The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech February 22, 2023 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 [email protected]. In the News Fox News: Professor sues University of Texas for threatening his career in response to criticism of DEI, CRT policies By Andrew Mark Miller .....A tenured professor sued the University of Texas at Austin after administrators allegedly made threats against him in the wake of his public criticism of the school’s critical race theory and diversity policies... Del Kolde, senior attorney at the Institute for Free Speech which is representing [the professor, Richard] Lowery, told Fox News Digital there was a "concerted effort" by the school to "silence" Lowery in response to his public criticism of administrators in news publications and on social media. Kolde explained to Fox News Digital that Lowery was exercising his right to freedom of speech when he expressed the belief that taxpayer funds being used to promote CRT and DEI amounted to "ideological indoctrination." "We're going to court on his behalf in order to protect his right to speak so he can start speaking again and be part of the conversation," Kolde said about the lawsuit. "All he's asking to do is to be treated equally like other faculty members," Kolde went on., "If you're pro DEI at the University of Texas you can speak all day all the time talking about how great these DEI policies are. In fact, they have a grant program that pays people to go talk about it." ProPublica: School District Pays Legal Fees After Banning Mothers From Reading Sexually Graphic Passages at Meetings By Nicole Carr .....A group of conservative Georgia mothers on a quest to ban library books has won a key victory against a school district that sought to limit their ability to recite graphic passages from those books at school board meetings... The agreement to pay legal fees stems from a late January consent judgment and injunction against the school district. The Mama Bears’ July 2022 lawsuit against the district detailed how Forsyth’s school board banned one mother from attending its meetings. The woman, Alison Hair, had insisted on reading sexually explicit material aloud before the board. “The hope is that other elected officials, people who are on school boards and thinking about running for school board, or school officials that interact with them like superintendents, see this result and are more careful when they are tempted to censor other parents in the future,” said Del Kolde, a senior attorney with the Institute for Free Speech, a D.C.-based nonprofit that opposes campaign finance restrictions and represented the Mama Bears pro bono... Kevin Goldberg, an attorney and First Amendment specialist with the nonprofit free-speech advocacy group Freedom Forum, said the Mama Bears’ victory could lead to even more challenges of restrictions on what people can say at school board meetings and who can be banned from them. “It’s going to embolden other individuals and groups to stand up to school boards,” Goldberg said. “Because now they’re seeing one organization come out of this with success. “This is a loss for the school board and, frankly, it’s a success for free speech.” Lawfare: Oral Argument Preview: Gonzalez, et al. v. Google and Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh, et al. By Brandon Broukhim, Brad Carney, and Sasa Jovanovic .....Numerous amici emphasize judicial restraint: if Section 230 is to be revised, they argue, the job should belong to Congress, not the courts. A group of internet law scholars argue that only Congress should make any changes to Section 230 and that the logical conclusion of petitioners' argument would expose users who amplify third-party content to liability. They emphasize that Congress chose to protect a wide range of speech and there is no support within Section 230 for distinguishing between mere automated recommendations and recommended content and thus all algorithmic recommendations fall within the scope of Section 230. By contrast, the Institute for Free Speech and Professor Adam Canteub argue that neither party's interpretation of Section 230's protections is correct. They urge the Supreme Court to remand to the district court, where it should develop the record to determine whether YouTube’s recommendations form its own speech (through the “creation of development of information,” which is precluded from protection under Section 230(f)(2)) or merely providing “transmitted information” to users. Supreme Court SCOTUSblog: “Not, like, the nine greatest experts on the internet”: Justices seem leery of broad ruling on Section 230 By Amy Howe .....The Supreme Court on Tuesday debated the scope of a 27-year-old federal law that shields social-media companies from liability for content published by others. At issue in Gonzalez v. Google is whether Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects internet platforms when their algorithms target users and recommend someone else’s content. Google and its supporters warned in legal briefs that a ruling against them could massively reshape legal liability for tech companies across the county, but after nearly three hours of argument on Tuesday, the justices appeared wary of taking such a significant step. Washington Post: Supreme Court won't upset Arkansas anti-Israel boycott law By Associated Press .....The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to step into a legal fight over state laws that require contractors to pledge not to boycott Israel. The justices rejected an appeal on behalf of an alternative weekly newspaper in Little Rock, Arkansas, that objected to a state law that reduces fees paid to contractors that refuse to