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
.....Citing the collection and mishandling of sensitive donor financial information, the Empire Center and Institute for Free Speech have sent a formal demand letter to the Office of the New York Attorney General (OAG) to stop ongoing First Amendment violations.
In 2021, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled in AFP v. Bonta that California could not force charitable organizations to disclose certain federal tax documents, as the collection of those documents represent a threat to the privacy of donors — and therefore a violation of First Amendment rights. New York was one of two other states that required those documents to be submitted annually.
Although New York’s OAG stopped collecting those documents following the SCOTUS decision, it was revealed last summer that the OAG had, apparently, not destroyed the documents it had collected when one of those documents — containing private donor information and bearing the office’s stamp — was published in a Politico article.
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The Courts
By Alex Ebert
.....Ohio’s former House Speaker was found guilty of public corruption capping a landmark trial over a $61 million bribery scheme in which FirstEnergy Corp. paid for a state-funded nuclear bailout...
The case was a major test of the boundaries for “dark money” prosecutions of nonprofit donations because the big question for jurors was how explicit a deal must be to take donations from the realm of normal politics into the zone of a corrupt quid-pro-quo bribe. The verdict could also open the door to additional wire fraud prosecutions against nonprofits.
“It will have a large impact nationally,” said David DeVillers, the former US Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio who originally indicted Householder who is now a partner at Barnes & Thornburg LLP. That’s because the trial is perhaps the first of its kind where a 501(c)(4) nonprofit—a group that’s supposed to be a social welfare organization with anonymous donations but limits on political activities—was the money laundering mechanism for a political corruption scheme.
“If an agency wants to look at 501(c)(4)s and they’re able to follow the money, they’re going to find a lot. And you’re going to see politicians, officer holders and big companies hopefully change their ways,” he said.
Householder’s attorney, Steven Bradley, said he‘d appeal the verdict.
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Congress
By Christopher Hutton
.....The House voted to place new restrictions on federal employees pressuring or helping private entities to censor political speech , a response by Republicans to the release of internal Twitter documents that detailed the close relationship that federal agencies have with Big Tech.
The Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act passed 219-206 in the lower chamber . The legislation would expand the Hatch Act, a law prohibiting federal employees from engaging in political activity, to include a prohibition on employees working with private companies or platforms to censor lawful speech. Republicans have argued that government officials have collaborated with Big Tech to censor conservatives.
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By Ari Blaff
.....Representative Stacey Plaskett (D., Virgin Islands) ripped into Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger during a Thursday hearing on the Twitter Files, accusing the pair of journalists of endangering the lives of Twitter employees by exposing how the social-media platform partnered with various federal agencies to censor disfavored political views.
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FEC
By David Bossie
.....The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is considering a major expansion in its regulation of internet communications; like so many attempts before it, this assault on political social-media influencers infringes on protected First Amendment free speech rights.
The latest effort to pressure the FEC to over-regulate has one central goal: to make it harder for everyday Americans to have their voices heard in the political arena. This folly runs parallel to a terrible decision in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., that rejected a restrained approach to regulating communications on the internet. Ironically, the case involves Hillary for America and David Brock’s Correct the Record, including their internet communications during the 2016 election.
Those pushing the left’s unconstitutional agenda this time give themselves phony “anti-propaganda” titles but belong to the same crowd that nodded its approval when the federal government told the Supreme Court it had the power to ban books during oral arguments for Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
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By Roger Sollenberger
.....In a decision that critics are calling “pathetic,” “troubling,” and “unfortunate,” with “limitless potential for corruption,” the country’s election regulators have for the first time explicitly authorized personal slush funds for politicians.
Slipped into a comparatively innocuous Federal Election Commission ruling published last week, the decision revolved around rent payments from former Republican congressman Lou Barletta’s leadership PAC (LOU PAC) to his wife.
That particular arrangement appears quite likely within the law, according to legal experts. But in dismissing the complaint, a majority of four commissioners also took the opportunity to make a far more sweeping statement, officially articulating for the first time that leadership PACs—long derided as personal slush funds—are entirely exempt from the ban on personal use.
In the analysis, the FEC wrote explicitly that “the prohibition against personal use applies only to the ‘use of funds in a campaign account of a present or former candidate.’”
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The States
By Hannah Kanik
.....Los Gatos Town Council’s censure of a planning commissioner for using “divisive” language caught the attention of First Amendment advocates who say the council’s disciplinary process violated the commissioner’s constitutional rights and was “plain and simple, illegal.”
The Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union wrote a letter to the town council March 1, urging them to revoke Commissioner Kylie Clark’s censure — a formal disapproval of her comments which she was given after calling out the “rich, white anti-housing men” in Los Gatos.
“That’s just pure and utter censorship. They’re saying, ‘We don’t like this speech, and that’s why we’re going to discipline it,’ and that’s exactly what you can’t do,” said Shilpi Agarwal, legal director of the ACLU of Northern California.
This letter is the first step in what could turn into a lawsuit between the ACLU and the town over Clark’s First Amendment rights. The ACLU argued that the censure was “flagrantly illegal and violative of Miss Clark’s free speech rights,” and that the town was trying to “make an example out of her.”
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By Greg Bishop
.....Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Wednesday that despite his million-dollar donations to two Illinois Supreme Court justices last year, they are independent and should not have to recuse themselves from two high-profile cases before them in which the governor is a defendant.
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By J.D. Tuccille
.....Massachusetts residents have a reputation for an abrasive style that has earned them the nickname "Massholes" among their neighbors. They can be abrasive when traveling, they can be abrasive with one another and, courtesy of a free speech-affirming decision issued this week by the state's Supreme Judicial Court, they're legally protected when being abrasive in all their Masshole glory with government officials. It's a win for the value of speech rights, even when politicians don't like how they're exercised.
"Although civility, of course, is to be encouraged, it cannot be required regarding the content of what may be said in a public comment session of a governmental meeting without violating [articles 16 and 19] of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, which provide for a robust protection of public criticism of governmental action and officials," the Supreme Judicial Court ruled March 7 in Barron v. Kolenda.
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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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