December 17, 2024

In the News

Union Leader via Yahoo: Both sides in Bow pink wristband lawsuit file post-hearing briefs

By Paul Feely

.....A request from parents for a temporary injunction against the Bow School District is in the hands of a federal judge after attorneys for both sides in a First Amendment lawsuit filed post-hearing briefs.

The lawsuit was filed by parents who claim their rights were violated when they were barred from school grounds following a silent protest of a transgender athlete playing in a girls soccer game in September.

Attorneys from the Institute for Free Speech and attorney Richard J. Lehmann filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Concord in September on behalf of Kyle Fellers, Anthony "Andy" Foote, Nicole Foote and Eldon Rash…

Attorneys for both sides filed their post-hearing briefs late Friday, after a two-day hearing last month before Judge Steven McAuliffe

Maine Morning Star: Maine sued over new campaign finance law, but that was supporters’ plan all along

By Emma Davis

.....Political action committees tied to a Republican state lawmaker filed a legal challenge in federal court on Friday to overturn a campaign finance reform Mainers overwhelmingly voted for in November. 

“The folks that try to attack Citizens United — or what I prefer to say, the people who like to impose restrictions on the amount of speech that people can have — do so under the misguided notion that somehow if somebody spends a lot of money getting their message out, they’re going to somehow win and convince people when they shouldn’t,” Miller said. 

“Our view of this is that if somehow people were able to get a lot of money behind their issue, well then maybe it shows you that, in the marketplace of ideas, that people think that that’s a good enough idea to support it.”

Before the election, the president of the Institute for Free Speech, David Keating, wrote an op-ed in the Portland Press Herald calling on Mainers to not support the referendum, echoing the overarching claims of the lawsuit when arguing that it would infringe on Americans’ rights to organize and express opinions on who should run the government. 

The Institute for Free Speech previously represented Libby and the Dinner Table PAC in a lawsuit against the state in 2023 to overturn restrictions that had set low fundraising limits for PACs led by legislators. Lawmakers ultimately repealed the restrictions. 

New from the Institute for Free Speech

Ellen Weintraub to Serve as FEC Chair, Again

By Tiffany Donnelly

.....In 2002, Kelly Clarkson won the first-ever season of American Idol. A Beautiful Mind won the Academy Award for Best Picture. A road trip required printed directions or a physical map. Americans grappled with the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which had just happened months prior.

This is what the world looked like when Ellen Weintraub was appointed to the Federal Election Commission by President George W. Bush in 2002.

Commissioner Weintraub’s term expired April 30, 2007: the year Madeleine McCann disappeared, Bob Barker hosted his final episode of The Price is Right, and Facebook and Twitter (now X) went global.

But Weintraub never left the FEC. Over 22 years after being appointed and 17 years after her term expired, Ellen Weintraub still serves as an FEC Commissioner. By statute, FEC commissioners are supposed to be limited to one six-year term. They are permitted to stay in office as “acting” commissioners until their successor is appointed.

No one ever thought, however, that “acting” could mean “over two decades.”

Supreme Court

SCOTUSblog: TikTok asks justices to temporarily block federal ban

By Amy Howe

.....UPDATED: A group of TikTok users filed a separate application on Monday afternoon, also asking the court to block enforcement of the law.

Social media giant TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, on Monday asked the justices to block a federal law that would require TikTok to shut down in the United States unless ByteDance can sell off the U.S. company by Jan. 19. Unless the justices intervene, the companies argued in a 41-page filing, the law will “shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration.”

The request came three days after a federal appeals court in Washington turned down a request to put the law on hold to give TikTok time to seek review in the Supreme Court. A panel made up of judges appointed by Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Ronald Reagan explained that the companies were effectively seeking to delay “the date selected by Congress to put its chosen policies into effect” –particularly when Congress and the president had made the “deliberate choice” to “set a firm 270-day clock,” with the possibility of only one 90-day extension.

The Atlantic: What If Free Speech Means Banning TikTok?

By Alan Z. Rozenshtein

.....Many will read last week’s federal appeals-court opinion that could ban TikTok as a loss for the First Amendment, and in some ways it is. If TikTok disappears from the United States, some 170 million Americans will lose access to a platform central to their daily lives and creative expression. And the court’s deference to Congress and the executive branch’s national-security claims continues a pattern of courts weakening First Amendment protections whenever the government invokes national-security concerns.

But the opinion need not be viewed solely through this lens. Significantly, the court rejected the usual framing of national security versus the First Amendment, and instead cast TikTok itself as the First Amendment villain. This approach could have long-term consequences for the government’s ability to regulate the internet.

Historically, when courts have considered cases involving national security and free speech, they’ve treated them as a zero-sum game: either protect national security at the expense of First Amendment rights, or preserve First Amendment freedoms despite potential security risks. Legal observers (myself included) expected the case to follow this familiar pattern, with the court weighing TikTok’s free-speech claims against the government’s national-security concerns about data privacy and information manipulation.

The Courts

U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Columbia: FBI Arrests Man Charged with Political Fundraising Fraud Using a Scam PAC

.....Jason Pallante, 52, of Orlando, Florida, was arrested today by special agents with the FBI and other law enforcement partners on charges he operated numerous political fundraising websites and illegally took the money for his own use. Pallante is charged with three counts of mail fraud and four counts of wire fraud.

The Media

Unaligned: I Choose Freedom

By Ana Kasparian

.....My openness to diverse perspectives, in addition to my critiques of a few sacred cows on the left, has spurred an entire cottage industry of YouTube channels that thrive off condemning my alleged heresy. Disagreeing with my views is one thing. But the orchestrated effort to mischaracterize me is unacceptable and sadly needs to be addressed.

