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

San Francisco Chronicle: Beauty pageant has First Amendment right to exclude transgender contestants, court rules

.....A national beauty pageant that bars transgender women as contestants is exercising its constitutional right of free speech to express its “ideal vision of American womanhood,” says a divided federal appeals court.

Citing the Supreme Court’s 1995 decision allowing sponsors of the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Boston to exclude a gay, lesbian and bisexual group, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled Wednesday that Miss United States of America acted legally when it refused to allow Anita Noelle Green to compete in its 2019 pageant…

The ruling was also praised by Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor who filed a brief on behalf of the Libertarian Law Council and the Institute for Free Speech in support of the pageant sponsors.

Center Square: North Carolina attorney general argues law against false campaign statements chills free speech

.....A North Carolina election law that prohibits false and derogatory statements against political candidates "threatens to chill speech at the heart of democratic process," state Attorney General Josh Stein argued in a federal court filing this week.

Center Square: Probe launched into Homeland Security’s 'taxpayer-funded censorship campaign'

.....House Oversight Committee Republicans are kicking off an investigation into what they they called a “taxpayer-funded censorship campaign” at the Department of Homeland Security.

Reason: Senator Dick Durbin Doesn't Understand the First Amendment

.....It is a troubling sign when politicians seem eager to label speech they dislike as not "free speech." For one, it indicates a flawed legal understanding of the First Amendment—something particularly worrying from a top-ranked politician and the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. However, Durbin's statements also reveal a deeper problem than a mere legal misunderstanding: A censorious impulse, and the desire to quash the speech of your enemies under nebulous accusations of harm.

Daily Caller: Left-Wing Group Appears To Threaten Americans Who Don’t Vote

.....The left-wing organization America Votes distributed mailers appearing to use threats to bully Nevadans into casting their votes in the Nov. 8 midterm elections.

New York Times: Fueled by Billionaires, Political Spending Shatters Records Again

By Jonathan Weisman and Rachel Shorey

.....Fueled by an expanding class of billionaires, political spending on the 2022 midterm elections will shatter records at the state and federal levels, with much of it from largely unregulated super PACs financed with enormous checks written mainly by Republican megadonors.

Roll Call: Amazon, other PACs resume donations to electoral objectors

.....After suspending donations to Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election, a collection of PACs, including those of Amazon and Caterpillar, restarted contributions ahead of midterm elections in which the GOP is favored to win House control.

The Atlantic: Is Gmail Silencing Republicans?

.....It started as strange conflicts sometimes do: with a couple of older people telling their son that something is wrong with their shared email account. “My parents, who have a Gmail account, aren’t getting my campaign emails,” Representative Greg Steube of Florida told Google CEO Sundar Pichai in July 2020, during a congressional hearing that was ostensibly about antitrust law. “My question is, why is this only happening to Republicans?”

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