sign the pledge. The full federal appeals court in St. Louis upheld the law, overturning a three-judge panel’s finding that it violated constitutional free speech rights. Similar measures in Arizona, Kansas and Texas were initially blocked by courts, prompting lawmakers to focus only on larger contracts. Arkansas’ law applies to contracts worth $1,000 or more. Washington Examiner: Supreme Court denies case backed by The Onion of Ohio man arrested after making satire By Kaelan Deese .....The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from an Ohio man who was arrested after creating a parody Facebook page in 2016 to make fun of his local police department, a case that garnered the attention of satirists at the Onion. Candidates and Campaigns Politico: George Santos reported spreading campaign cash to other Republicans. The money never showed up. By Jessica Piper .....One of George Santos’ first acts as a candidate for Congress in 2019, according to his campaign finance filings, was making a series of four-figure donations from his campaign to a pair of local Republican groups and President Donald Trump’s reelection committee. But according to those groups’ own filings, the contributions were never received — and may not have been donated. Wall Street Journal: Why I’m Running for President By Vivek Ramaswamy .....We must restore merit in determining which ideas win in America. The best ideas are born when no ideas are censored. Yet our government pressures technology companies to censor disfavored political speech and gives them special protections to carry it out. Internet companies are bound by the First Amendment when they act in concert with state actors. As Elon Musk did at Twitter, I will release the “state action files” from the federal government—publicly exposing every known instance in which bureaucrats have wrongfully pressured companies to take constitutionally prohibited actions. Viewpoint censorship extends beyond the internet and pervades our economy. If you can’t fire someone for being black, gay or Muslim, you shouldn’t be able to fire someone for his political speech. I will work with Congress to enshrine political expression as an American civil right, and I will enforce existing civil-rights laws to protect workers from invidious viewpoint discrimination. The federal prohibition on religious discrimination forbids employers from forcing employees to bow down to any religion, including secular ones as defined by the Supreme Court in U.S. v. Seeger (1965) and Torcaso v. Watkins (1961). The modern woke agenda in much of corporate America fits that bill. The States Orlando Sentinel: DeSantis-backed bill would make it easier to sue news media By Skyler Swisher .....State lawmakers are moving forward with a Gov. Ron DeSantis-inspired push to make it easier for prominent people to sue media outlets for defamation, setting the stage for a potential First Amendment clash in the courts. The Legislature is set to take up the measure that challenges longstanding protections for the press established by the U.S Supreme Court... The legislation proposes sweeping changes to Florida’s libel and defamation law. It presumes information from anonymous sources to be false and removes protections that allow journalists to shield the identity of sources if they are sued. It limits the definition of who would qualify as a public figure. Link via MSN. Newsmax: Santorum: Transparency, Good Gov't — Buzzwords of Left's Tyranny By Fmr. Sen. Rick Santorum .....Now the left is pouring gasoline on this cultural fire of exiling your political opponents by using the levers of government to identify, target, and cancel conservatives — and they are doing it under the banners of "transparency" and "good government." We saw this with the passage of Arizona’s Prop 211 that forces nonprofit organizations participating in policy discussions to expose the names and home addresses of their supporters. Prop 211 is a progressive dream and part of a national effort led by Democrats to bully citizens and nonprofits into keeping silent about their radical agenda. That effort includes legislation in Congress like last year’s H.R. 1 and the DISCLOSE Act, a bill which has repeatedly failed to pass over the past dozen years. However, after years of failure at the federal level and in other states, Prop 211 passed in Arizona because voters were misled by the initiative’s liberal backers and swamped by misinformation from the mainstream media... And while the passage of Prop 211 is a setback in Arizona, it has also set the stage for more dangerous ballot measures to appear across the country. Look no further than Oregon, where progressives have already filed paperwork to place a similar measure on the ballot in 2024. If there is any good news, it is that our constitutional rights stand in their way. Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas Legislature considers bill to overhaul Ethics Commission as it probes GOP officials By Andrew Bahl .....Amid a Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission probe into activities of prominent legislators and state Republican Party officials, lawmakers are considering a massive overhaul of the agency that could limit its ability to conduct future investigations. The agency's leader said the bill, House Bill 2391, would make Kansas' campaign finance laws among the weakest in the nation... Advocates of the bill say the commission's activities have had a "chilling effect" on free speech. [Ed. note: Read "Testimony of Bradley A. Smith Before the Kansas House of Representatives Committee on Elections" here.] 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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