December 9, 2024

In the News

EFF: This Bill Could Put A Stop To Censorship By Lawsuit

By Joe Mullin

.....For years now, deep-pocketed individuals and corporations have been turning to civil lawsuits to silence their opponents. These Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPPs, aren’t designed to win on the merits, but rather to harass journalists, activists, and consumers into silence by suing them over their protected speech. While 34 states have laws to protect against these abuses, there is still no protection at a federal level. 

Supreme Court

The Hill: Vance, GOP committees ask Supreme Court to strike down coordination limits

By Taylor Giorno 

.....Vice President-elect JD Vance and Republican committees asked the Supreme Court to overturn federal limits that restrict political parties from coordinating spending with candidates on the grounds that they violate the First Amendment.

Limits on contributions to candidates are much lower than they are to party committees such as the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), which are also plaintiffs along with former Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio).

“A political party exists to get its candidates elected. Yet Congress has severely restricted how much parties can spend on their own campaign advertising if done in cooperation with those very candidates,” the plaintiffs wrote in the petition made public Friday.

The Courts

Forbes: TikTok Asks To Pause Ban Until Supreme Court—And Trump—Weigh In

By Alison Durkee

.....TikTok asked a federal court Monday to pause its ruling upholding the federal government’s law that could ban the app in the coming weeks, as the company wants the law to remain on pause while it asks the Supreme Court to take up the case—and so President-elect Donald Trump will have time to try and block the ban himself.

New York Times: TikTok Faces U.S. Ban After Losing Bid to Overturn New Law

By Sapna Maheshwari

.....TikTok is one step closer to disappearing in the United States after a panel of federal judges on Friday unanimously upheld a new law that could lead to the banning of the popular Chinese-owned video app by mid-January.

The three judges, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, denied TikTok’s petition to overturn the law. The decision could be a death blow for the app in one of its biggest markets. More than 170 million Americans use TikTok to entertain and inform themselves, turning it into a cultural phenomenon. The looming loss of the app in the United States had spurred concern from free speech advocates and from the creators whose income depends on TikTok.

The decision also raises new questions for President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has repeatedly signaled his support for the app, but who doesn’t have a clear path for rescuing it under the new law, which is scheduled to go into effect the day before his inauguration.

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Protecting Speech Against Governments

By Eugene Volokh

.....If I had to identify one paragraph as the key to the majority opinion in TikTok v. Garland, I think it would be this:

Election Law Blog: The Parallels in the TikTok Ban Case and Regulation of Campaign Spending by Foreign Nationals

By Rick Hasen

.....So while under the Supreme Court’s NetChoice case, government content moderation control violates the First Amendment, when it comes to foreign controlled platforms under the TikTok case, government content moderation control prevents distortion and promotes First Amendment values.

In reading the DC Circuit opinion , I was reminded of a parallel dispute in the campaign finance arena over limiting spending by foreign nationals. In Citizens United, the Court held that domestic corporations cannot be limited in how much they can spend to influence federal elections. Citizens United rejected the argument, previously accepted in cases such as Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, that preventing distortion of the political marketplace could justify such a ban.

Courthouse News: Judge orders Alabama city to let LGBT group join Christmas parade

By Gabriel Tynes 

.....After a hearing for an emergency injunction Friday morning, a federal judge in Alabama granted an emergency motion for an injunction against the city of Prattville, after the mayor banned an LGBTQ rights organization from participating.

Prattville Pride was initially awarded a parade permit, but it was revoked amid community pushback, threats and safety concerns from group members. 

During a telephone hearing Friday morning before U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker, the parties clarified the relatively minor nature of the threats, while the city acknowledged it would not be burdened by providing the group with a light police escort. Late Friday, Huffaker issued an order enjoining the city from prohibiting the group’s participation and requiring the city to provide a law enforcement escort. 

Trump Administration

Reason: Kash Patel's Threats Against Journalists Make Him an Alarming Choice To Run the FBI

By Jacob Sullum

.....It is not hard to see why Ronald Collins, editor of the the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression's First Amendment newsletter, calls Patel "a clear and present danger to freedom of the press." Collins quotes University of Minnesota law professor Jane Kirtley, who adds: "If Kash Patel becomes the director of the FBI, it will mark the apotheosis of the concerted attack on the independent media which has been brewing for more than 20 years. Vengeance and retribution will be the order of the day."

