Email from The Institute for Free Speech The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech March 27, 2025 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 Des Moines Register: Indiana law protected my right to free speech. We need this protection in Iowa. By Madeline Thompson .....Should Americans face devastating legal, financial, and emotional consequences simply for speaking out on a matter of public concern? That was the question at the center of an ordeal during my time as a journalist at theIrish Rover, a student newspaper at the University of Notre Dame. There, I experienced how some weaponize the legal system to silence constitutionally protected speech. In 2022 and 2023, we covered a Notre Dame professor's public statements regarding abortion access. Our quotes were accurate, and our reporting was solid. Despite that, she sued us for defamation. The suit was a “SLAPP,” a strategic lawsuit against public participation... The lawsuit could have financially devastated our small student publication and derailed our education. Even if we ultimately won, we would have wasted countless hours on litigation at a time when we needed to focus on our studies and then entering the workforce. So, why didn’t that happen? Indiana’s anti-SLAPP law saved us. Indiana’s anti-SLAPP law earns a “B+” on the Institute for Free Speech Anti-SLAPP Report Card, which analyzes SLAPP protections in all 50 states. States with good anti-SLAPP laws protect the free speech rights of their residents, significantly reducing the risk of speaking. Supreme Court SCOTUSblog (Petitions of the Week): In lawsuit originally filed by J.D. Vance, GOP asks court to overrule limit on campaign spending By Kalvis Golde .....In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC, the Republican senatorial and congressional committees — with now-Vice President Vance and former Rep. Chabot out of the case — ask the justices to do what the 6th Circuit could not, and overrule their 2001 decision upholding the federal limits on coordinated party expenditures. The Republican Party makes two arguments in favor of overruling. First, the party contends that the court’s decisions since 2001 have narrowed the reasons Congress can restrict campaign spending to one: preventing “quid pro quo” corruption – the idea that individual donations will be made in return for specifc political favors. By contrast, the Republican Party suggests, Congress enacted the limits on coordinated party expenditures, and the justices’ 2001 decision upheld them, based on an entirely different justification: preventing the circumvention of contribution limits by individual donors with party connections. Second, the Republican Party argues that campaign spending has changed drastically in the past 25 years. The limits on coordinated party expenditures, the party contends, led to the rise of Super PACs, which today allow donors and candidates to coordinate in spending money on elections. The Courts Election Law Blog: Commissioner Weintraub Amicus Brief in DNC v. Trump By Nicholas Stephanopoulos .....HLS’s Election Law Clinic filed this amicus brief yesterday on behalf of FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub (whom President Trump purported to fire without cause last month) in DNC v. Trump, the case challenging the application of Executive Order 14215 to the FEC. The brief focuses on the importance of the FEC’s independence. Here are a few excerpts from the introduction: Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Parent Submits Photo of School Postings to LibsOfTikTok, Gets Restricted from Accessing School Property or Events By Eugene Volokh .....From Chief Judge Eric Melgren's opinion yesterday in Schmidt v. Huff (D. Kan.): Trump Administration New York Times: Federal Government Detains International Student at Tufts By Jenna Russell, Safak Timur, and Anemona Hartocollis .....An international student in a graduate program at Tufts University was taken into federal custody on Tuesday outside an off-campus apartment building, according to the university’s president and an attorney representing the student… A statement attributed to a senior spokesman for Homeland Security claimed on Wednesday that Ms. Ozturk had “engaged in activities in support of” Hamas considered “grounds for visa issuance to be terminated.” … Ms. Ozturk was listed as one of several authors of an opinion essay published last March in the Tufts student newspaper. The essay criticized university leaders for their response to demands that Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and divest itself from companies with ties to Israel… The Massachusetts attorney general, Andrea Joy Campbell, said her office was “closely monitoring this matter as it develops.” She added: “The footage of Rumeysa Ozturk’s arrest — a student here legally — is disturbing. Based on what we now know, it is alarming that the federal administration chose to ambush and detain her, apparently targeting a law-abiding individual because of her political views. This isn’t public safety, it’s intimidation that will, and should, be closely scrutinized in court.” New York Times: Trump Administration Considers Money for Pardoned Jan. 6 Rioters By Erica L. Green .....President Donald Trump said his administration was considering whether to establish a compensation fund for pardoned rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to stop certification of the election that he lost to former President Joseph. R. Biden Jr. In an interview with the conservative television station Newsmax, President Trump said on Tuesday that people in his administration were discussing