The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech August 30, 2022 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 Luke Wachob at [email protected]. We're Hiring! Senior Attorney – Institute for Free Speech – Washington, DC or Virtual Office .....The Institute for Free Speech is hiring a Senior Attorney with a minimum of seven years of experience. The location for this position is either at our Washington, D.C. office or remotely anywhere in the United States. This is a rare opportunity to work with a growing team to litigate a long-term legal strategy directed toward the protection of Constitutional rights. We challenge laws, practices, and policies that infringe upon First Amendment freedoms, such as speech codes that censor parents at school board meetings, laws restricting people’s ability to give and receive campaign contributions, and any intrusion into people’s private political associations. You would work to hold censors accountable; and to secure legal precedents clearing away a thicket of laws, regulations, and practices that suppress speech about government and candidates for political office, threaten citizens’ privacy if they speak or join groups, and impose heavy burdens on political activity. Campaign Contribution Limits Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): An Upgrade, not a Rebuild By David French .....Campaign finance reforms that were intended to empower the grassroots and disempower the wealthy elite have backfired. Radicalized small-dollar donors drive the financial bus. Progressive reforms that were designed to give power to the people through primaries have sidelined political parties. Now small minorities of activist primary voters exercise disproportionate power and further polarize our politics... We propose eliminating individual campaign contribution limits. Every single effort to micromanage political expenditures hasn't just failed, it's backfired. No one can get money out of politics, but we can distort the ways in which it flows into the system. And presently money flows through radicalized small donors who are mobilized through alarmist rhetoric and captivated by celebrity. Small dollar donations also undermine the power of parties. Give a political celebrity an email list, and they can build a movement. We want stronger parties. We want smoke-filled rooms. And if we can't have smoke-filled rooms, we want party conventions. Donor Privacy The Guardian: Billions in ‘dark money’ is influencing US politics. We need disclosure laws By David Sirota and Joel Warner .....Whether you support or abhor Leo’s crusade, we should be able to agree on one larger non-partisan principle: such enormous sums of money should not be able to influence elections, lawmakers, judicial nominations and public policy in secret. And we should not have to rely on a rare leak to learn basic campaign finance facts that should be freely available to anyone. Unfortunately, thanks to our outdated laws, those facts are now hidden behind anonymity, shell companies and shadowy political groups. America is long overdue for an overhaul of its political disclosure laws – and news organizations in particular should be leading the charge for reform. The Courts Daily Business Review: Florida Judge Urged to Halt Controversial Education Law By Jim Saunders .....Lawyers for a group of parents, students and a non-profit organization have asked a federal judge to halt school districts from carrying out a controversial state law that restricts instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation. The lawyers on Friday filed a motion for a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit launched in July against the school boards in Orange, Indian River, Duval and Palm Beach counties... “HB 1557, by design, deters speech by and about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning people in schools,” the motion said. “To achieve this end, the law employs undefined terms that restrict an absurdly broad scope of speech and activity, casting a broad chilling effect and leaving school officials to draw arbitrary and discriminatory lines in their attempts to implement the law.” The law, which has drawn nationwide attention, prevents instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade and requires that such instruction be “age-appropriate … in accordance with state academic standards” in older grades. FEC Washington Examiner: Pro-DeSantis group says FEC trying to stifle 2024 draft effort By Paul Bedard .....“Ready for Ron,” a political action committee eager for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to run for president, said today that the Federal Election Commission is attempting to stifle its effort to nudge the GOP superstar into the 2024 race. After asking the FEC to clear its plan to give its petition of supporters free to the governor, the election agency appears headed to block the move, a surprise to the Florida-based group. “The FEC is flat-out wrong,” said political law attorney Dan Backer, who today delivered a 17-page rebuttal to the FEC on behalf of Ready for Ron. Free Expression City Journal: How Woke Put Paid to Publishing By Joanna Williams .....Horrific crimes such as the murder of journalists at the French publication Charlie Hebdo in 2015 still prompt support for press freedom. But it took precisely two days for some to suggest that #JeSuisCharlie solidarity would “play into the hands of the racists and fascists.” Rare is the defense of free speech that comes without caveats: free speech, but not for racists or Islamophobes; but not without consequences; but not the liberty to say things that I, personally, find offensive. The upshot is that many who work in journalism, universities, or publishing are now more concerned to avoid offending than to test the limits of what can be said. In this context, arguing for free speech often arouses suspicion. Defenders are said to be aligned with racists, transphobes, deplorables. And no one wants that. Rather than publish and be damned, the message is to self-censor in line with fashionable woke values, or risk being cancelled. How has this happened? The States Arizona Mirror: Whiplash: Free and Fair Elections Act won’t be on the ballot after last-minute math changes By Gloria Rebecca Gomez .....A ballot initiative to reform elections and campaign finance laws was barred from the November ballot on Friday afternoon by the Arizona Supreme Court after a week of legal activity that saw the measure’s fate reversed. When the dust settled, the Arizona Free and Fair Elections Act, which sought to make sweeping changes to Arizona’s election and campaign finance laws, fell just 1,458 signatures short of qualifying for the November ballot... [The Arizona Free and Fair Elections Act] also proposed dramatic changes to funding streams for candidates running for political office. It slashed campaign contributions from individuals and political action committees from $6,250 to $1,000 or $2,500, depending on which office a candidate is aiming for. At the same time, the initiative boosted the funding of publicly financed candidates using the state’s Clean Elections system by twice the current amount. New York Times: California Approves Bill to Punish Doctors Who Spread False Information By Steven Lee Myers .....Trying to strike a balance between free speech and public health, California’s Legislature on Monday approved a bill that would allow regulators to punish doctors for spreading false information about Covid-19 vaccinations and treatments... The law would designate spreading false or misleading medical information to patients as “unprofessional conduct,” subject to punishment by the agency that licenses doctors, the Medical Board of California. That could include suspending or revoking a doctor’s license to practice medicine in the state... The legislation defines disinformation as falsehoods “deliberately disseminated with malicious intent or an intent to mislead.” A group called Physicians for Informed Consent opposed the legislation, saying it would silence doctors. The group filed a lawsuit this month to seek an injunction preventing the Medical Board of California from disciplining doctors based on accusations of disinformation. In its lawsuit, it called the legislation’s definition of misinformation “hopelessly vague.” 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 First Amendment rights to freely speak, assemble, publish, and petition the government. Please support the Institute's mission by clicking here. 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