Can a Court Arbitrarily Conclude That ‘Security’ Overrules the First Amendment? – Reason (blog)

A 3D printer company founded by provocateur Cody Wilson, along with the Second Amendment Foundation, has filed for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court in a case asking that the company be allowed to post on its website instructions for using a 3D printer to manufacture a plastic gun.

Defense Distributed and the Foundation sued the State Department and other government persons and agencies back in May 2015 after the government threatened the company in May of 2013 for hosting the 3D gun manufacturing files.

Defense Distributed

The government maintains that such files are essentially armaments in and of themselves and subject to existing laws against the export of such munitions, with posting them in a place where foreigners could access them constituting such an illegal export.

The plaintiffs have sustained a series of losses in lower courts attempting to get a preliminary injunction against the government. Their plaintiffs contends the government has violated the company owners' First, Second, and Fifth Amendment rights with its actions.

Most specifically in this cert petition they have asked the Supreme Court to answer these questions:

1. Whether a court weighing a preliminary injunction must consider a First Amendment plaintiff's likelihood of success on the merits. 2. Whether it is always in the public interest to follow constitutional requirements. 3. Whether the Arms Export Control Act of 1976....and its implementing International Traffic in Arms Regulations ("ITAR")...may be applied as a prior restraint on public speech.

The petition insists that in denying their request for an injunction, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has taken a dangerous stance in balancing the First Amendment against government's insistence that it has very good reason to violate it.

It is also worth noting the files in question, although no longer hosted by Defense Distributed, are universally available on the internet from many other sources.

Defense Distributed is represented in this case by Alan Gura, who won two previous Second Amendment victories at the Supreme Court in 2008's Heller case and 2010's McDonald. Gura and his co-counsels argue in the petition the Fifth Circuit should not have been allowed to have:

simply declared that the government's asserted interests outweighed the interest in securing constitutional rights....considering the merits of preliminary injunction motions is not optional. Of all contexts, the merits cannot be optional in First Amendment cases. It should ordinarily go without sayingand so it must now be saidthat federal courts cannot dismiss the Constitution's primacy in our legal system...

The government can be relied upon to assert the necessity of every prior restraint. The public must be able to rely on the courts to test these assertions for constitutional compliance.

Gura argues the government's rules defining what falls under ITAR are completely ambiguous and confusing. The process for learning whether or not those rules apply to you is a similar mess of ambiguity and overreach. And the government's ability to stonewall drags out cases like that of Defense Distributed for years, Gura writes.

The petition also details the history of interpretation of ITAR over the past decade in the (proper) direction of not using it as a prior restraint on expression or speech on American citizens when it involved non-classified information.

The Fifth Circuit, in its decision on the appeal of an initial district court loss for Defense Distributed, was pretty blatant in saying the First Amendment doesn't count here because the government says so:

Ordinarily, of course, the protection of constitutional rights would be the highest public interest at issue in a case. That is not necessarily true here, however, because the State Department has asserted a very strong public interest in national defense and national security.

Gura finds that assertion unsatisfying, leaning on a Fifth Circuit dissent from the panel's majority opinion. Dissenter Judge Edith Jones:

noted that "[i]nterference with First Amendment rights for any period of time, even for short periods, constitutes irreparable injury,"...and that "Defense Distributed has been denied publication rights for over three years,"...She then found it "a mystery" why the majority was "unwilling to correct" the district court's "obvious error" in applying only intermediate scrutiny to the content-based prior restraint at issue...

[Judge Jones believes the State Department's censorship of Defense Distributed] "appears to violate the governing statute, represents an irrational interpretation of the regulations, and violates the First Amendment as a content-based regulation and a prior restraint."

Jones also pointed out how weirdly ineffectual is the government's desired power to violate the First Amendment. The government admits stating or publishing that same information at a conference in the U.S., or in a domestic publication or library, would be protected speech if they somehow could insure no foreigners accessed it. Foreigners could, of course, access such information on the Internet, an act considered a blow against national security so severe it trumps the First Amendment. That is, if "foreigners can't hear this speech" is to be held as true and important, the power to restrict speech applies far beyond the Internet.

The Fifth Circuit's decision to ignore the First Amendment is dangerous far beyond the simple question of publishing files for printing plastic armaments on the internet, Gura argues. That decision:

has unsettled the established norms for adjudicating preliminary injunction requests. Gone is this [Supreme] Court's careful balancing test, with its reliance on the merits. In its place, a wholly arbitrary system: The court will consider the merits, when it wishes to do so. Whether the merits might reveal a constitutional violation is less important, because the court will enforce the Constitution only when it seems to be a good idea.

What are courts, attorneys, and the public to make of this innovation?

Critics of this or that opinion often allege that a court has followed an extra-constitutional agenda. For a court to declare that it has done just thatin ignoring a content-based prior restraint no lessraises basic questions about the judiciary's function. The public is left with no way of knowing when a judge would declare some interest more important than the Constitution, or even bother hearing the merits of plainly significant pleas to enjoin unconstitutional conduct.

Absent a merits inquiry, a court balancing the unknown equities is reduced...to declaring whether an abstract interest in constitutional rights is more or less important than an equally abstract government interest. And if the court then decides, as did the majority below, that security > freedom, that ends the matter. The logic is inescapable; where applied, it bars any injunctive relief.

Expressed that way, the danger of letting the Fifth Circuit decision stand should be clear even to Americans who don't understand why anyone, domestic or foreign, needs a computer file that helps them print a plastic gun at home.

The Supreme Court should take up the case, and let lower courts know they can't, absent a fair consideration of the merits, blithely decide that security beats the First Amendment in court.

Reason TV interviewed Cody Wilson of Defense Distributed last year:

More:

Can a Court Arbitrarily Conclude That 'Security' Overrules the First Amendment? - Reason (blog)

March on Google: Self-proclaimed ‘First Amendment supporters’ to … – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette


Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
March on Google: Self-proclaimed 'First Amendment supporters' to ...
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The group, reacting partly to a memo written by ex-Googler James Damore, will meet at Google offices across the country.
March on Google comes to Pittsburgh this weekend , one of eight citiesWTAE Pittsburgh
Planned protest at Google's Pittsburgh office not an alt-right event ...Tribune-Review

all 8 news articles »

Excerpt from:

March on Google: Self-proclaimed 'First Amendment supporters' to ... - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Liberals need to stop messing with the First Amendment – Washington Examiner

Two Chinese tourists were arrested last Sunday after taking photos of each other giving the Nazi salute in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin. Unlike in the United States, certain types of speech are illegal in Germany, including almost any Nazi symbolism.

Supposed comedian Chelsea Handler, weighed in on the story, suggesting the U.S. be more like Germany, which would require eliminating the First Amendment.

Most people in a civilized society agree that Nazi salutes are offensive, even if given in jest. Labeling speech that we all agree to be wrong as "hate speech" and then banning it by law might seem like a simple solution to the problem of occasionally hearing things that decent people don't like. However, passing laws to weaken our own rights in response to somebody else's poor behavior is not the solution.

If we want to be aware of what can transpire on the fringe of society, everyone should be free to express all of their opinions, even the ones that offend us. The Constitution treats us as grown-ups, depending on us to have the sense to reject opinions that are genuinely evil.

Take the Westboro Baptist Church for example, a group consisting mostly of family members. They scream obscenities and anti-gay slurs as they picket events such as papal visits and the funerals of service members killed overseas. They offend virtually everyone on earth. America, with its population of over 300 million people, seems to have collectively ostracized the 70-member group despite our government never making it a law to do so. No one is terribly worried that their annoying behavior is causing a trend.

Making any type of speech illegal would in itself destroy the First Amendment, which contrary to the claims of some washed up politicians, contains no exception for hate speech. Nor should it. The definition of hate speech is subject to continuous change. There are words no decent person will say, but the banning of even one word would eliminate the right to freedom of speech, replacing it with a subjective list of prohibited terms to which the government could and would add to over time.

It is strange that those who depend on free speech to make their living are often its most vocal opponents. Handler, for example, wants to ban offensive speech, but she engages in it quite often, as when she made fun of the first lady's accent, claiming Melania Trump barely speaks English. It's her right to tell that joke, of course. But it might not be if she had her own way.

Today's "safe space" culture has created the concept that words -- not threats, mind you, just unkind words -- are equivalent to physical harm. It just isn't so. And the First Amendment is a treasure, even if it does subject us all to Kathy Griffin posing in ISIS-inspired photoshoots, Johnny Depp expressing his envy of John Wilkes Booth, and Snoop Dogg shooting a clown dressed as Trump in a music video. As always, the proper answer to offensive speech is more speech, not violence or government coercion.

At a moment when leftists can't seem to get enough of speaking out against the current administration, their sudden turn against the First Amendment is a puzzling and troubling development. Their short-sighted talk of giving our government unacceptable authority to regulate our personal lives should be rejected like all the other bad ideas that people are free to express.

Alana Mastrangelo is a political activist and writer.

Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.

See the original post:

Liberals need to stop messing with the First Amendment - Washington Examiner

Militiamen came to Charlottesville as neutral First Amendment protectors, commander says – Washington Post

Of the harrowing images televised nationwide from Saturdays white nationalist demonstration in Charlottesville, one of the more chilling sights, amid hours of raging hatred and mayhem, was of camo-clad militiamen on the streets, girded for combat in tactical vests and toting military-style semiautomatic rifles.