the possibility of paying restitution to the rioters. Asked whether he was considering some kind of “compensation fund” because the rioters lost wages and other opportunities while they were prosecuted, Mr. Trump said “there’s a lot of talk about that,” adding that “people in government really liked that group of people.” Academic Freedom Podcast: On Columbia University and the Trump Administration .....Keith Whittington is joined by David Cole, the Honorable George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy at Georgetown University Law Center. He is also the former National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. This episode focuses on the recent “Statement from Constitutional Law Scholars on Columbia,” of which Professor Cole was a lead author. That statement was published on the website of the New York Review of Books, and was signed by an ideologically diverse group of 18 scholars ranging from Steven Calabresi and Eugene Volokh to Erwin Chemerinsky and Pam Karlan. Keith Whittington also signed the statement. The States Radio IQ: After years of unsuccessful attempts, Virginia closes campaign spending loophole By Brad Kutner .....A loophole in Virginia’s campaign finance laws will close thanks to a bipartisan effort signed by Governor Glenn Youngkin this week. The effort that took more than a decade to get to the governor’s desk. “I mean, unless you’re stealing from your campaign account to enrich yourself, you really shouldn’t have anything to worry about,” Delegate Marcus Simon, co-patron of a campaign finance bill told Radio IQ about the reform effort signed by Governor Glenn Youngkin this week. The law, approved unanimously in both chambers earlier this year, closes a loophole in Virginia campaign finance laws that allows candidates and elected officials to spend campaign funds on pretty much anything. Georgia Recorder: Bill criminalizing ‘doxxing’ in Georgia advances in spite of free speech concerns By Jill Nolin .....An attempt to crack down on so-called doxxing has been met with concerns from attorneys and First Amendment advocates who say the proposal is too broad and would hamper free speech. Senate Bill 27, which is sponsored by Sen. John Albers, a Roswell Republican, would make it a crime to distribute someone’s personal information – such as their home address – in a way that could cause more than $500 in economic losses or leave the victim scared of being stalked or hurt... “We appreciate that threats and harassment, particularly those enabled by the anonymity of social media, are real and serious concerns in Georgia and throughout society,” Brewerton-Palmer wrote in a letter she delivered to lawmakers Tuesday. “However, Senate Bill 27 presents little realistic likelihood of remedying those ills, while exposing innocent speakers and writers to arrest and prosecution that could be triggered by nothing more than publishing an already-prominent person’s name,” she said. Brewerton-Palmer and others have said the bill could be applied to an unfavorable Yelp review, such as one urging people to avoid a specific physician because they have had their license suspended numerous times. Andrew Fleischman, who is an attorney, presented a timely national example of what he argued could be considered doxxing under the proposal: An explosive report from The Atlantic’s editor that said he had been accidentally included in a text exchange with Trump administration Cabinet members about plans to bomb Yemen. ADF: Idaho governor signs ADF model bill to protect against viewpoint-based debanking at large financial institutions .....Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed into law the Transparency in Financial Services Act Tuesday, becoming the most recent state to adopt legislation protecting against viewpoint discrimination in financial services. Taking effect July 1, the law prohibits financial institutions with over $100 billion in assets from canceling accounts for constitutionally protected political or religious views, speech, or affiliations. By implementing the new protections based on Alliance Defending Freedom’s model legislation, Idaho joins Tennessee (which adopted ADF’s model bill last April) and Florida as the third state in the nation to proactively protect citizens from viewpoint discrimination in banking and payment processing. Last March, U.S. Bank abruptly canceled the long-held account of the Constitution Party of Idaho with no explanation, an instance that follows the well-worn pattern of apparent viewpoint-based cancelations by large, nationally chartered banks such as JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. JD Supra: Connecticut Supreme Court Protects Free Speech in Online Racism Dispute By Rose Collins and Alexa Millinger (Hinckley Allen) .....Amidst an increasingly polarized social climate that often manifests on social media, the Connecticut Supreme Court recently affirmed that calling someone on Facebook a “racist” or “white supremacist” could not be the basis for a defamation action since those statements represented opinions rather than statements of fact. The decision in Murphy v. Rosen, 351 Conn. 120 (2025), issued January 21, 2025, arose from a dispute in the comments of a 2020 Facebook post discussing the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. As the debate devolved, the defendant responded to another commenter and called the plaintiff “a troll and a white supremacist.” The plaintiff filed a defamation action against the defendant in Connecticut Superior Court. Read an article you think we would be interested in? 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