Wall Street Journal: The Trump NIH Pick Who Wants to Take On ‘Cancel Culture’ Colleges

By Liz Essley Whyte

.....Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford physician and economist, is considering a plan to link a university’s likelihood of receiving research grants to some ranking or measure of academic freedom on campus, people familiar with his thinking said.

Bhattacharya, a critic of the Covid-19 response, wants to counter what he sees as a culture of conformity in science that ostracized him over his views on masking and school closures.

He isn’t yet sure how to measure academic freedom, but he has looked at how a nonprofit called Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression scores universities in its freedom-of-speech rankings, a person familiar with his thinking said.

Candidates and Campaigns

Bridge Michigan: Michigan House battle was most expensive ever. Dems spent big, GOP won anyway

By Simon D. Schuster

.....The 2024 battle for the Michigan House smashed spending records to become the most expensive legislative election in state history, costing a minimum of $67 million, according to an analysis by Bridge Michigan.

The total includes campaign finance records and ad spending data from the firm AdImpact obtained by Bridge Michigan.

The total cost of the House campaign — including races for all 110 seats — increased 70% from just four years ago, when the Michigan Campaign Finance Network found slightly less than $40 million was spent in the 2020 race.

Despite being outspent more than two-to-one overall, Republicans unseated four Democratic incumbents and won control of the state House. They are poised to enter 2025 with a 58-52 seat majority in the chamber.

Independent Groups

Washington Post: Musk spent big to get Trump elected, but *he* didn’t get Trump elected

By Philip Bump

.....How do we know that Musk’s spending didn’t win the race for Trump? Well, for one thing, there’s no evidence that his significant investments in Pennsylvania, a focus of his nine-figure America PAC spending, were essential to Trump’s victory. Trump benefited from a national shift to the right, a reversal of the leftward shift in 2020. Swing states, where Musk’s (and the campaign’s) efforts were focused, actually moved to the right less than other states.

Online Speech Platforms

New York Times: Bluesky Is Different From X. For Now.

By Clay Shirky

.....On social media, the political is personal; migrating Bluesky users are signaling political separation from an increasingly conservative X and giving up on the idea of a town square that holds all voices simultaneously…

Bluesky is not ad-supported, does not have the incentive to scale at all costs and provides moderation tools that it says “put users and communities in control of their social spaces,” a distinctly un-X-like sentiment.

Every large space needs moderation, and every moderation regime privileges certain voices and behaviors. Moderating content at internet scale is a famously hard problem, and when X dismantled most formal controls, it simply outsourced moderation to the most aggressive bullies. Bluesky, on the other hand, has a sophisticated set of tools that allow users to simultaneously find people and organizations they are interested in while avoiding, muting or blocking ones they are not.

The States

Bloomberg Law: California Bar Applicant Campus Protest Memo Likely to Stand

By Maia Spoto

.....The California bar is upholding long-held standards in a memo stating that applicants who were disciplined for participation in campus protests may receive moral character inquiries, a state bar committee said Friday.

Members of the state’s Committee of Bar Examiners asked the authors of the memo, titled “Moral Character Determinations and the Israeli-Palestinian Campus Protests,” in a Friday meeting to consider editing it to stress that inquiries will be evaluated on an individual basis.

The suggestion came after public comments that said the memo singles out protest-related activity based on political beliefs. Assurances that such conduct will be considered ...

9 & 10 News: Lawmakers advance nonprofit transparency bills, hoping for passage in lame duck

By Sheldon Krause

.....A Michigan House committee moved forward what supporters say are critical pieces of transparency legislation, following a series of financial controversies among former lawmakers.

The bills add new requirements to 501(c)(4) nonprofits connected to state politicians, which aren’t required to report their donors. It also applies to 527 organizations, which are only required to report their donors if they bring in more than $25,000 annually…

The bills passed out of the House Ethics Committee with bipartisan support, and supporters are hopeful they will be considered by the full house in the next two weeks.

“We have to avoid the appearance of impropriety, and sometimes, when we don’t have the transparency, people assume the worst, so we need to hold ourselves to the higher standard so that we’re not even open to that criticism,” said Rep. Tom Kunse, R-Clare. “So it’s one of those things — if you can’t disclose it, if you can’t be open about it, you probably shouldn’t be doing it.”