Photos and video of the heavily armed cadre a relatively small force commanded by a 45-year-old machinist and long-ago Navy veteran from western Pennsylvania spread rapidly on social media, raising fears the clash of hundreds of neo-Nazis and counterprotesters might end in a bloodbath.

The show of strength was about allegiance ... to the Constitution, particularly the First Amendment, said Christian Yingling, leader of the Pennsylvania Light Foot Militia. He said he and his troops convoyed in to Charlottesville early Saturday to defend free speech by maintaining civic order so everyone present could voice an opinion, regardless of their views.

The fact that no shots were fired, Yingling said, was a testament to the discipline of the 32 brave souls serving under me during this particular operation. In a telephone interview Sunday, he sought to dispel the absurd idea in the publics mind that his group of patriots was allied with or sympathetic to the white nationalists.

Many militia units in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast have mutual defense agreements, Yingling said. Because he has overseen several militia responses at contentious gatherings in recent months helping keep the peace at right-wing public events in Boston; in Gettysburg and Harrisburg, Pa.; and at an April 29 rally in Harrisburg for President Trump Yingling said the commander of a Virginia militia asked him to organize and take tactical command of the Charlottesville operation.

He had never handled anything like this, Yingling said. And given the volatility of the event, it was not a good place to start.

When his group arrived in Charlottesville, we put our own beliefs off to the side, Yingling said. Not one of my people said a word. They were given specific orders to remain quiet the entire time we were there.... Our mission was to help people exercise their First Amendment rights without being physically assaulted.

He added: It was a resounding success until we were just so drastically outnumbered that we couldnt stop the craziness. It was nothing short of horrifying.

In the interview and in a Facebook Live monologue Sunday, Yingling detailed why the militia members participated, how he went about organizing their appearance, and how his group was received which he said was not with much welcome.

Jacka---s, was how he described both sides, meaning the white nationalists, who billed the gathering as Unite the Right, and the counterprotesters, many marching under the banner of Antifa, for anti-fascist. Yingling also criticized police, saying that officers were poorly prepared for the violence and not assertive enough in combating it and that they should have enlisted the militiamen to help prevent the mayhem.

Instead, about five hours after Yingling and his platoon arrived at 7:30a.m., they were ordered by police to leave the area, he said. By 1:42p.m. when a man reputed to be a neo-Nazi adherent allegedly drove his car intentionally through a crowded pedestrian mall and into a sedan, killing a 32-year-old woman and injuring 19 others the militiamen were far from Charlottesville, headed back to their encampment 50 miles northeast of the city, Yingling said.

He said several of his troops were battered and bloodied, having been attacked by people on both sides of the demonstration, yet they did not retaliate.

He said he does not know the suspect in the car killing, James Alex Fields, 20, of Ohio, or any of the white nationalists involved in Saturdays demonstration.

Virginias secretary of public safety, Brian Moran, rejected the assertion that police were ill-equipped to handle Saturdays unrest. To say we were unprepared or inexperienced is absolutely wrong, Moran declared Sunday, adding, We unequivocally acted at the right time and with the appropriate response.

He said: The fighting in the street was sporadic. But soon after it started, we began to have conversations about when to go in. The concern was that the fighting was in the middle of the crowd and that if we went in there, we would lose formation, lose contact. We would be putting the public and law enforcement in jeopardy.

Saturday marked the first time in 28 years the Virginia National Guard was used to help quell a civil disturbance. The militia showed up with long rifles, and we were concerned about that in the mix, Moran said. They seemed like they werent there to cause trouble, but it was a concern to have rifles of that kind in that environment.

Authorities also were worried that Yingling who was carrying a Sig Sauer AR-556 semiautomatic weapon and his troops would be mistaken for National Guard members by the public, Moran said.

Yingling called the weapons one hell of a visual deterrent to would-be attackers from either side. Although the weapons magazines were fully loaded, he said, the days standard procedure was that anyone who was carrying a long gun was not to have a round in the chamber. Now, our sidearms are generally chambered and ready to go.

The Pennsylvania Light Foot Militia is one of several Light Foot Militia outfits in states nationwide. In addition to having overall command of units in Pennsylvania, Yingling said, he is the leader of his home unit, the Light Foot Militia Laurel Highlands Ghost Company, based near his home in New Derry, Pa., about 50 miles east of Pittsburgh. The Ghost Company has about a dozen members, he said.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit watchdog group that monitors extremist organizations, classifies 276 militias in the country as antigovernment groups, meaning they generally define themselves as opposed to the New World Order, engage in groundless conspiracy theorizing, or advocate or adhere to extreme antigovernment doctrines.

The Pennsylvania Light Foot Militia is on the list, as are Light Foot Militia units in South Carolina, Utah, Wisconsin, Idaho, Nevada and Oregon. But the SPLC points out that inclusion on its list does not imply that the groups themselves advocate or engage in violence or other criminal activity, or are racist.

Yingling said he abhors racism and that his company, which usually trains in the woods once or twice a month, is open to prospective members of all races and creeds, although its active roster is entirely white.

A Navy veteran of Operation Desert Storm, Yingling said he was an aviation machinists mate for three years before leaving the service in 1993 as a petty officer third class, meaning he was four rungs up the enlisted ranks.

I joined the military to avoid the addictive lifestyle of my parents, he wrote in a Facebook post. I was raised in a VERY dysfunctional, abusive home. The military gave me the structure I needed. After his discharge, however, I quickly fell right into the lifestyle I had known all my life with my parents. I quit going to church, I started using drugs and alcohol, heavily becoming addicted to both. It started a... downward spiral which led to an eventual suicide attempt.

Then, in 2008, President Barack Obama was elected. Yingling said he was drawn then to right-wing, anti-government extremism.

I left my old addictive lifestyle behind and traded it for the lifestyle of a patriot, he wrote. I had found my calling as a militiaman. I founded The Westmoreland County Militia, Regulators 1st Battalion with two fellow patriots. He later left the unit and formed the Laurel Highlands Ghost Company.

No, I dont think the government, as a whole, is out to get us, he said in the interview, but a lot of people in society are self-absorbed. They dont get involved with the Constitution and defending the freedoms that it gives us. We need to defend those freedoms for everyone, on all sides of the political debate or eventually well lose them.

About a month ago, when he learned the Unite the Right event was being planned, Yingling said, I, like most militia commanders, did not want to touch it with a 10-foot pole for fear of being wrongly perceived as an ally of white supremacists. But after talking it over with a fellow Light Foot commander, in Upstate New York, he decided he had a duty to defend the right of free speech on the streets of Charlottesville.

Through Facebook and various militia chat rooms, he said, he recruited militia members from various East Coast units and organized a rendezvous Friday night at a farm in Unionville, Va. He said he was angered and embarrassed that only 32people showed up. Many others, he said, were afraid of being publicly branded as racists.

We knew what we were walking into, he said on Facebook Live. We knew what the results were going to be. And yet we walked in anyway. We werent afraid. And we didnt give a good damn about our image or about what anybody thought about us. And I still dont.

Original post:

Militiamen came to Charlottesville as neutral First Amendment protectors, commander says - Washington Post

Beyond the First Amendment – Washington Times

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

On social media, the troll empire strikes back

Several Republican governors have joined President Trump in an exclusive but growing club: They are being sued by left-wing organizations for removing persistent critics from their Facebook or Twitter pages.

In many cases, were talking about trolls, the people who post inflammatory, irrelevant or offensive comments. The latest to face the trolls wrath is Maine Gov. Paul LePage, who the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued last Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the District of Maine on behalf of two clients who say they were unconstitutionally blocked from Mr. LePages Facebook page.

Mr. LePage responded immediately on his Facebook page: This page was started by volunteers in the governors first campaign to support his candidacy. After that time it became his official political page. This page has never been managed by taxpayer-funded state employees. Under the about section of this Facebook page it states that is Paul LePages official politician page not a government page.

Well, so what, the ACLU suit says, in effect. Youre a public figure and must open yourself to any and all criticism.

On Aug. 1, the ACLU sued Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on behalf of four disappointed commenters. The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, includes a request for an injunction to block any more removals and to force the reinstatement of several hundred blockheads, er, Mr. Hogans spokespeople call the suit frivolous and note that his site reserves the right to block any comment that is profane, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, defaming, threatening or amounts to spam or repetitiveness. In February, his office reported that they had blocked 450 people for abusive language or spamming.

The ACLU managed to find some clients whose posts they say were none of the above, but the complaints enforcement would effectively stop any blocking.

On July 11, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed a federal suit against President Trump and two aides (former press secretary Sean Spicer and social media director Dan Scavino) in the Southern District of New York for blocking users critical of him from his private Twitter account. The key word here is private. Mr. Trump had the account before becoming president, and the First Amendment does not apply to non-governmental entities. It doesnt matter how big the audience is.

Mr. Trump has in excess of 33 million followers on his @realDonaldTrump Twitter feed and has tweeted more than 35,000 times since first starting the account in 2009, according to USA Today.

One of the plaintiffs, Rebecca Buckwalter of Washington, D.C., is a fellow at the Center for American Progress, a George Soros-funded left-wing think tank. She complained that her response to a June 6 Trump tweet was removed.

Trump: Sorry folks, but if I would have relied on the Fake News of CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS washpost or nytimes, I would have had ZERO chance winning WH.

Buckwalter: To be fair you didnt win the WH: Russia won it for you.

Should Mr. Trump be forced to keep her conspiracy theory tweet on his non-governmental site?

