This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected].
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New from the Institute for Free Speech
.....The Forsyth County School District (“FCS”) has agreed to pay attorney’s fees in a federal lawsuit brought by parents who were censored at school board meetings. FCS will pay the plaintiffs’ attorneys $107,500, in addition to their previous agreement to pay the plaintiffs nominal damages of $17.91 and allow entry of an injunction preventing them from enforcing the unconstitutional portions of their public comment policy. All but the amount of attorney’s fees were resolved by a January 31 court order...
“The right to speak includes the right to craft a message in a way that offends or embarrasses public officials. If a student can check out a book from a school library, then a parent can read from that same book during public comment time in order to make a political point,” said Del Kolde, a Senior Attorney at the Institute for Free Speech. “We took this case on a pro bono basis, but federal law provides for payment of attorney’s fees when government officials violate our civil rights.”
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Supreme Court
By Robert Corn-Revere
.....Later this month, the Supreme Court will consider how to interpret Section 230...
Gonzalez v. Google has attracted widespread attention because it presents the Supreme Court's first opportunity to weigh in on the statute—and because Section 230 has been at the center of a larger political debate regarding internet regulation for years.
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The Courts
By Robert Kraychik
.....James Lawrence, a lawyer representing Douglass Mackey — a social media figure known as “Ricky Vaughn” — said on Tuesday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow that the American Civil Rights Union (ACLU) “is nowhere to be found” and “MIA” with respect to the U.S. Justice Department’s (DOJ) prosecution of his client for speech protected by the First Amendment.
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.....The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University today filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that a part of New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act that requires applicants to register their social media handles with the government is unconstitutional. The brief does not take issue with the remainder of the act but argues that the registration requirement imposes a significant and unjustified burden on individuals’ First Amendment rights. In addition to the Knight Institute, five gun owners’ associations that advocate for safe and responsible gun ownership signed on as amici. Though the groups disagree about other parts of the act, they are united in the view that the social media requirement is unconstitutional and invites discrimination.
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By Derek Muller
.....An opinion in WinRed Inc. v. Ellison written by Judge Benton, joined by Chief Judge Smith (with some excerpts, below, lightly edited). (Judge Shepherd, “writing separately,” argues the case is not ripe for review and the court lacks jurisdiction.)
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By Chris Pandolfo
.....After issuing a formal apology, the National Archives has reached a preliminary agreement in a lawsuit with plaintiffs who alleged they were ordered to remove or cover pro-life messages on their clothing during a visit...
The apology recognized the irony of the alleged incident, in which a group of people were told they could not express their views in the building that houses the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights.
"As the home to the original Constitution and Bill of Rights, which enshrine the rights of free speech and religion, we sincerely apologize for this occurrence," the statement continued.
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Congress
By Natalia Mittelstadt
.....Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) blasted the IRS on Monday for allegedly conducting "government surveillance" on Americans following a Just the News report on the agency's invasive questioning of an election education nonprofit, as the House Oversight Committee requested to see the underlying documents.
In action reminiscent of the Lois Lerner targeting scandal under the Obama administration when the IRS singled out conservative groups for audits, the Biden IRS last year subjected an election education nonprofit applying for tax-empt status to intrusive formal questioning the group believes infringed on its speech rights under the First Amendment.
Just the News reported the story on Sunday after reviewing documents exchanged between the IRS and the Adams, Baldwin, and Covey Foundation, Inc. (ABC) that showed the agency grilling the foundation about its views on elections and how it would prevent "inflammatory language" from being creeping into its educational activities.
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By Alexandra Kelley
.....Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is looking for clarity from some of the biggest social media and internet companies in how they use algorithms to select content with which users engage, primarily regarding conservative voices.
The former presidential candidate issued four inquiries to Google, Meta, TikTok and Twitter asking for detailed information about the design of their content moderation systems. Cruz asks for the scope of several operations integral to content management on each platform, including recommendation systems, distribution effects on users and treatment of political speech.
“In addition to my concerns about the addictive nature of these systems, I am equally concerned with how censorship within recommendations impacts the distribution of speech online,” he wrote in the letter addressed to Google CEO Sundar Pichai. “In a world where seven out of ten Americans receive their political news from social media, the manner in which content is filtered through recommendation systems has an undeniable effect on what Americans see, think and ultimately believe.”
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The Media
By David Bauder
.....Half of Americans in a recent survey indicated they believe national news organizations intend to mislead, misinform or persuade the public to adopt a particular point of view through their reporting.
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By Robby Soave
.....The Global Disinformation Index (GDI) is a British organization that evaluates news outlets' susceptibility to disinformation. The ultimate aim is to persuade online advertisers to blacklist dangerous publications and websites.
One such publication, according to GDI's extremely dubious criteria, is Reason...
The U.S. government evidently values this work; in fact, the State Department subsidizes it...
Should the State Department spend public money to help an organization pressure advertisers to punish U.S. media companies? The answer, quite obviously, is no: The First Amendment prohibits the U.S. government from censoring private companies for good reason, and government actors should not seek to evade the First Amendment's protections in order to censor indirectly or exert pressure inappropriately.
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The States
By Melissa Montalvo
.....Two would-be challengers eyeing Board of Supervisor seats say they’re going to ignore a recent legal statement from Fresno County because they say it was intended to protect the incumbents.
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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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