Email from The Institute for Free Speech The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech June 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 California Globe: Young America’s Foundation Students File First Amendment Lawsuit against Golden West College By Evan Gahr .....Genocidal slogans such as “From the River to the Sea” and “Globalize the Intifada” go unchecked on college campuses. But it seems whenever somebody tries to debate the kind of people uttering them or otherwise challenge woke nostrums they are quickly shut down by school administrators... Now, Young America’s Foundation student activists at Golden West College, a community college in Huntington Beach, have filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the school for threatening to discipline them for making acerbic criticisms of Hamas and illegal immigration. Students Martin Samimiat and Annaliese Hutchings and the Young America Foundation filed the lawsuit last month in the United District Court for the Central District of California. New from the Institute for Free Speech Owen Yeates Returns to Institute as a Senior Attorney .....The Institute for Free Speech is pleased to announce the return of Owen Yeates as a Senior Attorney on the litigation team. Owen was initially hired at the Institute in 2015 as a Staff Attorney and was promoted in 2021 to Senior Attorney and Deputy Vice President for Litigation. He also served as Acting Legal Director following the departure of Allen Dickerson to the FEC. Most recently, Owen has served as Deputy District Attorney for Multnomah County in Oregon. “We are excited to welcome back Owen Yeates to our litigation team,” said Institute for Free Speech President David Keating. “He will also take on an important role in our regulatory, legislative, and policy work. Owen’s previous work at our organization has been invaluable; he played a key role in many of our cases and, in doing so, helped set a legal precedent that will protect American speech rights for years to come. We look forward to his continued contributions.” Owen received his J.D. from Stanford Law School after completing a Ph.D. in Political Science at Duke University. He clerked for judges of the United States Courts of Appeals for the Ninth and Tenth Circuits, and was an associate at Klarquist Sparkman, LLP in Portland, Oregon. Please join us in welcoming back Owen Yeates to our staff.  Institute for Free Speech Urges Supreme Court to Reverse Decision Upholding Law that Censors Therapists .....Can state officials avoid the rigors of First Amendment analysis by characterizing speech they dislike as “conduct?” That’s a core issue in a case that the Supreme Court is reviewing. The Institute for Free Speech filed an amicus brief in Chiles v. Salazar, urging the Court to reverse a Tenth Circuit decision that upheld Colorado’s restrictions on talk therapy. Chiles concerns a Colorado law that prohibits licensed therapists from providing to minors talk therapy aimed at exploring or reducing unwanted same-sex attractions or gender identity conflicts, even though the patient voluntarily seeks it. Licensed therapist Kaley Chiles challenged the law, arguing that it violates her and her clients’ First Amendment rights. The Courts AP News: Jury finds MyPillow founder defamed former employee for a leading voting equipment company By Colleen Slevin .....A federal jury in Colorado on Monday found that one of the nation’s most prominent election conspiracy theorists, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, defamed a former employee for a leading voting equipment company after the 2020 presidential election. The Federalist: California Judge Stops Trump Administration From Firing Internet Speech Police By Beth Brelje .....Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared in April that the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference hub (R-FIMI) was dead. But, because of legal interference, it turns out that for now, R-FIMI, formerly called the Global Engagement Center (GEC), is only mostly dead. Through the miraculous powers of an activist judge, San Francisco’s Senior District Judge Susan Illston ordered Friday that the Trump Administration must not dismantle R-FIMI, the creepy censorship arm within the Department of State that curtails free speech. Free Expression Wall Street Journal: The Public Needs Campus Viewpoint Diversity By John Ellis .....President Trump began acting on his pledge to end wokeness by targeting DEI and critical race theory in universities and the federal government. While this was a good first step, shutting down woke programs goes only so far; it limits what bad actors in academia can do, but it leaves those bad actors in place. Without broader staffing reforms, radical left-wing professors will still control higher education. Several states are trying to dictate what professors should and shouldn’t teach, but these efforts similarly don’t reach the core of academia’s sickness—the political monopoly that guarantees its continued malignancy. Politico: ‘Political violence is a sickness’: Elected officials worry that attacks will escalate By Giselle Ruhiyyih Ewing, Ben Jacobs, Natalie Fertig and Jessica Piper .....Republican and Democratic politicians are warning about rising violence targeting elected officials in the aftermath of a series of attacks, including the killing of a state official in Minnesota on Saturday. Within the last year, there have been multiple assassination attempts against President Donald Trump, an arson attack on Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence, and the killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington — setting a new cycle of violence in the country. The States Axios Denver: Scoop: Colorado pauses campaign finance database after Minnesota shootings By John Frank .....The Colorado Secretary of State temporarily removed its public campaign finance database from the internet Saturday amid concerns it could reveal home addresses and other personal information about state lawmakers and other officials. The Gazette: Supporting a cause shouldn’t put you at risk By Heather Lauer .....Just four years ago, Iowa elected officials passed a landmark law to protect Iowans’ privacy when they join, donate to, or volunteer for a nonprofit organization. Now that law is being tested, in exactly the way its backers predicted. Rep. Charley Thomson R-Charles City, the powerful Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, recently demanded that at least one nonprofit, Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice, turn over sensitive personal details about its members and supporters. Thomson wasn’t just fishing for financial information. He wanted a complete list of the names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses, among other details, of the organization’s backers. The group rejected Thomson’s demand and vowed to protect their supporters from exposure and possible retaliation. “We all have rights, we have each other’s backs and we will not remain silent or intimidated by threats,” Erica Johnson, the group's executive director, pledged in a message to members. Ohio Capital Journal: Ohio House, Senate budgets eliminate agency tasked with campaign finance oversight By Nick Evans .....Ohio’s state Senate has approved a two-year spending plan that eliminates the Ohio Elections Commission. Negotiators from the House and Senate still have a vast array of differences to hammer out, but both chambers advanced proposals that axed the state campaign finance watchdog. Barring a veto by Gov. Mike DeWine, it seems likely the commission is on its last legs. The question is how exactly lawmakers plan to wind down the agency and reassign its responsibilities. Reason: Brickbat: That's Not Funny By Charles Oliver .....In Riverview, Missouri, James Carroll faces a city-issued subpoena, signed by Mayor Michael Cornell, after posting an online joke implying the mayor was involved in a 15-year-old boy's disappearance. The incident began when Carroll shared a photo of the missing boy on a local Nextdoor group, humorously suggesting, "Someone check Riverview's mayor's basement!" Days later, he found the subpoena at his condo, demanding he appear at city hall to discuss his social media posts and threatening "severe penalties" if he did not. The Institute for Justice says the subpoena violates Carroll's free speech rights, as his joke was protected speech and not a call to violence. Nonprofit Law Prof Blog: Ward, Grasse & Lecy, Examining the Association Between State Lobbying Regulations and Nonprofit Lobbying Expenditures By Lloyd Mayer .....Kevin D. Ward (Seattle), Nathan Grasse (Carleton), and Jesse Lecy (Arizona State) have published Examining the Association Between State Lobbying Regulations and Nonprofit Lobbying Expenditures, Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly (2025). Here is the abstract: Newly released data on 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations’ lobbying expenditures shows that these organizations have increasingly engaged in lobbying over the past several decades. However, over roughly the same period, states have adopted increasingly stringent lobbying regulations. While often promoted as a way to curb the influence of private interests in public policy, lobbying regulations apply equally to for-profit firms and nonprofit organizations. This article employs two measures of state-level lobbying stringency to examine how traditional direct legislative and grassroots lobbying vary in different regulatory environments. We find that nonprofits reduce expenditures on direct lobbying and increase those on indirect or grassroots lobbying in more stringent regulatory environments. These findings are important because nonprofit organizations typically advocate on behalf of their constituencies, and state regulations appear to influence their lobbying activity. 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." 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