On July 31, the ACLU of Kentucky sued Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky for removing trolls from his Facebook page. Two blocked users are demanding that they and 600 other blockees be reinstated.

Bevin spokesman Woody Maglinger responded that blocking these people in no way violates their right to free speech under the U.S. or Kentucky Constitutions, nor does it prohibit them from expressing their opinion in an open forum.

Not all cases involve Republicans. A federal judge ruled on July 25 that Loudoun County, Virginia county board Chairwoman Phyllis J. Randall, a Democrat, committed a cardinal sin under the First Amendment when she blocked a constituents criticism for half a day from her official Facebook page.

But in his ruling, U.S. District Judge James Cacheris also said public officials are allowed to moderate comments to defend against harassment and against those who take over an online forum in such a way that violates the free speech rights of others.

Given the prevalence of online trolls, this is no mere hypothetical risk, the judge said.

The issue of public officials social media management will eventually wind up at the Supreme Court, where perhaps a clear distinction will be made between public and private communications.

Until the courts definitively rule, troll-beset lawmakers might want to have different social media accounts for different purposes, like Maines Gov. LePage:

This FB page has always noted it is for those who support the governor. This page is not a tool for organized, nationally-connected political protests against the governor. Those organizations wishing to attack and protest Gov. Paul LePage can create their own pages.

Beyond the First Amendment

Robert Knight is a senior fellow for the American Civil Rights Union.

Here is the original post:

Beyond the First Amendment - Washington Times

First Amendment lawsuits pile up against governors who block … – WJLA

WASHINGTON (Sinclair Broadcast Group)

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is representing individuals in Kentucky, Maine and Maryland who argue that the governors in those states have violated the First Amendment by deleting comments and blocking users on the governors' Facebook and Twitter pages.

The plaintiffs in each case argue that they were shut out of a public political forum because they had been critical of the governors' policies or expressed views were at odds with their state's chief executive. By blocking comments and users, the plaintiffs say their governor has violated their right to free speech and their right to petition the government for redress of grievances.

One of the issues at stake is whether public figures can use their social media accounts to sanction other users based private preferences. More fundamentally the cases could determine whether political speech is protected in the social media age.

"In this new world of social media, government officials and constituents are using these platforms as a powerful tool to connect with each other," said Meagan Sway, Justice Fellow with the Maine ACLU chapter. "But when that happens, the First Amendment applies."

Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) has been accused of using his Facebook account in an official government capacity to conduct official government business. He has also taken advantage of the platform's features to block certain constituents. According to the ACLU, "that's unconstitutional censorship."

The arguments are similar in Kentucky and Maryland, where numerous constituents have come forward to challenge the 21st century version of being banished from the public commons. In Utah, the ACLU has put the state's federal congressional delegation on notice after similar complaints from constituents.

Already, experts anticipate the cases in Kentucky, Maine and Maryland will shape the environment for the high-profile case involving President Donald Trump blocking Twitter users.

The Knight First Amendment Institute filed suit against the president in June arguing it is unconstitutional for an elected public official using a "designated public forum," like Twitter, to block speech just because it is critical or disagreeable.

"It's a new area of law," Sway said in an interview with WGME News. "We think courts will agree with us ... that this is an open platform, that the government cannot kick people off just because [they] dont agree with them."

Roy Gutterman, director of the Tully Center for Free Speech at Syracuse University, said the pending social media cases beg for a "firm declaration" from the courts that blocking political speech on social media a violation of the First Amendment.

"If you're a government official, your social media is an extension of your office and you cant block people for innocuous reasons, or for political reasons" he emphasized. "If you're a government official, especially a governor, I don't think you can bifurcate your personal speech from your official speech."

In Maine, LePage has worked to do just that and distance his official position from his official social media accounts.

A few weeks ago, the governor's "about" page on Facebook was updated. It now states that the page is "official-but not managed by gov't officials," was a fan page but is now home to LePage supporters. However, the page was verified on behalf of the governor and LePage even opted into Facebook's "Town Hall" feature, which helps connect constituents and their government representatives.

Shortly after taking office in 2015, Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland set up Facebook and Twitter accounts and by January 2017, Hogan had reportedly blocked 450 people.

"He didnt like [the posts], but thats not enough," Legal Director for ACLU Maryland Deborah Jeon told WBFF earlier this month. "People have a First-Amendment right to their own opinions. And when the governor establishes a forum for speech between constituents and the government, then he has to listen to what they have to say, whether or not he likes it."

The governor never responded to the ACLU's letter asking him to reinstate the seven individuals banned.

Hogan reacted to the lawsuit saying it was "frivolous" and motivated by partisan politics.

"Its silly, its ridiculous," Hogan told reporters last week. "We have about a million people a week on our Facebook page. Four of them were blocked for violating our Facebook policy and now the Maryland Democratic party got them to file suit with the ACLU."

The governor has defended blocking constituents on the basis of his office's "social media policy," which ACLU claims violates the state's social media policy. Under Hogan's personal policy, comments and users can be blocked if they are deemed irrelevant to the governor's announcements or initiatives, and if the users engage in a "Coordinated Effort" to petition the office. The office claims the right to block users and comments "at any time without prior notice or without providing justification."

"I don't buy that argument," he noted, adding that such arguments get into "untested" legal areas. "This is public business. This is clearly a first amendment issue with political speech implications and the right to petition government."

In Kentucky, Gov. Matt Bevin has argued that the only comments or users being blocked are "abusive trolls" and others who are posting obscene or inappropriate content.

"Gov. Bevin is a strong advocate of constructive dialogue," his communications directed said responding to the ACLU suit. "Blocking individuals from engaging in ... inappropriate conduct on social media in no way violates their free speech right under the U.S. or Kentucky constitutions, nor does it prohibit them from expressing their opinion in an open forum."

According to the plaintiffs, there are "hundreds" of users who have been permanently blocked by Bevin, including "Kentuckians Against Matt Bevin," a public Facebook group with over 1,900 followers.

One of the plaintiffs in the case, Mary Hargis, noted that while she has been critical of the governor on certain issues she was "shocked" to discover he had blocked her. "I may not have voted for Governor Bevin, but I'm one of his constituents," she said. "He shouldn't be permanently dismissing my views and concerns with a click."

As these suits are litigated and President Trump squares off against his blocked Twitter followers, it is unclear how the courts will rule, though U.S. courts tend to rule firmly in favor of protecting political speech.

"If these cases keep getting litigated and appealed ... I can actually see the Supreme Court weighing in on this a year or two down the road," Gutterman suggested. "I think it would be a soft ball."

Just recently the Court handed down its first major decision on a social media case in June, ruling unanimously that the First Amendment protected an individual from being refused access to social media. The question before the court was whether a convicted sex offender could be blocked from Facebook , Twitter and other popular social media sites.

The Supreme Court ruling is likely to provide a strong argument for the plaintiffs as the Facebook blocking cases move forward.

"Political speech ... has always been the highest level of First Amendment activity," Gutterman stated. "There's clear First Amendment action here. You've got government activity, government action and citizen expression."

Follow this link:

First Amendment lawsuits pile up against governors who block ... - WJLA

DC’s transit agency rejected ads touting the First Amendment (really) – Ars Technica

Enlarge / Issue ads like this one from 2012 used to be commonplace in the DC metro.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday sued the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, the government agency thatoperates the capital region's subway system and its primary bus network. The ACLU argues that the transit agency's policies for accepting advertisements on its subway stations, trains, and buses violate the First Amendment by discriminating against controversial and non-mainstream viewpoints.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are ideologically diverse: the ACLU itself, an abortion provider, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and alt-right-Internet-troll-to-the-point-Twitter-actually-banned-him Milo Yiannopoulos.

The inclusion of an alt-right figure like Yiannopoulos helps to demonstrate the ACLU's point that WMATA's policy squelches free-speech rights across the political spectrum. But Yiannopoulos' inclusionhas also raised the hackles of some on the political left, who see associating with the controversial authoras beyond the pale. Chase Strangio, an ACLU attorney who has represented whistleblower Chelsea Manning, posted a statement calling Yiannopoulos "vile" and attacking the ACLU for defending his First Amendment rights.

But the ACLU has a long history of defending the First Amendment rights of groups far outside the mainstream, including Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.As such, the organizationhasn't backed down from its defense of Yiannopoulos. "Protecting the First Amendment rights of all of these speakers is crucial to the ability of civil rights movements to make the change we need to make," the group argued in a Wednesday blog post.

The controversy began in 2015, when anti-Muslim activist Pam Geller tried to place ads depicting a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad on DC subways. That put WMATA in a difficult position, because some Muslim extremists have threatened violence against anyone who publishes Muhammad cartoons.

In an apparent effort to duck the controversy, WMATA announced that it was suspending "issue oriented" advertising across the board.

Of course, the big problem here is that it's not so clear what counts as an "issue oriented" ad. For example, military contractors have long taken out lavish ads touting their latest fighter planes. Arethey merely advertising commercial products or are they trying to influencepolicy decisions about what hardware to buy?

The ACLU believes that the "no issue ads" standard is unworkable and unconstitutional, and it assembled a group of plaintiffs to illustrate the point:

A couple of things are obvious from this list. First, while Yiannopoulos'participation in the lawsuit has gotten the most attention, the ACLU isn't only defending the rights of right-wing provocateurs like Yiannopoulos and Geller. Groups defending left-wing causes like animal rights and abortion rights have also been affected.

