This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact Luke Wachob at [email protected].  

Oregon Live: Online reviewers in Oregon on notice: Supreme Court declines to offer ordinary people higher media protection from libel suits

.....In a closely watched ruling, the state’s highest court declined to extend certain free speech protections available to the media to ordinary people, batting down arguments that anyone with an internet connection and an opinion now acts as a journalist...

Funk joined two other Oregon law professors, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh and appellate lawyer Howard Bashman in a friend of the court brief seeking to extend the “actual malice” standard to all defamation cases on topics of public concern.

Ed. note: The Institute for Free Speech joined the aforementioned amicus brief in the case.

.....July 1 marked the one-year anniversary of the Americans for Prosperity v. Bonta ruling, the Supreme Court’s most important decision on the First Amendment right of association in over 60 years.

In the 6-3 decision, the Court held that a California rule requiring charities and other nonprofit organizations to submit an annual list of donors to state officials violated the First Amendment right to freedom of association. Organizations have the right to keep one’s memberships, affiliations, and financial support private.

Washington Post: Congress seeks IRS probe amid suspicions that audits targeted Trump foes

By Tony Romm, Lisa Rein, Josh Dawsey and Devlin Barrett

.....Congressional Democrats and Republicans on Thursday seethed over new reports that the IRS may have targeted President Donald Trump’s political enemies with audits, issuing shared calls — backed by the tax agency itself — for a full federal probe into the matter.

Helena Independent Record: Ninth Circuit decision takes issue with Montana rule defining 'political committees'

.....A federal appeals court on Wednesday sent a political practices case back to a federal court in Montana, after finding that a portion of the state's law defining political committees is unconstitutionally vague in the case.

Colorado Politics: 10th Circuit reinstates student's First Amendment lawsuit over anti-Semitic 'joke'

.....A Cherry Creek High School student has credibly alleged school officials violated his First Amendment rights when they expelled him for an offensive social media post, the federal appeals court based in Denver decided on Wednesday.

"C.G.’s speech would generally receive First Amendment protection because it does not constitute a true threat, fighting words, or obscenity," he wrote in the July 6 opinion.

C.G.'s case drew substantial interest from multiple outside organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and school board associations representing the six states included in the 10th Circuit. Even his supporters called C.G.'s anti-Semitic social media post "dumb," "offensive" and "ignorant," and the Cherry Creek School District's backers claimed it "suggested imminent violence."

Deadline: Sacha Baron Cohen Again Beats Roy Moore’s $95M ‘Who Is America?’ Defamation Suit, Wins Appeal – Update

.....A year after a federal judge first found in Sacha Baron Cohen’s favor, the Who Is America? host finally achieved victory in the almost-absurd $95 million defamation battle instigated by Roy Moore.

“We have considered the Plaintiffs’ remaining arguments and conclude that they are without merit,” said the New York State judges. Siding with the acclaimed satirist against failed Alabama Senate candidate Moore, the appeals court declared that Who Is America? was “clearly comedy and that no reasonable viewer would conclude otherwise” (read it here).

Courthouse News: Maine can’t stop out-of-staters from collecting ballot petition signatures

.....Maine’s requirement that only people who live in the state and are registered to vote there can collect signatures for ballot initiatives likely infringes on the First Amendment, the First Circuit said Thursday in upholding a preliminary injunction.

The statute prevents citizens who want to propose a law “from reaching into a pool of more than 250 million people of voting age to assist in the collection of signatures — and to engage in the face-to-face, interactive communication designed to bring about political change that accompanies that collection of signatures — that the Supreme Court has deemed core political speech,” Chief U.S. Circuit Judge David Barron wrote in a 63-page opinion.

Albany Times-Union: Editorial: New York's social-media misfire

.....New York lawmakers may disagree with how the U.S. Supreme Court is interpreting the Second Amendment, but that's no reason to attack the First Amendment. Unfortunately, a requirement embedded in a package of new gun legislation does just that.

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The Institute for Free Speech is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that promotes and defends the First Amendment rights to freely speak, assemble, publish, and petition the government. Please support the Institute's mission by clicking here. For further information, visit www.ifs.org.