This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected].
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In the News
By Tiffany Donnelly
.....You’ve probably heard Florida has what some call a “Don’t Say Gay” law. But did you know it had a “Don’t Say Political Party” law?
Until recently, Florida prohibited candidates in nonpartisan races from telling voters true information about their party affiliation.
When Escambia County School Board candidate Kells Hetherington chose to describe himself as a “lifelong Republican” in his candidate statement on a county website in 2018, Florida officials fined him. He wanted to make a similar statement when he ran for the same office in the last election, but refrained because he didn’t want to get fined again.
So Hetherington, with the help of attorneys at the Institute for Free Speech — a nonprofit that promotes and defends First Amendment rights — challenged the constitutionality of the law.
The Institute argued that while Florida is free to create nonpartisan races, the state can’t prohibit candidates from telling voters their party affiliation...
In November, U.S. District Judge M. Casey Rodgers of the Northern District of Florida, Pensacola Division recognized that the First Amendment protects Hetherington’s right to express his party affiliation.
Rodgers noted that the challenged statute allows the candidate to “dance around the issue of partisan affiliation, so long as they do not utter a few magic words.”
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The Courts
By Kendall Tietz
.....A college free speech advocacy organization is suing Oklahoma State University (OSU) over policies that they argue deter, suppress and punish students for constitutionally protected speech regarding political and social issues.
Speech First filed a lawsuit Tuesday against OSU challenging three of its speech policies they claim are designed to chill and silence student speech, which is in turn a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of students, according to the lawsuit.
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FEC
.....Yesterday, TechFreedom filed comments to the Federal Election Commission on its proposal to “modernize” the agency’s campaign finance regulations by subjecting any online political communication “promoted for a fee” to disclosure and disclaimer requirements.
“The Internet has democratized mass communications, allowing each of us to speak our mind to an audience size once reserved for wealthy and powerful interests,” said Ari Cohn, TechFreedom’s Free Speech Counsel. “The FEC’s 2006 Internet Freedom Rule allowed regular citizens to engage in free online political speech without a regulatory Sword of Damocles hanging precariously over their heads. Now, ironically in the name of ‘modernization,’ the FEC appears ready to take a step backward.”
The FEC’s proposal risks subjecting much vibrant online political discourse to unwarranted regulation, as TechFreedom explained in its comments.
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Online Speech Platforms
By J.D. Tuccille
.....After years of hyperventilating over the alleged perils to American democracy posed by foreign shitposts, it looks like Moscow's social media campaign to influence U.S. elections accomplished little, say researchers.
That is, Russian tweets had little effect, unless you count the boost it gave to the careers of pundits bloviating about the supposed vulnerability of our political system. In fact, with this study dropping in the midst of competing revelations about political shenanigans, it appears the government that meddled the most in American politics is the one based in Washington, D.C.
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By Katie Paul
.....Meta's Oversight Board on Monday overturned the company's decision to remove a Facebook post that used the slogan "death to Khamenei" to criticize the Iranian leader, saying it did not violate a rule barring violent threats.
The board, which is funded by Meta but operates independently, said in a ruling that the phrase is often used to mean "down with Khamenei" in referring to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has been leading a violent crackdown on nationwide protests in recent months.
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The States
By Tina Kelley
.....On Thursday, 14 students were learning skills that will soon be required for all New Jersey students: critical thinking, effective research, and how to evaluate information.
Just the day before, Gov. Phil Murphy had signed a law making New Jersey the first state in the U.S. to require K-12 lessons in how to tell reliable information from fiction and navigate a world — and an internet — rife with alternative facts and research rabbit holes...
Murphy had spoken proudly about the information literacy law (S588), mentioning it on the Friday anniversary of the Jan. 6 attacks, when people who did not believe the results of the 2020 election stormed the U.S. Capitol. The Democratic governor noted “we are the first state to ensure that our kids, and the generations to come, possess the skills needed to discern fact from fiction and reject disinformation.” He also hailed the bill along with other bipartisan legislation at a bill signing on Thursday.
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By Abe Streep
.....Changes to campaign-finance laws have also contributed to tipping the balance of power in the state. Following the 2010 Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case, a dark-money group that became known as American Tradition Partnership challenged Montana’s 1912 law that prohibited corporate spending on campaigns. In 2011, the Montana Supreme Court upheld the law, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the ruling the following year, and corporate money poured into Montana. State law still restricts direct corporate spending on local elections, but political-action committees and dark-money groups have injected money into divisive contests and, as in much of the country, there’s no limit on candidates’ donations to their own campaigns.
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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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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.
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