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.

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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.

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

Former Education Secretary Bill Bennett came down hard on journalists who leak sensitive information to the public.

"The First Amendment is not a license to ruin your country," Bennett remarked to "Fox & Friends" on Monday.

The Trump administration has been plagued by illegal leaks through the press of sensitive and even classified information.

The latest leak debacle occurred last week when transcripts of President Trump's phone conversations earlier this yearwith the leaders of Mexico and Australia were published in the Washington Post. The leak embarrassed the administration, suggesting a lack of control over confidential information.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions vowed to crack down on leakers last week, saying they will be found and prosecuted.

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Bennett agreed, saying all leakers should be prosecuted, and even reporters should not be exempt.

"Let's not have excluded special categories," he advised. "These are tough cases to make. I understand it."

"The law is the law and it has to be honored," he said.

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Bill Bennett on Leaker Journalists: First Amendment Not a License to Ruin Your Country - Fox News Insider

Collins currently has a single out titled Cold Dead Hands. It is a declaration to gun-grabbers everywhere that the Second Amendment has been preserved by generation upon generation and that preservation will not end on his watch.

The first verse of Cold Dead Hands tells the story:

Theres a rifle in my closet, Made in 1893

Carved right on the barrel it says Winchester Company

Its been passed through generations, Ive been taught to use it well

Its put food there on the table, And it aint never been for sale

Theres people on my TV, telling me whats right and wrong

Not one damn gun of mine, has ever pulled the trigger on its own

From the verse, Collins transitions to a chorus reminiscent of the great Charlton Heston:

From my Cold Dead Hands

Its about you and me, aint no redneck thing, why dont you understand

You can bitch and moan, all you want

Youll get my gun from my Cold Dead Hands

When I wrote this song I was watching the news and I just got super aggravated, Collins told Breitbart News on Sunday. I got real irritated with the whole thing I thought about everybody I grew up with here in Kentuckyout here in rural America. You know, we get guns for our birthdays and Christmas. Its something you get when youre very young. When youre eight, nine, ten years old, you get your first rifle and go deer hunting and stuff. People out there in other parts of the country dont understand customs and traditions like we have in rural America.

America was built on guns, he added. We took our freedom from the English. If it wasnt for guns wed be having tea and biscuits instead of steak and beer. Its that kind of thing to me. Without the Second Amendment there is no First Amendment. Theres nothing that stops anybody from coming and taking what you worked hard for. To me its just a very simple fact of life; its freedom, thats what owning a gun is. Its the very foundation of freedom.

The Nelson County, Kentucky native is set to play a handful of concerts across his home state through the end of September.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host ofBullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter:@AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.

P.S. DO YOU WANT MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE DELIVERED RIGHT TO YOUR INBOX?SIGN UP FOR THE DAILY BREITBART NEWSLETTER.

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Country Singer Dustin Collins: 'Without the Second Amendment, There Is No First Amendment' (Exclusive) - Breitbart News

A global injunction issued by Canadas Supreme Court is consistent with the USs First Amendment, according to WIPR readers.

In June this year, the Supreme Court of Canada ordered Google to de-index the website of Datalink Technology Gateways.

Datalink had unlawfully relabelled and sold products of a competitor, Equustek Solutions, a technology company in British Colombia.

Google had raised freedom of expression concerns and challenged the propriety and necessity of the extraterritorial reach of the global order.

The dispute found itself at the Supreme Court, which upheld a global injunction, enjoining Google from displaying any part of Datalinks websites on any of its search results worldwide.

In July, Google filed a claim against Equustek at the US District for the Northern District of California, San Jose Division.

It said: Google brings this action to prevent enforcement in the US of a Canadian order that prohibits Google from publishing within the US search result information about the contents of the internet.

Google is seeking a declaration from the court that the Canadian order is unenforceable in the US as it is inconsistent with the First Amendment and the Communications Decency Act.

The Canadian order is repugnant to those rights, and the order violates principles of international comity, particularly since the Canadian plaintiffs never established any violation of their rights under US law, said Google.

However, 100% of WIPR readers, when asked whether they agreed that the injunction was inconsistent with the First Amendment, said no (although they didnt provide any reasoning).

David Price, senior product counsel at Google, said: Rules regarding online content vary from country to country, so we're taking this court action to defend the legal principle that one country shouldn't be able to decide what information people in other countries can access online.

He added that the undermining of this core principle inevitably leads to a world where internet users are subject to the most restrictive content limitations from every country.

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Canada Supreme Court, Google, searches, trademark, trade secrets, labelling, trademark infringement, counterfeits

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WIPR survey: Google global injunction consistent with First Amendment - World Intellectual Property Review (subscription)

The Israel anti-boycott law penalizes boycotts, which are a nonviolent and legal freedom of expression. That violates the First Amendment. People complain about the over-regulation of business. This bill is a prime example. It would be an expensive, time consuming, and intrusive process for a court or other government agency to determine why a business was not doing business with Israel or Israeli companies. No matter what your views are on the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement are, I hope that people can agree that we need to protect our constitutional rights, especially in todays political climate.

Dorah Rosen Shuey, Davenport

The Sentinel welcomes your letters to the editor. Letters should be short, no more than 150 words. We do not accept anonymous letters. Letter-writers should include their full name as well as a street address and telephone number. We dont publish those details in the newspaper, but need the information for verification purposes. Occasionally, we reject letters simply because weve had so many on the same subject. Submit your letters online at santacruzsentinel.com/submit-letters.

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Letter: Anti-boycott law violates the First Amendment - Santa Cruz Sentinel

For Internet trolls, last week may as well have been Christmas.

On July 25, Judge James Cacheris of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia handed down a decisionstating that public officials may not block their constituents on social media.

The case, which will influence a similar casefiled by the Knight First Amendment Institute against President Trump, involved a dispute between defendant Phyllis Randall, chairman of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, and plaintiff Brian Davison. The facts allege that Randall banned Davison from her Facebook page titled Chair Phyllis J. Randall after Davison published comments during an online forum that, in Randalls view, consisted of slanderous remarks about peoples family members and kickback money (if the facts seem confusing or incomplete, its not just you neither party could recall the precise contents of the deleted comment).

Davison claimed the ban violated his First Amendment rights. The court agreed, reasoning that Randall had acted in her governmental capacity by hosting a Facebook forum open to the public and had engaged in prohibited viewpoint discrimination by choosing to ban only Davison. Granting declaratory judgment to Davison, the court reasoned, By prohibiting Plaintiff from participating in her online forum because she took offense at his claim that her colleagues in the County government had acted unethically, Defendant committed a cardinal sin under the First Amendment.

Although it is difficult to contest that Randall was acting in her official capacity, the courts conclusion that a social media platform is analogous to a public forum is ill-conceived.

The courts rationale rests primarily on Supreme Court dicta in Packingham v. North Carolina, a 2017 case involving a statute which made it a felony for registered sex offenders to access social networking websites. In that case, the court indeed compared social media networks to traditionally public spaces like parks and streets, but that comparison was hardly dispositive of the question, especially considering the courts decision rested primarily on the North Carolina laws expansive reach (the law constituted an absolute bar on mainstream means of communication). Moreover, the court expressly stated, this opinion should not be interpreted as barring a State from enacting more specific laws than the one at issue, a point that the court in Virginia tacitly acknowledged by recognizing that a degree of [comment] moderation is necessary to preserve social media websites as useful forums for the exchange of ideas.

In the Loudoun County case, however, the restriction was extremely lenient. As the court put it, the ramifications of Randalls ban were fairly minor. The ban lasted a matter of hours [and] during that time, Plaintiff was able to post essentially the same thing on multiple pages. Additionally, there was little indication that Plaintiffs message was suppressed in any meaningful sense, or that he was unable to reach his desired audience.

This distinction notwithstanding, the court doubled down on its premise that social media is a public forum, once again citing Packingham.

There is another reason, however, Packingham cannot stand for the proposition that social media is a public forum warranting First Amendment protection. If the contrary were true, Facebooks own terms of useand Community Standardswould violate the First Amendment. No public forum traditional or designated could ban, for example, hate speech, speech by people under the age of 13, speech by a convicted sex offender or speech that is misleading, malicious, or discriminatory, as Facebook does. Facebook even reserves the right to remove certain kinds of sensitive content or limit the audience that sees it, and provides users the unqualified ability to avoid distasteful or offensive content by unfriending, blocking and even reporting other users.

These rules to which Davison and Randall agreed in their decision to use Facebook fall under Facebooks proprietary domain. Accordingly, courts have no authority to alter or limit Facebooks rules regulating the conduct or rights of its users simply because one of those users is a public official. Under the courts reasoning in this case, Facebook would either be forced to permit the public official to use its website without requiring the officials assent to its terms of use or forgo the officials use altogether. Both are unfair to Facebook.

A better analogy than the courts in this case would have been a scenario in which a politician hosted a town hall at her private residence or business. The elucidating effects of such an analogy are immediate; surely, a homeowner does not surrender her property right of exclusion simply because she hosts an event open to the public? In the Loudoun County case, the only difference is that Facebook is the homeowner, and the public official enjoys a license from Facebook to exclude others at her discretion.

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Why social media is not a public forum - The Washington Post - Washington Post

Lata Nott

When we talk about the importance of a free press, what were 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 youre 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 arent 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 (FOIA) 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 theyre 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 youre seeking falls into an exemption category, like information that would threaten national security, or invade someones privacy. But if you think your FOIA request was unfairly denied, you can appeal, and if that doesnt 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 BuzzFeeds 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 governments 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 recordsto administrative proceedings.'

Requesting or fighting for government records is an instrumental part of BuzzFeeds 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 Mannings disclosure of Iraq-related documents would be unlikely to have any impact on U.S. operations in Iraq (directly contradicting the governments position at Mannings 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 were 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.

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First Amendment: When leaks dry up, we turn to FOIA - hays Post

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is seen during a ceremony in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 10.

Eric Thayer/Getty Images

Last year, a police officer in New Mexico arrested an acquaintance of his own supervisor and reported another officers misconduct. In 2014, a city plumber and rental housing inspector in Illinois complained about his citys failure to enforce codes and a lack of accessibility for those with disabilities. In 2009, a port authority officer for New York and New Jersey reported that a tunnel and bridge agent interfered with her police activities and harmed public safety.

Ostensibly all three of these public employees are whistleblowers, who sought to rectify misconduct, code violations, or safety issues. Still, they all suffered the same fatethey were dismissed from their jobs. These employees faced retaliation for their salutary speech and efforts to improve the public good and, if their allegations are believed, should have had valid First Amendment free speech arguments to challenge their dismissals. But, the bleak reality of modern American law is that such employees often have no valid free speech claim at all. As such, these three employees lost their respective cases before the 3rd, 7th, and 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in recent decisions, one as recently as July.

They lost their retaliation claims under the First Amendment, because of one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in years. That case is Garcetti v. Ceballos. Its been on the books for more than a decade, wreaking havoc on employees and bastardizing free speech jurisprudence. Those representing employees who have suffered because of the Supreme Court decision have labeled such lower court rulings as being Garcettized.

Garcetti has effectively applauded official oppression, trimmed truth in the public workplace, and done so without moral or workplace-efficiency justification, longtime Texas-based civil rights attorney Larry Watts told me. Garcetti is the greatest, judicial enemy of clean government I have seen in my 50 years at the Bar.

In Garcetti, the Supreme Court created a categorical rule: When public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline. Stated more simply, when public employees engage in official, job-duty speech, they are not speaking as citizens but public employees and have no free-speech rights at all. None. Zero.

For decades, the Supreme Court had a workable standard in such free speech cases.

The case involved an assistant district attorney named Richard Ceballos, who learned of perjured law enforcement statements in a search warrant affidavit. He wrote a memo to his superiors recommending dismissal of the criminal charges. Instead, he suffered a demotion and a transfer to a less desirable work location.

The case was argued twice before the Supreme Courtonce when Justice Sandra Day OConnor was still on the court and once after she had been replaced by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. The court ruled 54 against Ceballos, splitting along conservative-liberal lines. The more conservative jurists sided with the district attorney while the four more liberal jurists voted for the employee.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who often writes passionately about the importance of freedom of speech and thought, authored the majority opinion in Garcetti. It is the black mark of his First Amendment record, a scarlet letter that he should attempt to finally shed.

For decades, the Supreme Court had a workable standard in such free speech cases. Under that framework, the court asked whether a public employee spoke on a matter of public concern or importance, something of larger interest to the community. In other words, was the employees speech on a matter of public concern or merely a private grievance?

If the speech was merely a private grievance, there was no First Amendment claim. But, if the speech touched on a matter of public concernsuch as speech about racism in the workforce, unsanitary conditions in a school, or brutality against inmatesthen courts had to balance the employees right to free speech against the employers efficiency interests in a disruption-free workforce.

This two-part framework was known as the Pickering-Connick test after two earlier Supreme Court decisions, the 1968 case Pickering v. Board of Education and the 1983 case Connick v. Myers.

But, decades later the Supreme Court imposed the categorical bar in Garcetti, denying any protection if an employee engages in job-duty speech or speaks as an employee instead of as a citizen.

To appreciate the impact of Garcetti, consider the plight of a public school teacher who might be disciplined for classroom speech. Perhaps the teacher speaks about a controversial political matter, offers a different lesson plan, or uses the N-word in an unplanned lecture to students about not using racial slurs.

Lincoln Brown, a sixth-grader teacher in Chicago, learned the power of Garcetti the hard way when the 7th Circuit ruled he had no First Amendment claim for using the N-word in a well-intentioned lecture against such slurs. Brown gave his impromptu [lecture] on racial epithets in the course of his regular grammar lesson to his sixth grade class, wrote the 7th Circuit in Brown v. Chicago Board of Education. His speech was therefore pursuant to his official duties.

Translation: Lincoln Brown, like so many other public school teachers, had zero free-speech protection for speech in the classroom because of Garcetti.

Its not just teachers who have lost their free speech rights from the overly broad, categorical rule of Garcetti. Police officers have faced its wrath arguably more than any other group while firefighters and university-level employees have also had to suffer retaliation without recourse due to the ruling.

There have been a few glimmers of hope in recent years. In the 2014 case Lane v. Franks, the Supreme Court refused to apply Garcetti against a university employee who was terminated after providing truthful testimony in a court case. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her opinion, emphasized the importance of employee speech for the public. Citizens, including public employees, are supposed to testify truthfully in court after all.

Furthermore, two federal circuit courtsthe 4th and the 9thhave ruled that Garcetti doesnt apply to professor speech, because of the additional protection of academic freedom. But, that is only two circuits. As I explained in April testimony to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice: Garcetti threatens the speech of college and university employees. Only two circuit courts of appeals have explicitly rejected Garcetti as applied to university professors.

Some lower courts will work around Garcetti, finding that it wasnt part of an employees joband thus not a part of his public roleto set policy or to criticize certain departmental practices. For example, the 2nd Circuit Court reinstated a police officers First Amendment lawsuit in the 2015 case Matthews v. City of New York, finding that the officer spoke more as a citizen when he criticized his departments arrest quota policy.

Join Dahlia Lithwick and her stable of standout guests for a discussion about the high court and the countrys most important cases.

But, these are the exceptions.

Top Comment

So let me get this straight. More...

It has been more than a decade since the Supreme Court dramatically reduced the level of free speech protection for public employees. Various statutory protections are not sufficient to guard against this type of retaliation against whistleblowers. The Constitution is the highest level of law and the first 45 words of the Bill of Rights should not be empty language when applied to public employees. The First Amendment must protect those public servants who have the courage to speak out against corruption, inefficiency, waste, and other problems.

Its time for the court to reconsider one of its biggest mistakes of recent years. In fact, its long overdue.

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No Free Speech for You - Slate Magazine

Be careful before you invite Brian Davison to become a Facebook friend. You shouldnt expect warm and fuzzy posts from a tenacious rabble-rouser who wages personal campaigns for free speech, accountability and freedom of information.

Over the last two years, Davison has filed three separate civil rights lawsuits against the Loudoun Board of Supervisors and Chairwoman Phyllis Randall (D), Commonwealths Attorney Jim Plowman (R) and the Loudoun County School Board. They have at times blocked him from their Facebook pages, deleted critical comments he posted and attempted to ostracize him. One needs only to read Davisons online comments to understand why he gets under their skin.

Davison has sought public access to the school systems student growth percentile (SGP) scores. Hes accused Plowmans office of refusing to investigate perjury by school officials. Hes offended Randall with comments about corruption, lack of accountability and conflicts of interest that extend to the families of public officials, some of whom work for county government or the school system. And, yes, Davison pokes at the Times-Mirror for what he sees as a failure to report rigorously on alleged corruption and conflicts by elected officials.

To his supporters, many of whom are members of the anything-goes club of anonymous online commenting, Davison is a valiant campaigner for truth. To his critics, hes a self-righteous insulter. Before last week, few would have characterized him as a patriot. Now hes mentioned in the same sentence with James Madison, the Virginian who wrote the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights.

The Times-Mirror has consistently campaigned for open government and freedom of information in a county that frequently conducts business behind closed doors and uses Virginias Freedom of Information Act to block disclosure of information rather than provide access to it. Were also wary of anonymous, online comments that can distort stories with bias, prejudice, insults and inaccuracies. We acknowledge that were not always comfortable with the tone of anonymous discussion on LoudounTimes.com, but we regard it as important forum for readers to express their views on stories and discuss them with fellow citizens. When we err, we're more comfortable erring on the side of freedom of expression rather than censorship.

These are uncomfortable times. First Amendment lawsuits now raise the legal argument in which Twitter users claim their constitutional rights have been violated because President Donald Trump the commander-in-tweet blocks them from his personal Twitter handle. The argument about social media rights rages in a day and age when politicians, from the president on down, are using their private accounts to discuss public affairs or socialize their positions with constituents.

Davisons cases may provide a legal precedent. A federal judge ruled Chairwoman Randall violated Davison's First Amendment rights because she briefly banned him from her personal Facebook account.

"The suppression of critical commentary regarding elected officials is the quintessential form of viewpoint discrimination against which the First Amendment guards," U.S. District Judge James Cacheris wrote in the ruling on Davisons suit.

The judge didn't issue punishment against Randall since her Facebook ban only lasted about 10 hours. That said, the judge noted Randall committed "a cardinal sin under the First Amendment" by barring the constituent who posted about county corruption. What's more, the judge pointed out from the first sentence of the ruling that "this case raises important questions about the constitutional limitations applicable to social media accounts maintained by elected officials."

Somehow that decision was interpreted by the county as a victory for the countys elected officials. The status of social media is a novel question in the law, huffed County Attorney Leo P. Rogers as if Facebook was a passing fad.

Meantime, Randall insists shes a defender of the First Amendment and cites legal confusion. In earnest calls to the Times-Mirror she defended her takedown of Davison as an appropriate response to offensive comments pertaining to family members of public officials. Later, in reaction to the ruling in the School Board case, she acknowledged confusion:

while I blocked the plaintiff overnight for approximately eight hours because he made inappropriate comments, not about the elected official but about the members of their families, and another court finds a First Amendment infraction. It just doesnt make sense to me.

It all makes perfect sense to Davison, who argues that Loudouns elected leaders will go to any lengths -- and at any cost -- to defend arcane rules that enable them to govern behind closed doors, provide cover for conflicts of interest and shut down dissent.

Despite our distaste for bad behavior, online or off, we are inclined to agree.

There is a simple resolution to confusion over public participation in government: Open access to all meetings and information that impacts the welfare of citizens and provides accountability for public decisions.

True leaders have nothing to hide. They lead us out of the dark and into the sun even if it occasionally causes sunburn. Whether in Madisons time or Davisons or Davison's children's, open government, free speech and the First Amendment must stand as the foundations of American democracy and represent the values of our American experience.

You may not like Brian Davison or the democratizing platform of social media that he uses, but how one feels about either is wholly irrelevant. Our leaders should not worry about whether Davison is a pain. They should consider whether he is right.

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].

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EDITORIAL: First Amendment 2.0 | LoudounTimes.com - Loudoun Times-Mirror

Common Dreams

In 'Direct Attack on the First Amendment,' Sessions Declares War on Leaks Common Dreams "Every American should be concerned about the Trump administration's threat to step up its efforts against whistleblowers and journalists," said Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. (Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr/cc).

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In 'Direct Attack on the First Amendment,' Sessions Declares War on Leaks - Common Dreams

Certainly subsequent White House news has pushed Donald TrumpDonald TrumpBorder patrol was ordered not to engage with congressmen, lawyers during travel ban Trump says he never called White House 'a dump' Trump to sign memo on Chinese intel property trade practices Friday: report MORE Jr.s June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer allegedly pedaling Hillary ClintonHillary Rodham ClintonCongress wants Trump Jr. phone records related to Russia meeting Zuckerberg hires top Clinton pollster amid rumors of presidential run: report Democrats new 'Better Deal' comes up short for people of color MORE dirt to the sidelines. But as more details emerge, even Trump Jr.s brother-in-law, Jared Kushner, has tried to distance himself from the meeting in a statement before his recent closed-door testimony to the Senate intelligence committee.

Some have dubbed the Russia meeting a category 5 hurricaneand many have called for a federal prosecution of the Presidents son. Still, the debate has ignored the First Amendment, a constitutional bulwark that may save the younger Trump.

The right to free speech shields the receipt and dissemination of information. Indeed, truthful information about candidates for high office lies at the heart of constitutional protection. In this case, there is no suggestion that Trump Jr. thought the Russians would feed him falsehoods about Democratic presidential hopeful Clinton. He wanted to learn and perhaps disseminate facts damaging to his fathers opponent.

The First Amendment exists in part to serve this very function the disclosure of truthful information about the people seeking to govern us. As James Madison put it, a popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both.

What makes this situation complicated is that the Russian government might have obtained the information by breaking hacking or espionage laws in the first place.

Trump Jr. says Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya did not actually have any meaningful information in the June 9, 2016 meeting. But for the sake of argument, lets assume the worst about Trump Jr.s state of mind going into the meeting.

Lets assume he thought he was going to receive information that he knew the Russians obtained through criminal activity.

As long as Trump Jr. did not participate in or encourage the Russian governments illegal activity and there is no evidence in the public domain that he did he has a strong argument that the First Amendment immunizes his conduct. He was just agreeing to receive truthful information.

The Supreme Court considered a similar situation in Bartnicki v. Vopper, a 2001 case in which a journalist received a tape of a conversation among union leaders that someone had recorded in secret, in violation of federal wiretap laws. The journalist did not put anyone up to the illegal recording. The journalist did, however, publicize the recording, and the Court assumed that the journalist knew that the person who made the recording broke the law.

Drawing on the famous Pentagon Papers Case, the 1971 decision that allowed the media to publish classified documents about the Vietnam War, the Bartnicki Court held that the First Amendment protected the journalists right to publicize the recording.

In the current situation, Trump Jr. stands in the shoes of the journalist in Bartnicki, and the Russian government stands in the shoes of the illegal recorder. Like the recorder, the Russian government may have obtained the information illegally.

Like the journalist, Trump Jr. may have known or strongly suspected that the information was obtained illegally, but there is no evidence at present that he participated in or encouraged any illegality.

If special counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election sought to prosecute Trump Jr. for the meeting, he would likely rely on a campaign finance law that criminalizes accepting money or other thing of value from foreign nationals.

Surely a thing of value means that a campaign cannot accept stocks, bonds, bars of gold, and Renoir paintings from foreign nationals. But deciding whether truthful information about a competing presidential candidate is a thing of value under the statute is more complicated.

The question is so thorny that judges would likely rely on a doctrine called constitutional avoidance. That rule posits that if a statute is ambiguous between two meanings, one of which is potentially unconstitutional and one of which is safely constitutional, the court should opt for the more narrow, and safely constitutional, interpretation.

A narrow reading of the term thing of value that does not criminalize mere information avoids any potential First Amendment problem. Courts would likely adopt that reading of the law. Good news for Don Jr.

To be sure, trouble may lie ahead for the Presidents first born if evidence emerges that he encouraged or participated in Russian criminality. Perhaps Mueller has or will find statements to the Russians from Trump Jr. or others in the campaign like this is greatget me more. The First Amendment does not protect people who join or abet a crime. Or perhaps the presence of Rinat Akhmetshin, a possible Russian spy, at the meeting will lead to evidence that Trump. Jr. was colluding in espionage.

If anyone in the campaign or the family actually were recruited, that would be a serious crime, but the emails released to date suggest that Trump Jr. had no idea that Akhmetshin would attend.

Such is the irony, and the power, of the right to free speech. It protects to everyone, even members of President Trumps inner circle who may well hold the First Amendment in contempt. The elder Trumps disdain for the media is legendary, and he was just sued for First Amendment violations related to his Twitter account.

The Trump family may not like the First Amendment, but they are going to need it.

David M. Shapiro is the director of appellate litigation for the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center, a clinical assistant professor of law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, Chicago, and a Public Voices Fellow through The OpEd Project. He worked previously as a First Amendment and media lawyer in private practice.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.

Read more here:

How the First Amendment could save Don Jr. - The Hill (blog)

Post Register

Police confront 'First Amendment auditors' Post Register Search First Amendment Audit on YouTube, and you'll likely find hundreds of videos of people recording law enforcement in public areas and refusing to share their names with officers even when requested. One such incident happened June 12 outside the ...

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Police confront 'First Amendment auditors' - Post Register

Furthering its efforts around the First Amendment, the Radio Television Digital News Association has joined more than 20 organizations in launching the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a website dedicated to documenting abuses against journalists.

The tracker is a repository of data tracking incidentsarrests of journalists, equipment searches and physical attacks among themat a time when journalists in the U.S. are facing increasing hostility, RTDNA said.

Reporters covering protests in Washington and North Dakota, for instance, are among 19 journalists charged with crimes so far this year. Ten are currently facing charges, RTDNA said.

Twelve journalists have been subject to equipment searches, and 10 have been physically attacked, the tracker shows.

The tracker shows data collected from news reports and submissions. The Columbia Journalism Review, Investigative Reporters & Editors and Knight First Amendment Institute are among partnering organizations.

RTNDAs support of the tracker is part of the groups larger multi-faceted initiative fighting the range of threats, from limits to ugly rhetoric, that impede journalists from doing their jobs. The group launched a First Amendment task force earlier this year.

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RTDNA Joins Free Press Groups in Tracking First Amendment Abuse - Broadcasting & Cable

After months of a pending verdict in a case that raised consequential questions about the constitutional limitations on politicians' social media accounts, a federal court ruled last week that Loudoun County Chairwoman Phyllis Randall (D-At Large) violated Lansdowne resident Brian Davisons right to free speech by temporarily banning him from her Facebook page.

From a circuit court in Richmond to a federal district court in Alexandria, Davison, a software engineer and father of two, has won and lost battles in courtrooms in his pursuit of defending the First Amendment and accessing public records.

But the latest outcome of Davisons suit is one likely to affect politicians around the country, and maybe all the way up to the White House.

What started off as a pro se free speech suit by Davison against the countys chairwoman and Board of Supervisors could now play a key role in a recent lawsuit against President Donald Trump brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University alleging the president suppressed dissent by blocking critics from his Twitter account.

More and more elected officials are turning to online tools to conduct policy, to engage their constituencies, to advance their political agendas. But theyre also using the tools of censorship in those online platforms, and theyve been doing so without an honest conversation about what the First Amendment has to say about that censorship, Alex Abdo, senior staff attorney at the Knight institute, said. We wanted to start that conversation, and the case in Loudoun County has provided an excellent roadmap for how to think about governmental use of social media in the digital age.

Both Davison and the institutes lawsuits grapple with what is becoming a growing trend of politicians barring critics from their social media pages.

The issue has created a legal gray area around public forums in the digital age and peoples web protections under the First Amendment.

Do the social media accounts of politicians create a public forum protected by the First Amendment when they open up their pages to constituents? And if an elected official blocks or deletes critical comments of a user in that forum, does it violate their rights under the First Amendment?

According to U.S. District Judge James C. Cacheris July 25 ruling, yes, it does.

By prohibiting Plaintiff from participating in her online forum because [Randall] took offense at his claim that her colleagues in the County government had acted unethically, Defendant committed a cardinal sin under the First Amendment, Cacheris stated in a 44-page ruling.

Although Cacheris admitted the consequences of Randalls overnight ban of Davison from her page were fairly minor, he said the court could not treat a First Amendment violation in this vital, developing forum differently than it would elsewhere simply because technology has made it easier to find alternative channels through which to disseminate ones message.

Loudoun officials say the county is considering appealing Cacheris ruling.

Meanwhile, the Knight First Amendment Institutes suit against Trump and his associates argues the presidents @realDonaldTrump Twitter account is a public forum protected under the First Amendment that he uses as a key channel for official communication to make formal announcements and defend the administrations positions.

The institute alleges Trumps view-point based blocking of the seven users from his @realDonaldTrump account infringes the Individual Plaintiffs First Amendment rights and imposes an unconstitutional restriction on their participation in a designated public forum.

A murky outcome

But as lawyers from the First Amendment Institute point to Judge Cacheris ruling to help their case against the president, other legal experts say litigating the institute's case and similar suits going forward will be difficult.

A separate ruling just three days after Cacheris' on a free speech suit Davison brought against members of the Loudoun County School Board from a different judge in the same federal court is already showing signs of the legal conundrum.

In a 20-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga said it was unclear whether Davisons First Amendment was violated by several members of the School Board after they removed his critical posts on their Facebook pages.

Here, the law is less than settled as to whether the plaintiff had a right to post on a Facebook page maintained by a public official and that this right was violated when those postings were removed or when plaintiff was prevented from posting his comments, Trenga said.

Trenga noted it was not clear as a legal matter whether the Facebook pages in question were limited or public forums.

These [cases] are relatively new and every court could come up with a different decision, said Clay Hansen, executive director of the Charlottesville-based Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression. ... I think until we have some conflicting rulings where we have a split among courts that is at the federal circuit level and we can see this being resolved by a supreme court until we get to that stage we wont have any clear sense of how any particular court will handle it.

Hansen said the Trump case will likely be harder to litigate because the president uses both the @realDonaldTrump handle -- an account he created before assuming office -- as well as the official @POTUS account that has been handed off from one administration to the next.

In the case against Randall, the chairwoman tried to argue her Chair Phyllis J. Randall Facebook account was a personal page, but Cacheris pointed out that Randall created the page the day before she assumed public office with the help of her chief of staff. He also noted she created the account for the purpose of addressing her constituents and asked them to post on the page in question, thus, the account was born out of and inextricably linked to the fact of Randall's public office.

Following Trengas decision, County Attorney Leo Rogers said an appellate court would need to clarify how and when social media constitute public forums.

Eric Goldman, a California-based law professor at Santa Clara University who heads a blog that has closely followed Davisons suits, thinks although Cacheris ruling will be persuasive evidence in the First Amendment Institutes case, but the contrasting set of facts in the Randall and Trump cases could be problematic in litigating a case against the president and similar ones in the future.

I think this ruling gives the plaintiffs additional support for their legal arguments. So, I'm sure they'll be citing it and I'm sure that the judge will be interested in it, Goldman said. Whether or not the facts are extrapolatable enough is I think going to be a point of contention. And so, the defense arguments will be this is different and here's all the reasons why: Trump is in a different position than the supervisor in this case, or the implications of blocking somebody on Facebook are different than the implications of blocking someone on Twitter.

Goldman said the judge in the Trump case will also need to consider, from a philosophical perspective, the implications a favorable ruling could have on the nation.

I think that any judge is going to have to think very carefully about what it means to say that the president violated the Constitution, Goldman said. ... Judges are going to see in their career dozens of burglaries, but they're probably not all going to have one case where they rule on the top elected official in our country having violated our foundational principles.

The cost of activism

In addition to Davisons two suits against the county's Board of Supervisors and School Board, in a separate suit he has challenged Loudoun Commonwealths Attorney Jim Plowman (R). All of the suits accuse the defendants of either blocking him from their Facebook pages or deleting critical comments he posted.

In March, Judge Cacheris ruled that Plowman did not violate Davisons First Amendment right by deleting the Lansdowne residents Facebook posts.

However, Davison is in the process of appealing Cacheris March decision and says he plans to also appeal Trengas ruling in his suit against the School Board.

Davison is now in the midst of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Act suit against state Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant (R) in Henrico County.

He says a victory in a Richmond Circuit Court last year in his request for the Virginia Department of Education to release test score data showing student growth instilled a sense of confidence in him to pursue his First Amendment cases.

But his legal pursuits have not come without a cost. Davison says the repercussions of the suits will follow him for the rest of his professional career.

If Im a politician or Im an attorney, these cases help me, Davison said. In no way shape or form do these cases help me. When we have government clients, if they look my name up and see, Oh wow theres controversy around this person' that can only hurt me. There can be no near-term advantages that I can see, only consequences.

Still, he believes he's fighting for a fundamental American freedom.

From my perspective, it was just, 'Hey, am I going to sit here and watch it and put up with it? And I finally just got tired and thought I could help, Davison said of his lawsuits.

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"

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Loudoun County resident's First Amendment case may benefit free-speech group's suit against Trump - Loudoun Times-Mirror

(Reuters) - Thanks to the First Amendments Establishment Clause, U.S. courts have to be extremely wary of taking sides in doctrinal disputes between religious groups. On the other hand, as retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter pointed out Wednesday in his opinion for the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Congregation Jeshuat Israel v. Congregation Shearith Israel, the Free Exercise Clause means courts cant interfere with religious autonomy.

Judges have to navigate between those twin risks, Justice Souter said, using the map the Supreme Court provided in 1969s Presbyterian Church v. Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull: When property disputes reflect religious cleavages, courts should avoid entanglement with the doctrinal issues and hew closely to civil law.

So, according to the 1st Circuit, no matter how fascinating the history of one of the oldest synagogues in the U.S. nor how rich the tale of the divide between the Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews who worshipped there, the dispute between two warring congregations comes down to ordinary documents: 1903 and 1908 leases, a 1945 agreement with the U.S. government and a 2001 deal with the National Trust.

It is these common instruments for establishing ownership and control that most readily enable a court to apply the required, neutral principles in evaluating disputed property claims, wrote Justice Souter for a panel that also included Judge Sandra Lynch and 10th Circuit Judge Bobby Baldock, sitting by designation. When such provisions of deeds, charters, contracts, and the like are available and to the point, then, they should be the lodestones of adjudication.

Reversing an epic 2016 decisionby U.S. District Judge John McConnell of Providence, the 1st Circuit found that the documents proved New York Citys Congregation Shearith Israel to be the rightful owner of a 250-year-old synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, even though Newports Congregation Jeshuat Israel has worshipped there and maintained the building for more than 100 years.

The Newport synagogue - formally known as the Touro Synagogue in honor of two brothers who bequeathed thousands of dollars to keep it standing in the 1800s embodies the divide between Americas original Jewish settlers from Spain and Portugal and those who arrived two hundred years later in a wave of immigrants from Central Europe.

The first Jews to arrive in Newport, in 1658, were Sephardim, mostly of Spanish and Portuguese descent. By the mid-1700s, their community was sufficiently well-rooted to begin raising money to build a synagogue. Sephardic Jewish communities from around the world, including the New York City congregation known as Shearith Israel, contributed to the Newport appeal. In 1763, the Newport congregation, Yeshuat Israel, or the Salvation of Israel, celebrated the dedication of its brand-new synagogue. Myer Myers, a colonial silversmith who was a member of the congregation, created elaborate silver-and-gold finials, known as rimonim, to adorn Yeshuat Israels Torah scrolls.

Alas, most of the Sephardic Jews who founded Yeshuat Israel left Rhode Island when the Revolutionary War decimated Newports shipping industry. The last of Newports Jews died in 1822, according to Judge McConnells utterly compelling 2016 opinion.

As Judge McConnell recounted the story, many of the Sephardic Jews who left Newport ended up joining New York Citys Shearith Israel. The New York congregation cared for the Newport synagogue and the synagogues contents for several decades in the 19th century, when Newport didnt have enough Jews to sustain it.

But over the last half of the 1800s, a new wave of Jews arrived in Rhode Island. Unlike their Sephardic predecessors, these Jews were mostly Ashkenazi from Russia and Central Europe. The two cultures followed slightly different religious rituals. The crucial doctrinal difference, as it would turn out, is that the Sephardim prohibit the disposition of ritual objects and the Ashkenazi do not.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, the Newport Ashkenazi staged a year-long occupation of Touro Synagogue at the turn of the century, after the New York Sephardim from Shearith Israel shut them out of the building in a dispute over the appointment of a new religious leader. The warring congregations eventually put aside their differences to execute a 1903 lease agreement allowing Congregation Jeshuat Israel to use the building, although the lease specified that the Ashkenazis must conduct services according to the ritual rites and customs of the (Sephardic) Jews as at this time practiced.

The two congregations renewed the lease in 1908. In 1945, the New York group reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of the Interior to preserve Touro Synagogue as a national historic site. The Newport congregation signed the agreement as a leaseholder. Congregation Jeshuat Israel similarly affirmed its leaseholder status in a 2001 agreement between the congregation, a group known as the Society of Friends of Touro Synagogue and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. That contract, according to the 1st Circuit, described the Newport congregation as having possession of the site through a lease with Congregation Shearith Israel as owner.

Despite their mutual respect for Touro Synagogue as a landmark of American Jewish history, relations between the New York and Newport congregations were prickly. (Justice Souters exceedingly dry description: a want of cordiality.) Matters exploded in 2011, when the Newport group proposed selling the historic Myers Torah ornaments to establish an endowment for their congregations activities. Bostons Museum of Fine Arts offered more than $7 million. The New York congregation protested that a sale would violate the terms of the lease agreement, which required adherence to Sephardic practices. Litigation ensued.

Judge McConnell concluded after a nine-day bench trial and copious historical research that the New York congregation was actually a trustee for Touro Synagogue, not the owner, and that the Newport congregation has a right to oust the New York group as trustee. The judge also found the Newport congregation to be the outright owner of the Myers Torah adornments.

The judge tried to follow the U.S. Supreme Courts directive from the Presbyterian case, grounding his opinion in the legal agreements between the two congregations, as well as ancient deeds, wills, trust documents and congregation account books.

But when the 1st Circuit reviewed his opinion, it concluded Judge McConnell wasnt quite careful enough. As Justice Souter put it, with great delicacy: These are circumstances in which we think that the First Amendment calls for a more circumscribed consideration of evidence than the trial court's plenary enquiry into centuries of the parties' conduct by examining their internal documentation that had been generated without resort to the formalities of the civil law.

In a strict reading of the documents, the 1st Circuit found no reference to a trust in the lease agreements between the New York and Newport congregations, which assumed the New York group owned Touro Synagogue. The appeals court also held the Torah ornaments are encompassed in the leases reference to paraphernalia, so the New York congregation owns them as well.

The New York congregation is represented by Greenberg Traurig and Locke Lord. Greenberg partner Louis Solomon, who argued before the 1st Circuit, told my Reuters colleague Chris Kenning that his clients will continue to uphold their obligations to Touro Synagogue and look forward to putting this unfortunate litigation behind us. Gary Naftalis of Kramer Levin, who argued for the Newport congregation, said hes exploring the groups options.

Originally posted here:

Justice Souter, the First Amendment and the case of the synagogue standoff - Reuters

By Pilar Arias

First Amendment rights were a topic of discussion at the San Antonio City Council Governance Committee meeting Wednesday.

District 1 Councilman Roberto Trevino filed a council consideration request asking the permitting procedures for assembly and procession be reassessed and to provide options for potentially easing restrictions.

The central issue that weve had a problem with in the community is the amount of discretion in the police department and the cost involved, Free Speech Coalition member Amy Kastely told the committee. The consequence of this ordinance has been that numerous groups and individuals have been discouraged from having events, from speaking out, from having protests but also most painfully from having traditional cultural events.

Kastely referred to the ordinance as onerous and said its difficult for people to even get applications for permits.

District 3 Councilwoman Rebecca Viagran said shes looking forward to further discussions about potential improvements to the policy.

Read more from the original source:

Council Talks First Amendment - 550 KTSA

Editors note: This commentary is by Peter Berger, an English teacher at Weathersfield School, who writes Poor Elijahs Almanack. The column appears in several publications, including the Times Argus, the Rutland Herald and the Stowe Reporter.

Over recent decades, public schools have been drafted to play Hemingway while the rest of us have taken turns impersonating Joyce.

This brings us in a roundabout way to the First Amendment.

The Founding Fathers were adamant that free speech and a free press are essential for the health and survival of a free republic. I agree with Benjamin Franklin that there is no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech. In a day where we see the press corralled, berated and threatened at campaign rallies, and where the president echoes Stalin and Mao to declare our free press the enemies of the people, Im especially leery about any abridgement of anyones free speech rights.

However, I tell my students that the First Amendment doesnt mean you can say whatever you want whenever you want to. The government limits citizens speech all the time without violating the Constitution in a judges courtroom, in my classroom during instruction and tests, and, borrowing from Justice Holmes, by barring us from knowingly and falsely shouting Fire in a crowded theater.

The nexus of free speech and classrooms is important to me as a teacher not only because of my ardor for the First Amendment, but also because it illustrates societys failure to grasp classroom reality which brings us back to Joyce and Hemingway.

Courts have clarified students free speech rights in several signal decisions. In a Vietnam-era student protest case, the Supreme Court ruled that students and teachers dont shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate, and that schools can suppress student political speech only if that speech would materially and substantially interfere with the schools mission and operation.

One concurring opinion stipulated that students free speech rights are not the same as or co-extensive with those of adults. A dissenting justice expressed what he considered the courts consensus that school officials should be granted the widest authority in maintaining discipline and good order unless their limitations on students speech are motivated by their own political opinions. Going further in his dissent, another justice warned that the courts decision effectively compels the teachers, parents, and elected school officials to surrender control of the American public school system to public school students.

Two decades later the court clarified its position in a case involving a student who used sexually suggestive language and lewd innuendo in a campaign speech at a school assembly. This time the courts majority held that while the First Amendment protects some offensive forms of speech for adults, the same latitude of expression is not permitted to children in a public school. Officials concern for the sensibilities of other students constitutes a legitimate reason to limit student speech.

These precedent-setting rulings bear on a more recent case that affords a look at decisions that officials including judges make and how they dont reflect but do affect real students and teachers like me. The case this time featured breast cancer awareness bracelets bearing the inscription I (heart) boobies. Administrators banned the bracelets as vulgar and inappropriate for middle school. When two female students defied the ban and were suspended, they sued the district for violating their First Amendment right to free speech.

The schools attorney argued that the I love boobies message pushes the limits of propriety in public schools, undercuts efforts to maintain reasonable decorum, and disrupts the schools proper focus on education. He asserted that administrators should be able to prohibit the use of lewd language to convey political or social messages when the same message can be conveyed in a more decorous manner without lewd language.

The ACLU lawyer representing the students countered that I love boobies did not reasonably pose a substantial material disruption to learning and middle school student behavior.

A series of federal courts eventually concluded that the boobies bracelets were not plainly lewd and were protected as a commentary on a social issue, specifically breast cancer. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case on appeal, which left standing the lower courts decision and overturned the districts ban.

Its worth noting that at the same time this federal court in Pennsylvania was outlawing the ban, a federal court in Indiana was ruling that a school in its jurisdiction could impose a ban on the same boobies bracelets.

Lets set aside the vagaries of our federal court structure, and the image of 13 robed federal jurists discussing boobies for a full hour. Lets also agree that fighting breast cancer is worthwhile.

The principal of the school, herself a breast cancer survivor, banned the bracelets as imposing a substantial risk of disruption and distraction. In contrast, while conceding that there are always immature boys, one of the student plaintiffs opined, But I dont think its that disruptive.

Who should get to decide how much disruption is too much a seventh-grader or the school principal?

Before you answer, consider the T-shirt promoting testicular cancer awareness, also in current circulation, that bears the message, I love balls. How about the bisexual female high school student who came to school wearing a shirt declaring I Enjoy Vagina? Do we allow this as protected speech regarding her sexual preference? Do we allow a male student to wear the same shirt? How about the male football team?

The courts have ruled that administrators decisions must turn on whether they can reasonably forecast that the speech in question will disrupt education, violate other students rights, or obstruct appropriate discipline. No one can better judge what could likely disrupt a particular school than the principal and teachers who work there, the people entrusted with educating our children in the first place.

If you cant trust me to decide about bracelets and T-shirts, how can you possibly trust me to disseminate ideas?

As for our distinguished jurists, anybody who cant predict that many adolescents will have a disruptive, harassing field day with slogans that include reproductive organs and allied body parts shouldnt be in the position of deciding whats reasonable.

Once again your public schools have been rendered impotent.

Smirking vulgarity has triumphed in the name of free speech.

The courts and the general public will cluck their tongues at the further decline of public education.

Deal with it, Hemingway, theyll demand as they duck for cover.

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Peter Berger: Students and First Amendment rights - vtdigger.org

(Reuters) - In 1986, when Congress enacted the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Internet was still in its larval stage. Some U.S. government agencies communicated via the Defense Departments Arpanet, the Internets precursor. Universities and research centers were just starting to network with the government and each other. Commercial Internet service providers didnt exist. Tim Berners-Lee hadnt yet published his revolutionary proposal to link computers around the worldto share information. Mark Zuckerberg was 2 years old.

The CFAA, in other words, was not written to answer the question posed in litigation between the data analytics company hiQ and the social media site LinkedIn: Does a social media site control access to information its users post publicly? As Ive previously explained, hiQs business is to sell employers data analysis bases on their employees public LinkedIn profiles. LinkedIn believes hiQs data harvesting violates its rules. In May, LinkedIn sent hiQ a cease-and-desist letter advising the data company that LinkedIn had blocked its access to members profiles. If hiQ attempted to circumvent the block, LinkedIn said, it could face prosecution under the 1986 computer fraud law, which criminalizes unauthorized access to a computer.

Last month, hiQ sued LinkedIn, seeking an injunction to allow hiQ to continue scraping public data from LinkedIn. LinkedIn is allowing hiQ access while the litigation moves forward, but hiQs CEO, Mark Weidick, has said (including to me in an interview Tuesday) that his business probably wont survive if it loses its case against LinkedIn.

But hiQs fate is hardly the only consequence of the case. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of San Francisco, who presided last week over a hearingon hiQs motion for a preliminary injunction, will have to decide whether the CFAA is in tension with the First Amendment. Can private Internet companies use the CFAA to control access to public information? Or does the doctrine of constitutional avoidance preclude interpreting the 1986 law in a way that implicates the First Amendment?

Its no accident that both hiQ and LinkedIn brought in top-notch constitutional lawyers to argue at last weeks hearing. Former U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli of Munger Tolles & Olson represented LinkedIn, which contends hiQ has no First Amendment right of access to LinkedIns computer servers. Under the 9th Circuits interpretation of the CFAA, LinkedIn argued, hiQ is akin to a trespasser who has been warned to go away.

Verrilli drew an analogy between LinkedIns publicly available profiles and books in a public library. You go and get books and other information and material from the public library, but the fact that the information's available to the public in that sense doesn't mean that you can break into the library with a crowbar at two in the morning because you're seized with a desire to read 'Moby Dick', Verrilli said. It doesn't mean that you can take a book out, when you're supposed to return it in two weeks, and keep it for a year, because you want that information. It doesn't mean if your library privileges have been revoked for abusing the rules, that you can show a fake ID at the door to get back in. The information's public, but it's subject to conditions.

Verrillis library comparison was sufficiently compelling that hiQs constitutional heavyweight, Harvard professor Laurence Tribe, took care to counter it. Library books, he said, used to have borrowing cards in the back of books showing how often books were checked out. A borrower could presumably could have looked at those cards to figure out which books were most popular a rudimentary form of the data analytics hiQ performs. LinkedIn, in Tribes analogy, is trying to use the threat of government prosecution under the CFAA to bar hiQ from looking at an electronic equivalent of those old-school library book cards.

For the government to make it a crime for me to make use of that information because they want to be the exclusive distributors of information about what's popular to read would, of course, be unconstitutional, Tribe said. That's the setting in which I want to put this case.

According to hiQ, which is also represented by Farella Braun & Martel, LinkedIns trespassing comparisons dont apply because hiQ never ventured beyond public LinkedIn profiles. The data company didnt use someone elses password to access LinkedIn, for example, or hack LinkedIn servers. HiQ argued that social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are modern-day public forums, as the U.S. Supreme Court just held in June, in Packingham v. North Carolina. The CFAA, hiQ contends, cannot be read to give LinkedIn the power to use government authority to suppress the public flow of information.

Giving any powerful entity, public or private, the ability to choke off, at its discretion, speech is a dangerous path down which we should not go, Tribe said at the hearing.

Judge Chen, who previously presided over one of the 9th Circuits landmark CFAA cases, U.S. v. Nosal, was admirably engaged with both sides lawyers during oral argument, thanking them at the end of the hearing for their superb presentations. He promised a quick decision, since, as he said, I've got a feeling it's not going to end here.

Ive got a feeling hes right about that.

More here:

HiQ v. LinkedIn: Does First Amendment limit application of computer ... - Reuters

Shirley Tipton's Friday, July 28 Herald and News letter, "Johnson Amendment needs to be kept alive", deeply disturbs bothers and angers me.

This letter is predicated upon blatant ignorance! Her letter in essence is not only promoting continuing government censorship of the First Amendment and free speech by targeting and censoring pastors, but likewise defends another career criminal politician from America's shameful past.

I previously alluded to this in my Sept. 27, 2016 letter, also to the Herald and News, titled: "Trump description would fit LBJ well."

question: why are the worse socialists in America ignorant, deluded self righteous senior citizens who blindly "suck up to the party line," continue to re-elect repeat offenders to both houses of Congress and state legislatures, and stubbornly embrace the almighty nanny state?

Perhaps the links listed below will help expose and rebuke the unconstitutional 1954 Johnson Amendment which rightly is government censorship. These include:

"How the Johnson Amendment Threatens Churches's Freedoms" by Michelle Terry

"Come Out of Hiding Pastors, Trump Has Set You Free", May 11, 2017 by Dave Daubenmire.

This along with other credible writers such as Devvy Kidd, Chuck Baldwin, etc. remain archived

"Lawmakers Have a Plan to Stop IRS From Censoring the Free Speech of Pastors" by Rachel del

guidice", October 4, 2016.

Need I continue on? Probably not. Again, after reading Shirley Tipton's letter "I got heated up

like the barrel jacket on a World War II German MG-42 machine gun!" Yet, the Bible states: "Be ye angry and sin not, do not let the sun go down on your wrath."

I attempt to channel my anger into civic activism.

Read more:

Promoting First Amendment censorship | Letters | heraldandnews.com - Herald and News

As a chapter chair of College Republicans, I have never been more alarmed by the blatant attack on our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech than I am at the present.

Over the past decade (and particularly the past year), universities across the country have left conservative-leaning students and faculty reeling over their treatment of seemingly benign ideas. Organizations like Campus Reform were forced into existence as a response to faculty and administration officials on various campuses to expose behavior that was intended to stifle conservative views. While student groups like College Republicans and Turning Point USA are attempting to reverse the dangerous course that many of these campuses are set on, the have a long way to go before higher-education can be taken seriously again.

While stories about liberal campuses enforcing liberal policies and in some cases disenfranchising their conservative students go back many years, it appears that incidents have spiked over the past year in particular. It doesnt take much for many of us to recall the riots in Berkeley, California over Milo Yiannopoulos and the violence that was caused. However, the nonsense continues heavily in California, where a case in which conservative students at Orange Coast College allege that their college hired an investigator to harass them is only one of many in the state.

However, its clear that the problem isnt just California, its everywhere. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has logged hundreds of cases across the nation, including ones in Louisiana and Texas. The organization has handled cases at LSU, Texas A&M San Antonio, TCU, Texas Tech, and others over cases regarding free speech and other topics. As recently as yesterday, in a case that has not been noted by FIRE but rather by media outlets, a student government diversity chair from the University of Central Florida declared on social media that Trump supporters are not welcome on our campus. These cases are not isolated; they are rampant throughout the United States.

Today, that very same sort of case came to Southern Methodist University in the worst sort of way. Last week, the SMU chapter of Young Americans for Freedom submitted a request in order to place 2,977 flags in memory of the victims of the September 11th attacks. Not only was their request denied by SMU administration, but the administration included in its response letter that The University also respects the right of all members of the community to avoid messages that are triggering, harmful, or harassing. The SMU College Republicans, along with SMU College Democrats, Turning Point USA at SMU, Mustangs for Life, SMU Feminist Equality Movement, and SMU Young Americans for Freedom all responded with a fierce bipartisan rebuke of the administrations decision.

A flag memorial to honor those who lost their lives in the events of 9/11, or displays promoting the education and discussion of the pro-life, pro-choice movements among SMU students must not be viewed as attacks on others. In choosing to view these displays as such, SMU is deviating from its call as a center of higher learning. Its mission is to be a place where ideas are challenged and intellect thrives, not a place to hide or silence alternative points of view, reads the letter from the student groups to the SMU president. The letter is absolutely correct: inhibition of free speech, no matter which side of the spectrum, no matter how much you individually disagree with it, and no matter how stupid it may seem to you, is not good for a free society. Its insulting to the memory of the 2,977 victims of 9/11 to insinuate that a memorial to them would be triggering, and its even more disconcerting the standard that this policy would set. Colleges and universities will undoubtedly produce our nations next set of leaders, conservative or liberal. By teaching these students that its okay to void another persons opinion simply because it offends you in some way isnt diverse, and its intellectually bankrupt. In fact, its degrading the very purpose of our Constitution. It teaches potential future leaders that its okay to take away the rights of someone due to their opinions.

Luckily for us, it appears that the student body at Southern Methodist University at least understands that free speech is something to be valued. Lets hope that message is spread to the rest our campuses as well.

Link:

SMU Becomes the Face of the Collegiate War On The First Amendment - The Hayride