Second, while WMATA might have thought "issue ads" were a clear and value-neutral category, in practice it has turned out to be unworkably vague. Rules that allow companies to hawk fighter jets and hamburgers, but ban anti-war and animal rights groups from advertising, is the opposite of viewpoint-neutral. The WMATA's guidelines give the agency unfettered discretion to decide which positions are too controversial to appear in ads, and that seems hard to square with the First Amendment.

The ACLU is generally viewed as a liberal group, but itsabsolutist stance on the First Amendment doesn't fit well with everyone on the political left. A growing contingent of left-wing thinkers have come to see "hate speech" as a serious problem and free speech absolutism as an obstacle to addressing it.

Controversy has become more common over the last eightmonths as the ACLU has attracted a wave of new supporters alarmed by the Trump presidency. Many people donated to the ACLU in the expectation that the group would oppose Trump administration policiesand the group has done plenty of that. But not all of the ACLU's new donors understood the depths of the ACLU's commitment to free speech rights.

"Especially for many of our new members, they may be surprised by the ACLU's robust First Amendment positions," ACLU staff attorney Lee Rowland said in February. "But it's certainly not new."

Over time, defending the free speech rights of right-wing extremists has become something of a trademark for the group. For example, in 2012 the ACLU sued the state of Georgia defending the right of the KKK to "adopt a highway" in the state. In 2010, the group defended the free speech rights of Fred Phelps, the infamous pastor who pickets the funerals of LGBTsoldiers with anti-gay messages.

The ACLU has been doing this kind of thing for almost 100 years now, and it's not likely to stop any time soon. Individualswho don't want their donations supporting the rights of people who engage in "hate speech" mightbe wise toresearch organizations ahead of time.

Go here to read the rest:

DC's transit agency rejected ads touting the First Amendment (really) - Ars Technica

ACLU Sues DC Metro After It Rejects Ad With Text Of 1st Amendment – NPR

The ACLU and three other plaintiffs have filed a lawsuit against the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, alleging its advertising guidelines are unconstitutional. Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP hide caption

The ACLU and three other plaintiffs have filed a lawsuit against the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, alleging its advertising guidelines are unconstitutional.

The four plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority are from across the political spectrum: the American Civil Liberties Union, a health care group called Carafem that provides abortions, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.

What they have in common is that the transit agency known as WMATA has rejected their advertisements, saying the ads ran counter to its guidelines. They have now banded together, saying the guidelines introduced in 2015 violate their First Amendment right to free speech.

In fact, the ACLU's rejected advertisement displays the text of the First Amendment in English, Arabic and Spanish, with the ACLU's logo and the slogan "We the People."

The ACLU says WMATA has violated its right to free speech by rejecting an advertisement showing the text of the First Amendment in three languages. ACLU hide caption

WMATA did not explain in writing why it rejected the ACLU's ad, according to the complaint. Outfront Media, which manages the system's advertising, initially told the ACLU that it was rejected because it "does not take any issue oriented advertising." Outfront later stated that "you'll need to dramatically change your creative in order to resubmit," the complaint says.

"In its zeal to avoid hosting offensive and hateful speech, the government has eliminated speech that makes us think, including the text of the First Amendment itself," said ACLU senior staff attorney Lee Rowland. "The ACLU could not more strongly disagree with the values that Milo Yiannopoulos espouses, but we can't allow the government to pick and choose which viewpoints are acceptable."

The D.C. metro system changed its advertising policy in 2015. According to the ACLU, it happened "following controversy surrounding a set of anti-Muslim advertisement." The ACLU, Carafem and PETA had previously advertised with Metro.

The guidelines on commercial advertising, which are published on WMATA's website, say medical messages are allowed "only from government health organizations, or if the substance of the message is currently accepted by the American Medical Associated and/or the Food and Drug Administration."

It also blocks ads "intended to influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions," those "that support or oppose an industry position or industry goal without any commercial benefit to the advertiser" and those "that are intended to influence public policy."

In a statement about the lawsuit to NPR, WMATA pointed to its change in policy and said it "intends to vigorously defend its commercial advertising guidelines, which are reasonable and viewpoint neutral."

The lawsuit says WMATA rejected advertisements from PETA (counterclockwise from top), Carafem, Milo Yiannoloulos and the ACLU. ACLU hide caption

The Carafem advertisement says it sells the FDA-approved mifeprex/misoprostol regimen used to end pregnancy at up to 10 weeks. The "10-week-after pill," it reads, "for abortion up to 10 weeks."

WMATA rejected multiple PETA ads, including one saying "I'm ME, not MEAT. See the Individual. Go Vegan," next to a photo of a pig. The plaintiffs argue that "WMATA has accepted and displayed many advertisements that are intended to influence riders to buy, do and believe things that are at odds with PETA's viewpoint on humans' proper relationship with animals."

WMATA initially accepted advertisements for a book by conservative commentator Milo Yiannopoulos but took them down after receiving complaints, saying they violate the guidelines, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit claims that WMATA's rejection of the ads from the ACLU, Carafem and Milo Yiannopoulos was not because the ads themselves violated the guidelines. Instead, it says the ads were rejected for reasons outside of their content "such as the identity of the advertiser, the advertiser's known or presumed viewpoints, or the advertiser's line of business."

Go here to see the original:

ACLU Sues DC Metro After It Rejects Ad With Text Of 1st Amendment - NPR

Jeffrey Lord: ‘CNN caved on the First Amendment’ when it fired him – Fox News

Conservative commentator Jeffrey Lord spoke out about being fired from CNN, saying "CNN caved" when they let him go on Thursday.

"I want to make something very clear. I have nothing but respect, affection and love for CNN. I think the world of CNN," Lord told The Associated Press. "I think they're terrific people and serious people."

Lord was given the boot after he tweeted a Nazi salute at a critic.

A network spokesperson called the Nazi salute "indefensible" in a statement, confirming that Lord was no longer with the network hours after Lord tweeted the Nazi slogan "Sieg Heil!" at the head of a liberal advocacy group, Media Matters for America.

Lord called himself a "First Amendment fundamentalist" and said CNN's decision was disappointing.

"From my perspective CNN caved on the First Amendment of all things. I disagree. I respectfully disagree."

He said his "Sieg Heil!" tweet was not an endorsement of Nazism or fascist tactics, but was meant to mock Media Matters and its use of boycotts.

He declined to get into specifics of how he was fired, saying he wanted to keep that a private conversation.

Lord may think CNN made the wrong move in letting him go, but many people on Twitter felt the network was right in saying "good riddance."

Lord is a former Reagan administration staffer who is currently a columnist for the conservative magazine The American Spectator. He was brought on to CNN in 2015 as one of the first fully pro-Trump commentators after the then-candidate first entered the GOP primary race. The network has since added pro-Trump contributors following the election.

Caving to bullies, caving to people who use fascist and Nazi-style tactics to try and remove people from the air is unacceptable, Lord toldEntertainment Weeklyafter his dismissal.

I mocked this guy. Mocking Nazis is OK. Thats a good thing, not a bad thing. A writer has only a handful of tools in his writers box, and mockery is one of them. To suggest that this is anything other than that, to my way of thinking, is caving in. And Im not going to cave.

The Anne Frank Centertweeteda rebuke of Lords use of the phrase.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Read the original post:

Jeffrey Lord: 'CNN caved on the First Amendment' when it fired him - Fox News

Symposium: A path through the thicket the First Amendment right of association – SCOTUSblog (blog)

Daniel P. Tokaji is the Charles W. Ebersold and Florence Whitcomb Ebersold Professor of Constitutional Law at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.

A constitutional standard for partisan gerrymandering is the holy grail of election law. For decades, scholars and jurists have struggled to find a manageable standard for claims of excessive partisanship in drawing district lines. Most of these efforts have focused on the equal protection clause. But as Justice Anthony Kennedy suggested in Vieth v. Jubelirer, the First Amendment provides a firmer doctrinal basis for challenging partisan gerrymandering. An established line of precedent understands voting as a form of expressive association protected by the First Amendment. These cases offer a nuanced standard that would avoid the undesirable result of rendering any consideration of partisan consequences unconstitutional.

The right of expressive association

There is an obvious difficulty in relying on the First Amendment in partisan-gerrymandering cases: The Supreme Court has never considered voting a form of protected speech. It has, however, long recognized that voting is a form of protected association, at least in certain contexts. Before getting to those cases, its helpful to examine the roots of the right of expressive association.

The original associational-rights cases involved groups like the NAACP and the Communist Party that were extremely unpopular one might even say persecuted in many parts of the country. In NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, for example, the Supreme Court invalidated a requirement that the NAACP disclose its membership list. Justice John Marshall Harlan IIs opinion for the court remarked that the freedom to engage in association for the advancement of beliefs and ideas is an inseparable aspect of the liberty assured by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which embraces freedom of speech. In other words, expressive association is a necessary corollary of free speech.

The right of expressive association is closely linked to the First Amendments prohibition on content and viewpoint discrimination. As Justice Antonin Scalia put it in one of his last dissenting opinions, the First Amendment is a kind of Equal Protection Clause for ideas. It prohibits the government from abusing its authority to suppress disfavored points of view. Most importantly, it restricts the dominant political groups authority to diminish the voices of those who might challenge their grip on power.

Thus, in the first generation of association cases, disfavored groups like the NAACP and the Communist Party relied on the First Amendment to prohibit the government from taking adverse action against them and their members. These cases rest partly on the individual liberty interest identified in NAACP v. Alabama. But theyre also grounded in a larger vision of how democracy should function.

A leading example is the line of patronage cases that began with Elrod v. Burns, in which the Supreme Court struck down the practice of firing public employees who werent members of the Democratic Party, which controlled Cook County, Illinois. After describing the harm to individual employees, the plurality turned to systemic concerns arising from this practice: It is not only belief and association which are restricted where political patronage is the practice, wrote Justice William Brennan. The free functioning of the electoral process also suffers. Discrimination against non-party members tended to starve political opposition, thus tip[ping] the electoral process in favor of the incumbent party. In other words, party-based discrimination distorts the political process, entrenching the dominant party in power while subordinating its chief rival.

Voting as association

Partisan gerrymandering effects a comparable systemic harm, albeit through a different mechanism. By manipulating district lines, the dominant party can entrench itself in power even when the political winds shift. The increasingly sophisticated technology that line-drawers have at their disposal exacerbates the problem. It allows the dominant party to capture a large percentage of seats while ensuring that its majority will hold in both bad times and good.

Thats true not only in Wisconsin, from which Gill v. Whitford emerges, but in other states that would be competitive but for gerrymandering. Take my own state of Ohio. Although Ohio is a consummate purple state in presidential elections, Republican mapmakers drew lines there in 2011 that give their party a supermajority of districts three-quarters of the states congressional delegation and roughly two-thirds of its state legislative districts. These districts were drawn with the goal of creating a firewall that would ensure Republican control even in a strong Democratic year. And theyve been a spectacular success, ensuring Republican control of the Ohio state legislature throughout the current decade. Because they diminish the power of the non-dominant party in a manner thats both substantial and enduring, excessive partisan gerrymanders violate the right of expressive association.

Still, one might argue that compelled disclosure and patronage are very different from redistricting. In the original association cases, particular individuals were harmed discouraged from or punished for affiliating with disfavored groups. Moreover, those cases dont directly involve voting. Its a leap, one might argue, to hold that the right of association is implicated when voters, candidates and parties associate through the electoral process.

As it turns out, the Supreme Court made this leap long ago. For almost a half-century, the court has recognized that voting is a form of association protected by the First Amendment. The first voting-as-association case was Williams v. Rhodes, which challenged Ohios ballot-access requirements for new political parties like George Wallaces American Independent Party. Justice Hugo Blacks opinion for the court relied on both the First Amendment right of association and equal protection to strike down this requirement. Ohios onerous rules for adding new parties to the ballot gave the two old, established parties a decided advantage plac[ing] substantially unequal burdens on both the right to vote and the right to associate. In Williams, the Supreme Court thus stressed the risk of dominant parties using voting rules to entrench themselves in power, thereby harming non-dominant parties and their supporters.

Several years later, in Anderson v. Celebrezze, the Supreme Court again relied on the right of association to invalidate another ballot-access rule in Ohio, this time one that would have kept John Anderson from running as an independent presidential candidate in 1980. Justice John Paul Stevens opinion for the majority recognized that theres no litmus-paper test to separate valid and invalid restrictions on voting and association. Rather, the court should weigh the character and magnitude of the burden on voting and association against the states asserted interests. Although reasonable, nondiscriminatory restrictions can usually be justified by important regulatory interests, a stronger justification is required for more serious burdens, including ones that discriminate against outsider candidates and their supporters.

A subsequent case involving write-in voting in Hawaii, Burdick v. Takushi, reaffirmed Andersons flexible standard while clarifying that strict scrutiny applies only if the burden on voting and association is severe. Other cases like Tashjian v. Republican Party of Connecticut and Washington State Grange v. Washington Republican Party apply this standard to electoral rules that burden the associational rights of major parties and their adherents. The Anderson-Burdick balancing test is now used in constitutional challenges to a wide variety of election laws, including ballot access, blanket primaries and even voter ID. Whats not commonly recognized is that this legal standard originated in voting-as-association cases.

Applying the voting-as-association standard

Its true that the Supreme Court hasnt yet applied the Anderson-Burdick standard to partisan gerrymandering. In fact, the court has been maddeningly unclear about what legal standard should apply in these cases. But for several reasons, the standard emerging from the voting-as-association cases provides the best fit for evaluating partisan gerrymandering claims.

The first is that the First Amendment right of association best captures the type of injury alleged, specifically the lasting harm to non-dominant political parties and their adherents arising from the dominant partys self-entrenchment. Expressive-association cases have long focused on such harms, not only to the non-dominant party but to our political system. By contrast, equal protection law doesnt accord any special status to political party affiliation. Unlike race or sex, party affiliation isnt a protected class under the equal protection clause.

The second advantage of relying on the established voting-as-association standard is that it focuses on effects rather than intent. Recall that the Anderson-Burdick standard requires courts to weigh the character and magnitude of the burden on voting and association against the states asserted interests. An intent to harm the non-dominant party may be relevant, but it isnt required. Thats a good thing, because intent is notoriously hard to prove or disprove, especially in redistricting cases. The Shaw v. Reno line of racial-gerrymandering cases exemplifies this difficulty. Under those cases, the pivotal question is whether race was the predominant factor in drawing a particular district. Twenty-four years after Shaw, the Supreme Court is still struggling to explain what this means. An effect-based test is preferable. Though Anderson-Burdick is hardly a bright-line rule, its balancing standard has proven manageable in other voting contexts and can be adapted to partisan-gerrymandering claims.

This brings me to a third advantage of relying on the voting-as-association cases to assess partisan gerrymandering claims: It provides a nuanced legal standard. The Anderson-Burdick balancing approach would allow lower courts to sort through the evidence, striking down the most egregious and unjustified partisan gerrymanders without categorically prohibiting any consideration of party affiliation when drawing districts. Of course, partisan-gerrymandering claims demand hard judgments. There are no bright lines here. But the legal standard that the Supreme Court has long used in voting-as-association cases provides the best fit for partisan-gerrymandering cases like Gill v. Whitford.

Posted in Gill v. Whitford, Summer symposium on Gill v. Whitford, Featured, Merits Cases

Recommended Citation: Daniel Tokaji, Symposium: A path through the thicket the First Amendment right of association, SCOTUSblog (Aug. 10, 2017, 2:12 PM), http://www.scotusblog.com/2017/08/symposium-path-thicket-first-amendment-right-association/

Read more from the original source:

Symposium: A path through the thicket the First Amendment right of association - SCOTUSblog (blog)

Jeffrey Lord Speaks Out on Firing: ‘CNN Caved on the First Amendment’ – Mediaite

Hours after he tweeted out Sieg Heil! during a Twitter fight with Media Matters president Angelo Carusone, political commentator Jeffrey Lord found himself fired by CNN. Commenting on the network severing ties with the pro-Trump pundit, a CNN spokesperson stated that Nazi salutes are indefensible.

Following CNNs announcement of his termination, Lord spoke with the Associated Press. While he expressed his affection and love for CNN, noting that theyre terrific people and serious people, he said he felt the outlet was doing a disservice to free speech.

He called himself a First Amendment fundamentalist and called CNNs decision disappointing. From my perspective CNN caved on the First Amendment of all things. I disagree. I respectfully disagree.

Those remarks somewhat echo what he said to CNN senior media correspondent Brian Stelter shortly after he was canned, as he claimed in that conversation that CNN was caving to bullies.

Lord further told the AP that he had received a tidal wave of support from conservatives following his firing. One of those conservatives is White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who called the American Spectator columnist last night to encourage him to keep fighting.

[image via screengrab]

Follow Justin Baragona on Twitter: @justinbaragona

Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com

Read more:

Jeffrey Lord Speaks Out on Firing: 'CNN Caved on the First Amendment' - Mediaite

After landmark First Amendment ruling, more Loudouners share their stories of social media censoring – Loudoun Times-Mirror

What do a local government contractor, a conservative activist in Sterling, gay rights leaders in Lovettsville, a Purcellville politician and members of a left-leaning political action group have in common?

All have been blocked from an elected officials social media account for challenging their policy positions.

Following a federal court ruling last month that said Chairwoman Phyllis (D-At Large) violated Lansdowne resident Brian Davisons First Amendment rights by blocking him temporarily from her Facebook page, residents from Loudoun and around the country have come forward with more stories about how they were censored from the social media pages of their elected officials.

For a politician to just say outright you're no longer allowed to post in this public forum that I've created, I think that does definitely cross a boundary, said conservative activist Rick Canton of Sterling.

Canton says he was blocked from Del. Kathleen Murphys (D) Twitter account in 2013 after he challenged her position on gun rights. He also says he was initially blocked from State Sen. Jennifer Wextons (D) Twitter account but later reinstated after challenging her on the same issue.

Jonathan and David Weintraub LGBTQ activists from Lovettsville -- claim they were preemptively blocked from Del. Dave LaRocks (R) Facebook page before they could even interact with him on the page. They believe LaRock banned them because of their liberal reputation on equal rights issues.

When it comes to being criticized and disagreed with and presented with information that might be inconvenient for [politicians], they should not be able to block that from happening in a public forum, David Weintraub said. And when they put up an official Facebook page that says, I am the delegate of the 33rd District, that's a public forum, its not a personal page.

Purcellville Town Councilwoman Karen Jimmerson says she has been blocked from State Sen. Dick Blacks (R) Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as LaRocks Twitter page, though the delegate later reinstated her.

But Jimmerson finds herself in a unique and some would say hypocritical spot. She admitted she has blocked people from her social media page, which she maintains is a campaign page. Jimmerson said the users were banned because their comments were extremely vile postings that were personal in nature as opposed to focused on the subject being debated.

In addition to Jimmerson, Chairwoman Randall, Sens. Wexton and Black and Del. Murphy, Congresswoman Barbara Comstock (R) and state Del. Tag Greason (R) have also blocked citizens from social media pages.

A tide-turning decision, but confusion ensues

U.S. District Judge James C. Cacheris decision in Davisons case against Chairwoman Randall and the Board of Supervisors has already shown regional and national implications.

Lawyers from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which recently filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump and his social media team, say the president suppressed dissent by blocking critics from his Twitter account. They said they plan to point to the Davison decision to help their case.

Some elected officials, like State Sen. Wexton and Del. LaRock, also appear to be taking steps to unblock constituents from their social media pages.

But mixed rulings on the issue from different judges from the same federal court has caused some confusion, as has debate over what are personal, campaign and official social media accounts.

A separate ruling on a free speech suit Davison brought against members of the Loudoun County School Board from a different judge in the same federal court said members of the School Board did not violate Davisons right to free speech for blocking him from their pages.

In a 20-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga noted the issue was not clear as a legal matter whether the Facebook pages in question were limited or public forums.

Senator Wextons office said after the court clarified that public officials cannot block constituents, she unblocked accounts regardless of how they previously behaved.

Wexton's office said its social media policy has been to not block constituents as long as their messages did not become threatening or unnecessarily aggressive.

Delegate LaRock said that in the last few days he and his office have published a disclaimer on his Facebook page reserving their right to delete user comments that include profanity, name-calling, threats, personal attacks, or other inappropriate comments or material.

LaRock said members of the GOP caucus have also met to discuss the Davison decision, but they do not think the ruling will affect their social media accounts that are considered personal and treated as personal.

The western Loudoun delegate maintains his social media accounts are campaign accounts and not official government business. Altogether, he thinks he has banned roughly a half dozen people over the last six months, though he says he is open to unblocking them.

The only time I would delete a comment is if it is something that's out of context, or is just an unfounded accusation that is not really in any way connected with an inquiry for information, which I generally consider to be intentionally disruptive, LaRock said.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia this week sent a letter to all members of the states congressional delegation asking them to stop blocking people from their official and unofficial social media accounts used for official purposes simply because they oppose what they are saying.

The ACLU said many of the complaints they received from constituents around the commonwealth did not distinguish the elected officials accounts between official and political.

But with the rulings coming out of federal court in Alexandria, Alan Gernhardt, head of the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council, said they plan to talk about the recent decisions at a meeting later this month.

Were trying to stay aware of it, and were trying to watch things. I think we will try to address it sometime in the future, but we dont really have specific guidelines on social media right now, Gernhardt said.

Related coverage:

-"Loudoun resident files civil rights suits against county officials over social media censorship" -"Federal judge sides with Loudoun commonwealths attorney in First Amendment suit" -"Loudoun County chairwoman, Lansdowne resident meet in federal court" -"U.S. District judge rules Randall violated Lansdowne residents First Amendment right" -"Federal court dismisses Lansdowne residents free speech suit against Loudoun County School Board" -"Loudoun County residents First Amendment case may benefit free-speech groups suit against Trump"

Contact the writer at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or on Twitter at @SydneyKashiwagi.

Comments express only the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of this website or any associated person or entity. Any user who believes a message is objectionable can contact us at [emailprotected].

Read the original here:

After landmark First Amendment ruling, more Loudouners share their stories of social media censoring - Loudoun Times-Mirror

The First Amendment (Literally) Banned in DC – ACLU (blog)

Can the government ban the text of the First Amendment itself on municipal transit ads because free speech is too political for public display?

If this sounds like some ridiculous brain teaser, it should. But unfortunately its not. Its a core claim in a lawsuit we filed today challenging the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authoritys (WMATA) restrictions on controversial advertising.

The ACLU, ACLU of D.C., and ACLU of Virginia are teaming up to represent a diverse group of plaintiffs whose ads were all branded as too hot for transit: the ACLU itself; Carafem, a health care network that specializes in getting women access to birth control and medication abortion; People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA); and Milo Worldwide LLC the corporate entity of provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.

To put it mildly, these plaintiffs have nothing in common politically. But together, they powerfully illustrate the indivisibility of the First Amendment. Our free speech rights rise and fall together whether left, right, pro-choice, anti-choice, vegan, carnivore, or none of the above.

Lets start with the ACLU. Earlier this year, following President Trumps repeated commentary denigrating journalists and Muslims, the ACLU decided to remind everyone about that very first promise in the Bill of Rights: that Congress shall make no law interfering with our freedoms of speech and religion. As part of a broad advertising campaign, the ACLU erected ads in numerous places, featuring the text of the First Amendment. Not only in English, but in Spanish and Arabic, too to remind people that the Constitution is for everyone.

The ACLU inquired about placing our ads with WMATA, envisioning an inspirational reminder of our founding texts, with a trilingual twist, in the transit system of the nations capital. But it was not to be: Our ad was rejected because WMATAs advertising policies forbid, among many other things, advertisements intended to influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions or intended to influence public policy.

You dont have to be a First Amendment scholar to know that something about that stinks.

Our free speech rights rise and falltogether whether left, right, pro-choice, anti-choice, vegan, carnivore, or none of the above.

Lets start with the philosophical argument. WMATAs view is apparently that the litany of commercial advertisements it routinely displays involve no issues on which there are varying opinions. Beyond the obvious Coke-or-Pepsi jokes, theres a dark assumption in that rule: that we all buy commercial products thoughtlessly. Buy beer! (Dont think about alcoholism.) Buy a mink coat! (Dont think about the mink.) That is, WMATA sees varying opinions only when they relate to something it recognizes as controversial. And as the Supreme Court recently reminded us, the government violates the First Amendment when it allows only happy-talk.

And now to the practical. This is a policy so broad and vague that it permits WMATA to justify the ad hoc exclusion of just about anyone. And the broad set of plaintiffs in this case confirms that.

Despite the fact that Carafem provides only FDA-approved medications, its ad was deemed too controversial because it touched the third rail of abortion. Carafems proposed ad read simply: 10-week-after pill. For abortion up to 10 weeks. $450. Fast. Private. As we at the ACLU know all too well, as states continue to erect draconian barriers to the right to choose, information about and access to abortion care is more critical than ever. Yet Carafems ad was apparently rejected simply because some people think otherwise.

One of PETAs intended advertisements depicted a pig with accompanying text reading, Im ME, Not MEAT. See the Individual. Go Vegan. Despite the fact that WMATA routinely displays advertisements that encourage riders to eat animal-based foods, wear clothing made from animals, and attend circus performances, PETAs side of this public debate was the only one silenced by the government.

WMATAs advertising agency suggested that with some changes, ACLU and PETA might be able to get their advertisements accepted. Perhaps PETA could remove the Go Vegan slogan from its advertisement? But for the ACLU, Youll have to dramatically change your creative. In other words, as long as we dont try to make anyone think, we might get the right to speak.

That brings us to our final client: Milo Worldwide LLC. Its founder, Milo Yiannopoulos, trades on outrage: He brands feminism a cancer, he believes that transgender individuals have psychological problems, and he has compared Black Lives Matter activists to the KKK. The ACLU condemns many of the values he espouses (and he, of course, condemns many of the values the ACLU espouses).

Milo Worldwide submitted ads that displayed only Mr. Yiannopouloss face, an invitation to pre-order his new book, Dangerous, and one of four short quotations from different publications: The most hated man on the Internet from The Nation; The ultimate troll from Fusion; The Kanye West of Journalism from Red Alert Politics; and Internet Supervillain from Out Magazine. Unlike Mr. Yiannopoulos stock-in-trade, the ads themselves were innocuous, and self-evidently not an attempt to influence any opinion other than which book to buy.

WMATA appeared to be okay with that. It accepted the ads and displayed them in Metro stations and subway cars until riders began to complain about Mr. Yiannopoulos being allowed to advertise his book. Just 10 days after the ads went up, WMATA directed its agents to take them all down and issue a refund suddenly claiming that the ads violated the same policies it relied on to reject the ads from the ACLU, Carafem, and PETA.

The ideas espoused by each of these four plaintiffs are anathema to someone as is pretty much every human idea. By rejecting these ads and accepting ads from gambling casinos, military contractors, and internet sex apps, WMATA showed just how subjective its ban is. Even more frightening, however, WMATAs policy is an attempt to silence anyone who triestomakeyou think. Any one of these advertisements, had it passed WMATAs censor, would have been the subject of someones outraged call to WMATA.

So, to anyone whod be outraged to see Mr. Yiannopoulos advertisement please recognize that if he comes down, so do we all. The First Amendment doesnt, and shouldnt, tolerate that kind of impoverishment of our public conversation. Not even in the subway.

At the end of the day, its a real shame that WMATA didnt accept the ACLUs advertisement the agency could really have used that refresher on the First Amendment.

Read this article:

The First Amendment (Literally) Banned in DC - ACLU (blog)

The Fired Google Engineer, the First Amendment, and the Alt-Right – Xconomy

Xconomy San Francisco

Google software engineer James Damore confirmed to Bloomberg on Monday that Google fired him for circulating a lengthy memo on his views that women are biologically less suited to tech work than men.

His manifesto was spread through Googles internal communication channels over the weekend, and obtained by Gizmodo and other tech publications. Damore expressed his opinion that women are underrepresented in tech companies such as Google, not because of discrimination, but because, on average, women are naturally more inclined to concentrate on feelings rather than on ideas. Damore also professed his belief that women are more neurotic or prone to anxiety than men, as well as less competitive and more inclined to be collaborative.

Google acted quickly, firing Damore on grounds that his memo violated the companys code of conduct by propagating harmful gender stereotypes, according to the New York Times. Damore had criticized Google for its initiatives to promote diversity.

Damores ideas were roundly denounced by both women and men in the tech industry, including former Googler Yonatan Zunger, who is now at machine learning startup Humu. Zunger, an experienced engineer, said in a Medium post Saturday that traits Damore defines as female, such as empathy and the ability to collaborate, are the core traits which make someone successful at engineering.

But in the memo, Damore claims his views are shared by many fellow Googlers who have told him privately that theyre grateful to him for raising opinions they agree with but would never have the courage to say or defend because of our shaming culture and the possibility of being fired.

Its Damores claim that Google stifles dissent, in the memo he called Googles Ideological Echo Chamber, that may keep his ideas in the forefront of public debate. Signs are that he may sue Google, claiming a violation of his First Amendment rights, or of his rights under federal labor law.

If Damore challenges his firing on grounds that Google suppressed his free speech rights, hes unlikely to win, legal scholars say. But Damore may already have achieved part of his aims, in spades. His opinionsthough offensive to manyare now part of a public discussion in arenas much broader than Google internal memos.

Damores case has dragged Google into the ongoing political and cultural battle between right and left in the U.S.between conservative groups that resist diversity efforts, and employers such as universities that try to counter discrimination. This could turn out to be a bigger headache for Google (and potentially other companies) than an employment rights suit it may be likely to win.

David French, writing for the conservative magazine National Review, blasted Google for Damores firing. Of course Google did this, French wrote. Of course an increasingly radical progressive enclave cant handle thoughtful critiques of its ideological monoculture.

Google is a private company and has wide legal latitude to discipline its employees for their speech, but make no mistakethis is a direct assault on the American culture of free speech, French added.

Another writer forNational Review, Jim Geraghty, eagerly anticipates legal action by Damore. When does one employee holding an opinion contrary to another employees become harassment? My guess is that a lawsuit at Google is going to explore that question under the harsh glare of public scrutiny, Geraghty wrote.

Other conservative outlets, includingThe American Conservative and Breitbart,also jumped into the fray. Breitbart published a flurry of at least nine stories supporting Damores views.

On the other end of the political spectrum, The Guardians Owen Jones wrote under the headline, Googles sexist memo has provided the alt-right with a new martyr.

Jones wrote, Youre going to hear a lot about [Damore] in the coming weeks: hell probably be a star guest on alt-right shows and the rightwing lecture circuit, splashed on the front covers of conservative magazines, no doubt before a lucrative book deal about his martyrdom and what it says about the Liberal Big Brother Anti-White Man Thought Police.

The portrayals of Google as a standard-bearer for anti-discrimination policies, or a radical progressive enclave, can be dizzying, because Google has actually been trying to counter the impressionbased on its own workplace statisticsthat its hiring and promotion policies significantly disadvantage women and minority members.

If Damore files a lawsuit against Google for suppressing his views against equal opportunity measures, it might be heard even while the U.S. Department of Labor continues its investigation of a significant gender wage gap at Google.

Prior to his firing, Damore had already sought recourse by filing a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board, arguing that Google was trying to silence him, according to the New York Times.

Stanford University law professor Richard Thompson Ford, who specializes in anti-discrimination law and workplace rights, says Damore has a slight, though not non-existent, chance at winning a lawsuit against Google over his firing.

The First Amendment claim is not strong, Ford says.

Many people think the amendment gives them the right to free speech on the job, but thats a misreading Next Page

Bernadette Tansey is Xconomy's San Francisco Editor. You can reach her at btansey@xconomy.com.

Continued here:

The Fired Google Engineer, the First Amendment, and the Alt-Right - Xconomy

Politicians, Social Media and the First Amendment – KDWN

Photo by Bethany Clarke/Getty Images

An emerging debate about whether elected officials violate peoples free speech rights by blocking them on social media is spreading across the U.S. as groups sue or warn politicians to stop the practice.

The American Civil Liberties Union this week sued Maine Gov. Paul LePage and sent warning letters to Utahs congressional delegation. It followed recent lawsuits against the governors of Maryland and Kentucky and President Donald Trump.

Trumps frequent and often unorthodox use of Twitter and allegations he blocks people with dissenting views has raised questions about what elected officials can and cannot do on their official social media pages.

Politicians at all levels increasingly embrace social media to discuss government business, sometimes at the expense of traditional town halls or in-person meetings.

People turn to social media because they see their elected officials as being available there and theyre hungry for opportunities to express their opinions and share feedback, said Anna Thomas, spokeswoman for the ACLU of Utah. That includes people who disagree with public officials.

Most of the officials targeted so far all Republicans say they are not violating free speech but policing social media pages to get rid of people who post hateful, violent, obscene or abusive messages.

A spokeswoman for Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan called the Aug. 1 lawsuit against him frivolous and said his office has a clear policy and will remove all hateful and violent content and coordinated spam attacks.

The ACLU accused Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin of blocking more than 600 people on Facebook and Twitter. His office said he blocks people who post obscene and abusive language or images, or repeated off-topic comments and spam.

Spokesmen for Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch and Rep. Mia Love, who were singled out by the ACLU, said people are rarely blocked and only after they have violated rules posted on their Facebook pages to prevent profanity, vulgarity, personal insults or obscene comments.

We are under no obligation to allow Senator Hatchs Facebook page to be used as a platform for offensive content or misinformation, spokesman Matt Whitlock said.

Katie Fallow, senior staff attorney at Columbia Universitys Knight First Amendment Institute, which sued Trump last month, said theres no coordinated national effort to target Republicans. The goal is to establish that all elected officials no matter the party must stop blocking people on social media.

If its mainly used to speak to and hear from constituents, thats a public forum and you cant pick and choose who you hear from, Fallow said.

Rob Anderson, chairman of Utahs Republican Party, scoffed at the notion that politicians are violating free-speech rights by weeding out people who post abusive content.

You own your Facebook page and if you want to block somebody or hide somebody, thats up to you, Anderson said. Why else is there a tab that says hide or block?

Court decisions about how elected officials can and cannot use their accounts are still lacking in this new legal battleground, but rules for public forums side with free-speech advocates, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California-Berkeley Law School.

For instance, lower court rulings say the government cant deny credentials to journalists because their reporting is critical, he said.

These are government officials communicating about government business. They cant pick or choose based on who they like or who likes them, Chemerinsky said.

But public officials may be able to legally defend the way they police their social media pages if they prove their decisions are applied evenly.

Its got to content-neutral, Chemerinsky said.

Trumps use of social media and the Supreme Courts decision in June striking down a North Carolina law that barred convicted sex offenders from social media is driving the increased attention to the issue, said Amanda Shanor, a fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.

More and more of our political discussion is happening online, Shanor said. Its more important that we know what these rules are.

Here is the original post:

Politicians, Social Media and the First Amendment - KDWN

The First Amendment won’t protect you from saying something your company doesn’t like – Marketplace.org

ByDavid Brancaccio

August 08, 2017 | 8:58 AM

Google has fired the engineer who circulated an internal memo criticizing the company's diversity initiatives. The former employee, James Damore, argued that biological differences between men and women are responsible for tech's gender gap.

Google said he violated company policy about promoting gender stereotypes. The company did not publicly name him, but Damore later revealed his identity to the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. Damore claims he has a legal right to express his views and that he's going to fight the dismissal.

Lee Rowland, senior staff attorney at the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, joined us to talk about the role the First Amendment has in cases like these and when companies can fire you.

David Brancaccio:I know you tend to focus on public employee free speech rights. But if someone works for the private sector, help us understand what the law says about our ability to say what we want in the workplace.

Lee Rowland:Well, the law doesn't say a lot about it. The First Amendment really only acts as a restraint on government. In fact, the first few words of the First Amendment are: Congress shall make no law restricting freedom of speech or of the press or religion. So when you work for the private sector and your employer is not the government, the Constitution gives you zero protection in terms of keeping your job based on what you say. So while it is possible that states and localities could pass laws protecting speech and a very, very tiny number of cities and localities have done so 99.9 percent of the time, there is no legal barrier to a private employer firing an employee because of their speech at or outside of the workplace.

Brancaccio: Soif you're signing up at a private employer and they hand you the code of conduct or the employee handbook with rules, you ought to take those seriously.

Rowland:That's exactly right, because they have every right to fire you should you run afoul of them. Now there is an important asterisk on this, which is employers may not use firing you because of your speech as a pretext to violate other laws that prevent discrimination. So, for example, federal laws that prevent employers from firing employees because of their religion or because of their pregnancy or their sex or their race. But, if it is solely because of their speech, there are no federal laws and no laws at the state level that I know of that give employees that kind of protection based on their speech rather than who they are.

Brancaccio:Now there is some talk in this case of the Google employee that somehow National Labor Relations Board rules might somehow apply. It's not a unionized position as far as I'm aware. Does that inform this discussion at all?

Rowland: Ishould be the first to admit I'm not a labor lawyer, so there may be some obscure contractual provision that he can take refuge in, but it certainly doesn't come from the Constitution.

Read the original here:

The First Amendment won't protect you from saying something your company doesn't like - Marketplace.org

ACLU, Rutherford Institute say permit revocation violates First Amendment – The Charlottesville Newsplex

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (NEWSPLEX) -- The American Civil Liberties Union and the Rutherford Institute say a decision to move the Unite the Right rally to McIntire Park raises First Amendment concerns.

According to a letter sent to Charlottesville city officials, the "belated demand" to move the Aug. 12 demonstration from Emancipation Park "undermines [the] ability of demonstrators to effectively communicate their message."

The letter also calls the timing and justification for the demand a "callous disrespect for the rights of free speech and assembly."

Jason Kessler submitted a request for a permit to protest the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue from Emancipation Park about two months ago.

According to an annotation on the letter, city code says requests for demonstration permits are deemed granted unless they are denied within ten business days following the application.

Kessler has said the protest will still take place in front of the Lee statue despite the city's actions regarding the permit on Monday.

"We are going to exercise our First Amendment rights no matter what," he said on Monday. "At this point, this is a civil rights issue. They have done everything in their power to deny me and my friends our civil rights and we're going to fight that."

"The city must provide factual evidence to support its attendance estimate and justify revoking the permit to demonstrate in Emancipation Park," said the letter. "While the city relies upon a forecast that 'many thousands' will attend the event, it has not disclosed the sources of the information it is relying on for that estimate and whether such sources have any factual basis. When First Amendment rights are at stake, the city should be transparent about the evidence and information underlying its action so that citizens can be sure that fears of overcrowding are not simply a pretext for censorship and meet the requirement for proof that a compelling government interest underlies its decision."

The organizations call the city's justification for revoking the permit specious in light of approval for permits for counter demonstrations on the same day in Justice and McGuffey parks that are reportedly expecting more than 1,000 people to attend.

They also say the city's decision amounts to a "hecklers' veto," saying the revocation violates the principle that the rights of speech and assembly cannot be restricted because one group may be met with opposition.

"The city must act in accordance with the law, even if doing so is distasteful to members of the community who disagree with the views espoused by the Unite the Right organizers," added the letter. "At the very least, the city must explain in more than just generalities its reasons for concluding that the demonstration cannot safely be held in Emancipation Park."

The ACLU and the Rutherford Institute are asking for a response from the city by Aug. 9.

To read the full letter and its annotations, click on the document in the Related Documents box.

More here:

ACLU, Rutherford Institute say permit revocation violates First Amendment - The Charlottesville Newsplex

The First Amendment: Freedom of speech in the workplace – WDAY

The 1st amendment says you can take to the streets or express controversial views, but the amendment doesn't protect you against the resulting consequences.

"You sort of check your first amendment rights at the door when you work for a private employer," said Lisa Edison-Smith.

Anyone who doesn't work for the state or federal government isn't protected by the 1st amendment and to most that's a little known fact.

"I didn't know that, that's actually quite a surprise to me," said Devon Solwold, Moorhead.

An employer can fire you if your views are fundamentally different than those of the company and one google employee learned that the hard way after getting fired for sending this memo internally, saying there are fewer women in tech because they are quote 'biologically different.'

On Tuesday employment lawyers say these cases are showing up more now than ever thanks to social media.

"There's this disconnect that people will often post and do things at a computer or an Ipad that they wouldn't say face to face to people. If it's not willing to say something face to face, don't do it in an electronic comment," said Edison-Smith.

While everyone we spoke to says it's an important right, it's one that should be used with caution and wisdom.

Employment lawyers say you can express your views outside of work without consequence unless they damage the reputation or business as a whole.

See the article here:

The First Amendment: Freedom of speech in the workplace - WDAY

Inside the First Amendment: When leaks dry up, we turn to FOIA – Meridian Star

When we talk about the importance of a free press, what we're really talking about is how important it is for the press to serve as a watchdog on the government. The highest responsibility of journalism is to supply the people with information about what their government is doing, so that the people can hold the government accountable, and make the best possible decisions when they vote.

But if you're not a journalist (full disclosure: I am not), you may not give a lot of thought to how journalists get that information in the first place. Official government press releases and briefings aren't really the place to find information about government misconduct. Obviously, leaks are a much better source when it comes to getting the real dirt. But the recent emphasis on prosecuting leakers is likely to have a major chilling effect on that source of information.

But there is a way that journalists can get their hands on FBI records, secret military policy memos, and NSA email exchanges without having to worry about their sources getting arrested or fired.

They can ask the government for them.

The Freedom of Information Act is a law that requires the government to hand over its records if someone asks for them. The act applies to federal government agencies, but every state has laws that allow the public to access its government records. Anyone can request information, whether they're a U.S. citizen or foreign national. And anything can be requested.

A government agency can, of course, deny your request if it decides that the information you're seeking falls into an exemption category, like information that would threaten national security, or invade someone's privacy. But if you think your FOIA request was unfairly denied, you can appeal, and if that doesn't work, you can sue.

Nabiha Syed, assistant general counsel for BuzzFeed, is intimately familiar with this process. A large part of her job involves getting government agencies to give up information that they would rather not share information that often ends up being crucial to BuzzFeed's reporting. She sees the right of the public to access government information as an exciting First Amendment frontier. "For the most part, the First Amendment says, 'This is hands off, the government's not going to be involved, you guys figure out speech,'" Syed says. "And then you have the First Amendment right of access, which says, 'Yes, but also, we are going to allow you to use the law as a sword to get access to judicial proceedings, to official records...to administrative proceedings.'"

Requesting or fighting for government records is an instrumental part of BuzzFeed's reporting strategy. Such records have allowed the BuzzFeed News team to report on misconduct in death penalty executions, for-profit foster care scandals, and the widespread abuse of seasonal migrant workers. Just last month, BuzzFeed News obtained a secret Department of Defense report that stated that Chelsea Manning's disclosure of Iraq-related documents would be unlikely to have any impact on U.S. operations in Iraq (directly contradicting the government's position at Manning's trial).

To be sure, the system is far from perfect, as many information-seekers can attest. As Jason Fagone wrote in his article "The Secret to Getting Top-Secret Secrets," "The Freedom of Information Act, passed in 1966 to increase trust in government by encouraging transparency, has always been a pain in the ass. You write to an uncaring bureaucracy, you wait for months or years only to be denied or redacted into oblivion, and even if you do get lucky and extract some useful information, the world has already moved on to other topics."

But when it does work, the payoffs can be enormous. As Nabiha Syed says, "How do we at least inject the information we need into the commons, into the public square, to try and heighten the conversations we're having? At least getting the underlying facts out there, in ways that are hopefully more authoritative than anecdotal, I think would be really helpful."

Lata Nott is executive director of the First Amendment Center of the Newseum Institute. Contact her via email at lnott@newseum.org, or follow her on Twitter at @LataNott.

Read more here:

Inside the First Amendment: When leaks dry up, we turn to FOIA - Meridian Star

Toledo Pro-Lifers Face Muzzling of First Amendment Rights – Church Militant

TOLEDO, Ohio (ChurchMilitant.com) - The Toledo city council is considering a new city ordinance designed to keep pro-life advocates away from Toledo's two abortion mills.

The ordinance, proposed on July 10 and called "Impeding Access to Health Care," would make it a misdemeanor offense for pro-life advocates to physically block access to an abortion facility.

Free clip from CHURCH MILITANT PremiumWATCH MORE LIKE THIS

It also forbids pro-life advocates from "Engag[ing] in a course of conduct within twenty feet of the premises of a Health Care Facility or Reproductive Health Care Facility when that behavior places another person in reasonable fear of physical harm."

Pro-life advocates are crying foul over the rule, noting there are already laws making it illegal to harass people outside of abortion mills.

Jeff Barefoot, president of Greater Toledo Right to Life (GTRL), called it "a criminal ordinance in search of a perpetrator." He noted to Church Militant that, so far, no protesters have been charged or arrested for harassing women seeking abortions.

He adds that the ordinance doesn't define what "reasonable fear of physical harm" is and that it can be interpreted subjectively.

Abortion mill worker, Schuyler Beckwith, commented women seeking abortions at the Capital Care Network facility "are being screamed at, and they're being accosted with photographs that depict images that are not accurate about what we do at the clinic." She goes on to complain, "They're being prayed to, they're being harassed on a regular basis, and they come in, and they're mentally hurt."

Ed Sitter, executive director of Greater Toledo Right to Life, slammed the law as "unnecessary," calling it a "direct assault on an individual's freedom of speech and of assembly."

Greater Toledo Right to Life asserts, "Regardless of personal beliefs, this is an issue of free speech." The group asserts, "Sharing one's views in the public domain without physically threatening or harming anyone is a constitutional right."

The legislation was sponsored by Steven Steel, the president of the city council and a staunch abortion activist. The ordinance is expected to be put forward for a vote on August 30.

Pro-life advocates are asking Toledo residents to phone their city council member to voice their disagreement with the proposed ordinance.

Greater Toledo Right to Life is hosting a petition, asking people to vote "No" at the next meeting.

Have a news tip? Submit news to our tip line.

Like our work? Support us with a donation.

Original post:

Toledo Pro-Lifers Face Muzzling of First Amendment Rights - Church Militant