertising across TV, radio and digital platforms, outspending Republicans by more than $300 million. Yet Kamala Harris lost decisively, picking up zero electoral votes in the battleground states where the overwhelming majority of spending occurred.

The States

KSFR: Overhaul Ahead in Campaign Reporting Law

By Rob Hochschild

.....The state’s Campaign Finance Reporting Act is in need of an overhaul. That’s according to state elections officials and state lawmakers who discussed it during a meeting yesterday afternoon.

At a hearing held by the Courts, Corrections, and Justice committee, secretary of state Maggie Toulouse Oliver said that she wants to suggest some changes to the law prior to the beginning of January’s legislative session.

The law is intended to promote transparency in the campaign finance process. It played a role this fall, when one New Mexico political action committee was forced to reveal its donors after a State Ethics Commission ruling required it to do so.

During yesterday legislative meeting, at which Toulouse Oliver was presenting on the administration of last week’s election, state senator Katy Duhigg, of Albuquerque, said loopholes in the law were exposed by a federal ruling.

The state law aimed to ensure that disbursed campaign funds would only go to 501(c)3 organizations, but Duhigg said a federal court removed some of the guardrails.

"This is a really big deal. That was really important because without that limitation in there, I can give it away to whoever I want and call them a charitable organization so I can give my friends a whole bunch of my campaign funds, and that would be legal and appropriate.

"This is something that we really do need to address this coming session, and figure out a way to put appropriate guardrails on the use of campaign funds while still respecting the ruling that we got from the federal court."

Next year’s 60-day state legislative session begins in late January.

Detroit News:  Michigan House considers slowing lawmaker-to-lobbyist revolving door; ethics bills advance

By Beth LeBlanc

.....State Rep. Tom Kunse, a Clare Republican who sits on the House Ethics and Oversight Committee, said he is also hopeful the package moves through the House. He said the bills referred out of committee were a good first step.

Kunse expressed some concerns about the definition used to describe legislative staff subject to the law, arguing it should be tighter. But he said he was supportive of the law requiring lawmakers to wait a year before registering as lobbyists, slowing down the so-called revolving door from the Legislature to the Lansing lobby corps…

Legislation that has yet to move through committee include bills requiring nonprofit 527 and 501(c)4 organizations ― named for sections of the tax code ― to register with the Secretary of State. These groups are sometimes referred to as "dark money" accounts used by politicians to accept anonymous contributions.

Another bill allows the Bureau of Elections to petition Ingham County Circuit Court for an injunction if the bureau believes a candidate may be in violation of certain campaign finance laws.