I recently had a civil conversation with Glenn Beck, which I’ll admit I enjoyed. We acknowledged our obvious differences of opinion, but also found areas of common ground, which I never would have predicted a few short years ago. That allegedly offended a TYT contributor to such an extent that he made a public spectacle out of quitting the network and asked our viewers to abandon us for whatever he’ll be doing next. I genuinely wish him luck in his future endeavors...

Some seem to have a hard time processing that I don’t respond to manipulative tactics or public spectacles meant to shame me to submission. I have admitted when I’ve been wrong in the past, and I don’t feel I’ve done anything wrong here. Additionally, people who are serious and confident about their views should want to defend them through dialogue and debate rather than taking their ball and going home.

Nieman Lab: The rise of informal news networks

By Heather Chaplin

.....Predictions — said someone — are a fool’s game. But there’s little doubt that in the next year we will continue to bear painful witness to the decline of America’s formal news structures. Twentieth-century news outlets will keep crashing by the wayside — victims to changing business and technological models, to hubris, to cultural mistrust and to overall irrelevance in people’s daily lives.

But it’s also true that news and information won’t stop circulating and that people won’t stop talking to their neighbors about thorny topics.

People without free presses, or laws to protect journalists, have always found ways to collect and share news, to debate and compromise on the issues of the day. In a non-democratic country like Cuba, people have long passed flash drives hand to hand, containing stories unlikely to make it past the scrutiny of censors.

Donor Privacy

People United for Privacy: SEC Nominee Bears Good News for Nonprofit Donor Privacy

By Brian Hawkins

.....President-elect Donald Trump recently nominated attorney Paul Atkins to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). While ESG and cryptocurrencies are the headline issues on the SEC’s agenda, Atkins’ return to the commission – where he previously served from 2002 to 2008 – may also have positive reverberations for nonprofit donor privacy.

For many years, Democrat-appointed commissioners at the SEC have sought new regulations requiring publicly-traded companies to disclose their giving to nonprofit organizations. Outgoing SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has expressed his desire for new disclosure rules on corporate giving on numerous occasions. Gensler’s predecessor, Commissioner Allison Herren Lee, opined that “[a]nother significant ESG issue that deserves attention is political spending disclosure.”

This desire for new disclosure rules did not arise in a vacuum. Rather, it is the product of anti-privacy zealots who have espoused baseless allegations about nefarious political influence by nonprofits that advocate for certain policy perspectives. In this broader campaign, the SEC is merely one more avenue to weaponize the government against political opponents, similar to other schemes to expose donors and chill speech at the IRS, the Judicial Conference, and other agencies.

Nonprofits

New York Times: What if Charity Shouldn’t Be Optimized?

By Emma Goldberg

.....Our debates over altruism come amid a real crisis for small, local charities. A report this year, from nearly 200 philanthropic leaders, noted that as 20 million households dropped out of giving, from 2010 to 2016, the organizations that have suffered most are community-based groups whose existence depends on small-dollar donors rather than on mega-philanthropists, and those that “provide the backbone of civic life.”

Washington Examiner: ‘Fix the Court’ activist group runs deficit paying director 96% of its revenue

By Gabe Kaminsky

.....A watchdog group lobbying for Supreme Court reforms in the name of “ethics” and “transparency” ran a deficit while paying the charity’s leader the equivalent of 96% of its annual revenue, financial disclosures show.

Fix the Court, a nonprofit organization registered under section 501(c)(3) of the IRS, reported on tax forms covering fiscal 2023 paying Gabe Roth, its director, a salary of $168,100. The group, which has helped lead a campaign criticizing Clarence Thomas and other Supreme Court justices for allegedly failing to disclose gifts and other items related to their finances, received just $175,400 in donations last year — spending to the tune of $221,000 and finishing with a deficit of almost $46,000.

“Fix the Court paid a grossly excessive salary to Gabe Roth, thereby jeopardizing its tax-exempt status with the IRS,” said Paul Kamenar, counsel to a conservative watchdog group called the National Legal and Policy Center that is mulling filing an IRS complaint. Last year, the NLPC demanded an investigation over Fix the Court paying Roth 82% of its revenue, claiming the payment constituted an Excess Benefit Transaction.

Online Speech Platforms

The Hill: Ghosted by ChatGPT: How I was first defamed and then deleted by AI

By Jonathan Turley

.....My path toward cyber-erasure began with a bizarre and entirely fabricated account by ChatGPT. As I wrote at the time, ChatGPT falsely reported that there had been a claim of sexual harassment against me (which there never was) based on something that supposedly happened on a 2018 trip with law students to Alaska (which never occurred), while I was on the faculty of Georgetown Law (where I have never taught).

The States

Michigan Advance: Conservative robocall election disinformation case proceeds

By Anna Liz Nichols

.....The Michigan Court of Appeals on Friday upheld criminal charges against two far-right operatives who prosecutors say made a series of robocalls in the state during the 2020 election particularly targeting Black voters in Detroit.

Gothamist: Mayor Eric Adams denied public matching funds for reelection bid — for now

By Brigid Bergin

.....Taxpayers will not be footing the bill for Mayor Eric Adams' 2025 campaign — at least not yet.

The five-member New York City Campaign Finance Board announced on Monday that it was withholding public matching money from Adams’ reelection campaign, citing his ongoing criminal indictment and his campaign’s failure to adhere to the program’s rules.

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn Loses Libel Lawsuit Against Lincoln Project Cofounder Rick Wilson

By Eugene Volokh

.....From today's decision in Flynn v. Wilson, by Florida Court of Appeal Judge Susan Rothstein-Youakim, joined by Judges Darryl Casanueva and Morris Silberman: