Email from The Institute for Free Speech The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech September 4, 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]. Supreme Court Washington Examiner: GOP, 20 states, and Chamber of Commerce urge end of campaign spending restrictions By Paul Bedard .....The Supreme Court has been hit with a huge surge of filings in support of a GOP and Trump administration demand to end campaign spending restrictions on “coordinated expenditures” by the Republican Party and its House and Senate candidates. In the past week, the court received 18 filings from individuals, groups, and the Republican National Committee, most in support of the call by the National Senatorial Campaign Committee for the court to reverse an earlier decision and approve unlimited party coordinated spending with its candidates. Most of the new filings in support of the NRSC in its case against the Federal Election Commission came in late last week, led by the RNC’s 40-page file from former FEC Chairman Lee Goodman with the Dhillon Law Group Inc. Like the others, he argued that the spending and coordination limits placed on political parties in previous court cases are outdated and violate the First Amendment. He added that the court should lower the bar on parties as it has done on corporations, which gave rise to historic spending by super PACs. Ed. note: Read our amicus brief here. Read the brief of Sen. Mitch McConnell here. The Courts The Texas Tribune: Texas student groups sue to block state law that limits campus protests By Nicholas Gutteridge .....The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression sued the University of Texas System in federal court on Wednesday to block a new state law that creates rules for campus protests and gives university systems’ governing boards the power to limit where they can take place. In the 59-page lawsuit, attorneys from FIRE argue that Senate Bill 2972 violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments because it prohibits protected expression and speech. According to the law, expressive activity is banned on campuses from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m., a rule that applies to students, campus groups and university employees. Jonathan Turley: Former Arizona Ethics Professor Sues University for Alleged Termination for Speaking Out Against Gender Policies .....Former University of Arizona professor Daniel Grossenbach is suing the school over alleged retaliation over his views on gender policies in his children’s school district. Grossenbach, who taught ethics as an adjunct instructor from 2020 to 2023, was a contract faculty member (as opposed to tenured faculty) and was terminated after a cancel campaign over his voicing objections to the policies. The lawsuit presents a familiar free speech controversy in higher education, where conservatives or libertarians are targeted for their views outside of universities, while those on the left are rarely subject to such campaigns. Daniel Grossenbach says the university was pressured to terminate his contract in November 2023 after receiving anonymous complaints about his parental rights advocacy in his children’s school district. Grossenbach is the father of two students at Catalina Foothills School District (CFSD) and founded a parental rights group called SaveCFSD in 2023. The group fought “policies and practices of hiding minors’ mental health information as a violation of fundamental parental rights.” The impetus of the group was gender identity surveys of students that allegedly led to lists of students who preferred different names and pronouns without notifying parents. Bloomberg Law: DOJ Should Treat Viewpoint Discrimination As Antitrust Violation By Mehek Cooke .....Viewpoint discrimination isn’t just un-American, it’s unlawful. And thanks to the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice’s new antitrust doctrine, it’s finally being recognized for what it is: collusion in plain sight. The DOJ filed a statement of interest in federal court last month, arguing that antitrust laws apply when dominant media firms conspire to suppress dissenting voices. This represents a long-overdue course correction in competition enforcement. At the center of the underlying lawsuit, brought by a coalition of political commentators and Children’s Health Defense (the nonprofit formerly chaired by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.), is the Trusted News Initiative. According to the plaintiffs, legacy media, together with tech platforms, collaborated to suppress or remove disfavored opinions about politically sensitive issues. The DOJ’s filing calls on the US District Court for the District of Columbia to reject the idea that antitrust law has no role in protecting viewpoint diversity in the press. The DOJ is right—American legal history says the opposite. Just the News: Conservative nonprofit wins free-speech case against California law banning AI political satire By Misty Severi .....The conservative nonprofit Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute (HLLI) on Tuesday announced that it won a major free-speech case last week against a controversial California law that bans political satire created with Artificial Intelligence. California passed a legislative package last year that targeted AI-generated political speech and punished content creators for "deceptive" speech. The two state bills in the package were the Protecting Democracy Against Election Disinformation and Deepfakes Act and Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act. HLLI said a federal court last week ruled that the two state laws violated the Constitution, confirming a lower court's injunction on the two laws. The case was filed on behalf of YouTuber Mr. Reagan and joined by the Babylon Bee, Rumble, and X. Free Expression Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Would Graham Linehan's "if All Else Fails, Punch Him in the Balls" Be Protected Under U.S. Law? By Eugene Volokh .....Irish writer Graham Linehan has reportedly been arrested on his return to the U.K., in part apparently based on this Tweet that he had posted: I don't know whether this is indeed punishable under English law; I have a hard enough time keeping track of the law of one country. But someone asked me whether this would be punishable even under U.S. law, so I thought I'd post about it. The Hill: House Democrat slams UK arrest of comedian over transgender X posts By Sarah Fortinsky .....Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) condemned the United Kingdom’s arrest of comedian Graham Linehan for his social media posts about transgender people. The Silicon Valley congressman called the arrest “an offense to anyone who supports free speech,” in a post on the social platform X. “I guess UK has not learned from the time prosecutors read passages of The Picture of Dorian Gray to convict Oscar Wilde,” Khanna continued. New York Times: U.K. Should Clarify Free-Speech Laws After Comedian’s Arrest, Police Chief Says By Lizzie Dearden .....Britain’s most senior police officer has called for the government to change or clarify the law regarding free speech amid intense public debate over the arrest of an Irish comedian on suspicion of inciting violence against transgender people on social media. Mark Rowley, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, which serves the London area, said his officers had been put in an “impossible position” in which laws were drawing them into “toxic culture-wars debates.” In a statement on Wednesday, Mr. Rowley said he had suggested to the government changes that would enable police to “limit the resources we dedicate to tackling online statements to those cases creating real threats in the real world.” Mr. Rowley was responding to criticism over the arrest of Graham Linehan, an Irish comedy writer and anti-transgender activist who was detained at Heathrow Airport on Monday. Mr. Linehan, who was a creator of the 1990s comedy series “Father Ted” and wrote and directed “The I.T. Crowd,” said he was arrested after landing at Heathrow, near London, on a flight from Arizona. Daily Caller: Billionaires Bankroll Anti-Trump ‘Workers Over Billionaires’ Protests By Melissa O'Rourke .....Billionaire backers were behind the nationwide “Workers Over Billionaires” protest on Labor Day, which took aim at the Trump administration’s policies and called for an end to what organizers described as a “billionaire takeover.” The States Center Square: Report: States are increasingly taking election integrity measures By Tom Joyce .....A new report from the group says eight states banned foreign funding of ballot issue campaigns this year, bringing the national total to nine… In 2025, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee, and Wyoming enacted bans on foreign funding of ballot issue campaigns. Wyoming was the first state to act this year, and Ohio adopted a similar ban in 2024… The report says other states could act in 2026. It highlights Michigan, Florida, Nebraska, Alaska, North Carolina, Montana and Arizona as places that have seen foreign-tied spending but have not yet passed bans. “The clearest first step for a state like Florida to take is to pass a true and complete ban on foreign dark money in the ballot measure process, just what eight other states have done this year,” Snead said. San Francisco Standard: Newsom accuses ‘dark money’ group of breaking law in redistricting war By Josh Koehn .....The complaint, which is headed to the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission, accuses the group Right Path California of illegally skirting disclosure requirements and using “dark money” to fund two political mailers, while also skipping deadlines for filing records with the state. “The ‘NO’ campaign is illegally trying to hide their Trump donors and trick Californians,” Hannah Milgrom, a spokesperson for Newsom’s campaign committee, said in a statement. “They are helping Donald Trump rig the next election and keep Republicans in total control of the federal government. Californians will see through their lies and lawbreaking.” Austin American-Statesman: Texas House Republicans pass bill to bar fundraising during future walkouts By John C. Moritz .....Legislation to bar state lawmakers from raising campaign money during future walkouts scratched open a a still-raw scab in the Texas House on Tuesday as members clashed along partisan lines over whether the measure is meant to stifle dissent. "What this bill is trying to do is to prevent us from representing our districts," said state Rep. Barbara Gervin Hawkins, D-San Antonio. "They're trying to treat us like children rather than colleagues and equals." The legislation, House Bill 18 by Plano Republican Matt Shaheen, passed on a party-line vote. During the debate, Shaheen acknowledged that lawmakers have a constitutional right to break quorum as a means toward killing, or at least stalling, proposals that they lack the votes to defeat outright. But, he said, there should be consequences when one third of the members of the House or Senate choose to grind the work of the Legislature to a halt. "This bill punishes individuals that are absent from the Capitol and stopping the legislative process," Shaheen said. State law already prohibits state elected officials from raising money starting 30 days before a regular legislative session and ending 20 days after it adjourns, so the bill would have little effect unless a quorum break occurs during a special session. That's what happened last month when enough Democratic House members fled the Capitol for two weeks to slow down the GOP's redistricting legislation. Archive link 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. 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