Email from The Institute for Free Speech The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech April 17, 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 Concord Monitor: Federal officials to review Bow parents’ free speech lawsuit regarding transgender athletes By Sruthi Gopalakrishnan .....Bondi responded to Monday’s court ruling yesterday evening on social media. “I have asked my @CivilRights Division to examine this matter. This DOJ stands with women and their supportive parents,” she posted on X. Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, echoed the sentiment in a separate post. “This ruling is unconstitutional and will not stand,” Dhillon wrote on X. “Every father has not only a right but also a duty to stand up for his daughters, and the right to free speech is not curtailed by subjective ‘feelings.’” Attorneys representing the parents in the lawsuit expressed support for the Justice Department’s review. Del Kolde, an attorney with the Institute for Free Speech, the firm that brought the lawsuit on the parents’ behalf, said they feel encouraged by the attention the case is receiving at the federal level. “We don't have any insight into what the US DOJ is doing, but we welcome any scrutiny into what is going on at Bow SD,” Kolde wrote in a statement to the Monitor. “We continue to believe that school officials violated our clients' civil rights and we intend to continue the legal fight.” Just the News: Judge spurs grassroots backlash by upholding ban on 'demeaning' XX symbol at girls' games By Greg Piper .....By letting a New Hampshire school district ban parents from wearing "XX" wristbands at their daughters' soccer games to silently protest male participation, calling the female symbol a "demeaning and harassing assertion" in that context, U.S. District Judge Steven McAuliffe may have doomed the political viability of gender identity-based athletics policies. St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Opinion: Frivolous litigation shouldn't stifle free speech in Missouri By David Keating .....My organization, the Institute for Free Speech, analyzes anti-SLAPP legislation across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., to determine the strength of a given law and assign a letter grade based on the protections provided. Unfortunately, Missouri is among the dwindling number of states that do not have strong protections in place to deter SLAPP suits. In our most recent Anti-SLAPP Report Card, Missouri earned a “D-,” scoring just 26 out of 100 possible points. New from the Institute for Free Speech Journal of Supreme Court History Publishes Another New Article by Knowles-Gardner on NAACP v. Alabama .....Last month, the Journal of Supreme Court History published a new article from Institute for Free Speech Research Director Helen Knowles-Gardner detailing another aspect of the litigation history of the critical 1958 Supreme Court case, NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson. The resulting decision in that case was a historic victory to preserve the First Amendment rights of speech and assembly. The article is entitled “Without a Little Help from Your Friends: The Supreme Court’s Rejection of the American Jewish Congress Amicus Brief in NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson (1958).” It can be found in the Journal of Supreme Court History, Volume 50 Issue 1 (March 2025), pages 54-88… This piece is the third article authored by Knowles-Gardner about the NAACP litigation. The Seattle University Law Review published the first installment, “The First Amendment to the Constitution, Associational Freedom, and the Future of the Country: Alabama’s Direct Attack on the Existence of the NAACP,” on First Amendment Day (September 25, 2024, and the Journal of Supreme Court History published the second installment in November 2024. The Courts Bloomberg Law: Ohio Judge Strikes Social Media Law Restricting Teen Access By Tonya Riley and Ufonobong Umanah .....A federal judge struck down Ohio’s law limiting teen social media use, marking another court win for the tech industry group NetChoice fighting similar restrictions nationwide. Judge Algenon L. Marbley granted a permanent injunction against the Social Media Parental Notification Act in a Wednesday decision for the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. The law required platforms to verify whether its users are at least 16 and demanded parental consent for younger users. The decision enjoins Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (R) from enforcing the law. New York Times: A.C.L.U. Sues Defense Department Schools Over Book Bans By Sarah Mervosh .....The American Civil Liberties Union sued the Department of Defense’s education agency on Tuesday, arguing that the removal of books in response to Trump administration orders infringed on the First Amendment rights of students. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia, centers on a school system for children of military families run by the Defense Department. The school system has faced pushback and student walkouts in response to a number of changes under the Trump administration, including the pausing of student affinity clubs focused on race and gender and the removal of Pride decorations at some schools. Congress Reason: Rand Paul on China, Free Speech, and Banning TikTok By Elizabeth Nolan Brown .....Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) has opposed the TikTok ban since it caught on in Congress. In January, sensing a congressional attitude shift after President Donald Trump came to the app's defense, Paul introduced the Repeal the TikTok Ban Act. The bill is part of Paul's broader project of trying to keep alive a "consistently free trade and free markets" wing within the Republican Party. Reason's Elizabeth Nolan Brown spoke with the senator in January about TikTok, the trouble with isolating ourselves from China, and the divisions between conservatives and libertarians on speech. Washington Post (Tech Brief): ‘Tesla Takedown’ organizers ask Democrats to protect Section 230 By Will Oremus .....The latest bipartisan push against Section 230 is a bill that Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) plan to reintroduce this session. The bill would “sunset” Section 230 by 2027, a move the senators say is designed to incentivize their fellow legislators to revise or replace it with a more narrowly tailored liability shield. The nonprofit digital rights group Fight for the Future is sending a letter Thursday to Durbin and other Democratic leaders, calling on them to “leave Section 230 alone.” Dozens of Tesla Takedown organizers around the country signed it. They argue that without Section 230’s protections, online hubs would face heightened pressure to suppress activism under the Trump administration, which has deemed some of it to be terrorism. “Without this law to protect our online speech and communities from censorship, we would never have been able to coordinate our movement on such a scale,” says the letter, which was shared with the Tech Brief before its publication Thursday. “Instead, the social media platforms we used to share information would have deplatformed us, for fear of being sued by Elon Musk or his supporters.” Trump Administration Politico: State Department eliminates key office tasked with fighting foreign disinformation By Maggie Miller .....Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday announced the closure of the agency’s hub for fighting foreign disinformation campaigns — the final nail in a yearslong effort to shut down the office accused by GOP lawmakers of censoring conservative voices. In a statement, Rubio claimed the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference office at the State Department, formerly known as the Global Engagement Center, had “spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving.” According to Rubio, the relatively modest federal office expended “more than $50 million per year.” The Free Press: Joe Biden Made More Than 600 Grants to Stop ‘Disinformation.’ Donald Trump Now Has a Plan for Them. By Gabe Kaminsky and Madeleine Rowley .....The award is among more than 800 federal grants and contracts since 2017, totaling more than $1.4 billion, to help curb speech considered by the U.S. government to be misinformation and disinformation. More than 600 were made during the years when Joe Biden was president. The Biden years saw heightened public scrutiny of some of these programs, which Republican lawmakers and free speech groups criticized as “censorship” devices in the U.S. That culminated in an executive order from President Donald Trump on his first day in office that accused the government of violating the free-speech rights of Americans “under the guise of combating ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation.’ ” But until now, it has not been clear just how much taxpayer money was spent on these programs and how many federal agencies were involved in the effort. Indeed, it was only when The Free Press began contacting agencies for comment about programs listed in federal documents as active that officials in the Trump administration began to scrutinize them more closely—launching investigations and evaluating internal policies. The States Human Events: Texas Bill undermines First Amendment and silences conservatives By Ben Ferguson .....Texas, for years, has been a refuge—a place where truth-tellers and bold voices had the protection of the courts, thanks to the Texas Citizens Participation Act, a strong anti-SLAPP law designed to defend free speech. But that refuge is now under threat. Senate Bill 336, currently being considered by the Texas Legislature, would strip away key protections in that law—exposing outspoken conservatives to relentless legal harassment. And I’m not speaking in theory. I know exactly what’s at stake here because I’ve lived it. Politically motivated lawsuits have personally targeted me—weaponized not to correct wrongdoing but to punish me for speaking the truth. These lawsuits weren’t about justice; they were about silencing me. They were deliberate, strategic, and designed to hurt. The goal wasn’t to win in court. The goal was to break me financially. They wanted to bankrupt me into silence. And they almost did. National Review: Big Banks Are Not Bakers By Lathan Watts .....Last year, Tennessee passed the first-of-its-kind legislation prohibiting the practice of politicized de-banking, which is canceling a customer’s account based on his beliefs, speech, or affiliation with certain causes or industries. This year, Idaho has joined Tennessee, and similar legislation is pending in West Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama, and Texas. Perhaps owing to the trend of legislative action to address de-banking, JPMorgan Chase recently announced policy changes to protect customers, vendors, and employees from discrimination. Interestingly, though, none of the nation’s largest banks — Chase, Bank of America, or Wells Fargo — have admitted to de-banking anyone yet still raise objections to the proposed regulations. When it comes to the banks’ objection, comparing themselves to cake artists and website designers, it’s important to remember that the First Amendment protects speech, not conduct. Loans, deposits, and bank accounts express nothing; custom-designed cakes and websites often do. Read an article you think we would be interested in? Send it to Tiffany Donnelly at [email protected]. For email filters, the subject of this email will always begin with "Institute for Free Speech Media Update." The Institute for Free Speech is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that promotes and defends the political rights to free speech, press, assembly, and petition guaranteed by the First Amendment. Please support the Institute's mission by clicking here. For further information, visit www.ifs.org. Follow the Institute for Free Speech The Institute for Free Speech | 1150 Connecticut Ave., NW Suite 801 | Washington, DC 20036 US Unsubscribe | Update Profile | Constant Contact Data Notice