Daily Archives: June 23, 2017

The tensions between them exploded in December after Mr. Paladino made offensive remarks about the Obamas in a local weekly newspaper. The newspaper, Artvoice, sent a survey to members of the Buffalo community asking about their hopes for 2017. Mr. Paladino said he hoped Mr. Obama would die of mad cow disease and that Mrs. Obama would return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.

Mr. Paladino apologized. He also said he meant to send the remarks to friends, not the newspaper, but he hit reply instead of forward. About a week after his comments were published, the Buffalo school board demanded his resignation, which he declined to provide.

Not long after, the board filed a petition with the Education Department to have Mr. Paladino removed from his position, saying he had twice disclosed confidential information. In one instance, they said that he shared information with reporters about a legal dispute the board was having with a contractor, which had been discussed with the boards lawyer in executive session, meaning it was closed to the public. Then in January, Mr. Paladino published an article in Artvoice about contract negotiations with the teachers union, which occurred in the fall.

Mr. Paladinos lawyers disputed that his disclosures were improper, arguing that the closed-door meetings had not been convened correctly. But the thrust of their argument was that the board wanted him removed after his comments about the Obamas, and when it learned he could not be removed for what he had said, it looked for another reason. Such an effort violates his right to free speech, the lawyers said. Last week, Mr. Paladino sued members of the board who are trying to remove him, seeking damages.

Frank W. Miller, a lawyer representing school board members, has conceded that Mr. Paladinos statements were protected speech but said that the board was not trying to remove him for those statements. He said Mr. Paladinos disclosures were an unmistakable rejection of his oath of office that made it difficult for the board to have open, fair, and candid discussion. In her testimony Thursday, Dr. Nevergold agreed.

It was quite disturbing to have a board member to go out and reveal executive session information knowing we were in the process of negotiating a contract, she said. It really disrupts the ability of the board to function appropriately.

This was the first day of testimony in a hearing that is expected to stretch into early next week. MaryEllen Elia, the states commissioner of education, is presiding over the hearing and will decide whether Mr. Paladino may remain on the board.

Luis Ferr-Sadurn reported from Albany, and Elizabeth A. Harris from New York

A version of this article appears in print on June 23, 2017, on Page A25 of the New York edition with the headline: Free Speech Is Defense For Paladino At Hearing.

See the original post here:
With Paladino's Job at Stake, Right to Free Speech Is His Defense - New York Times

Statue of "Lady Justice"outside Bangladesh's Supreme Court building.

During a recent visit to Bangladesh to revisit my years there as a student, a colleague suggested I meet Sultana Kamal, much admired for decades of work on justice as a human rights defender.

But Kamal was not making many public appearances, because of threats from militants.

The story that emerged is a tale of authorities who, while attempting to appease some hardline religious groups, ended up compromising basic human rights principles.

In May, prime minister Sheikh Hasinas government, which has long claimed a commitment to secularism, caved to the extremist group Hefazat-e Islamis demands to remove a statue representing Lady Justice in front of the Supreme Court in Dhaka because it was deemed to be an un-Islamic religious object.

On May 28, Kamal argued during a television debate that by this logic no mosques should be permitted on the court premises. That prompted the Hefazat spokesman to call for Kamals arrest, and threaten that if she came out on the streets they would break every bone in her body. Kamal has said that after the threat was made, abusive postings appeared on Facebook, including doctored images of her being lynched.

While Kamal has since received police protection, the government has yet to publicly condemn the threats. On June 18, a lawyer served legal notice seeking her arrest for hurting religious sentiments of the Muslim majority in the country; however, Kamal has not been arrested.

These threats and claims of hurt sentiments are not new. They follow several lethal attacks by extremist groups on bloggers and activists for promoting secularism. Rather than condemn the attacks and arrest those responsible, officials responded by warning that hurting religious sentiments is a crime.

All this is happening against a background of increasing attacks on free speech by the state. Over the past two years, the government has cracked down on media and civil society.

The authorities restored Lady Justice to another part of the Supreme Court complex. But Bangladesh is on a dangerous course. The government needs to do much more to protect rights activists like Kamal and promote an environment where they can carry out their work free from threats and attacks. Appeasing religious extremists and silencing dissent will only lead to more violence.

Go here to read the rest:
Free Speech Under Fire in Bangladesh - Human Rights Watch

STEVENS POINT, Wis. (WSAW) -- While many disruptive protest have been making headlines on campuses nationwide, many students at University of Wisconsin- Stevens Point said it's a different story.

"I haven't seen it here on our campus here specifically," UWSP student Rachel Kleine said.

Nonetheless, the university is just one of several UW campuses that will be subject to the UW Free Speech bill recently passed by the Wisconsin Assembly, if it becomes law.

UWSP Provost and Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs Greg Summers said open discussion and debate is a crucial part of a college experience.

"That you could come on a college campus and say things that may be unpopular and debate and discuss, and disagree with one another, that's exactly what universities are about," Summers explained.

But he is not sold that the UW free speech bill is the solution to maintaining those ideals. He believes the legislation has good intentions but is wary of what may be unintended consequences as well, and may instead curb free speech for people who want to protest.

"We don't want anyone to feel intimidated when they express their views on campus, and I'm a little concerned this law may have some unintended consequences along those lines," Summers said.

Rather than suspend or expel, he believes balance may be the key.

"I think the articulation of that set of consequences in the form of a law is perhaps a bit heavy handed," Summers explained.

"Finding a good balance of what protests are allowed at campuses and at least allowing whatever they're protesting to still continue I think is important," Kleine added.

The common PR director for the UWSP Student Government Associations said the organization is monitoring and paying close attention to the bill, and gathering feedback from other students.

The bill heads to the Senate next. Governor Scott Walker has spoken positively of the idea.

More:
UWSP: Free speech bill: "Balance is key" - WSAW

According to the prosecution, Carter spent the two weeks before Roy's suicide texting him encouragement to kill himself. On July 12th, 2014, Roy drove to a remote Target parking lot and filled the cab of his truck with carbon monoxide from an external generator.

He reportedly called Carter while the truck filled with fumes. At one point, Roy changed his mind about committing suicide and exited the cab but went back in at Carter's urging. She then listened to him slowly die without calling emergency medical services for help. What's more, the prosecution only learned of this phone conversation only from texts sent between Carter and a friend weeks after the incident.

While courts have generally treated suicide as an act of free will, Judge Lawrence Moniz decided last week that Carter's actions (and subsequent inaction) influenced Roy's thinking enough to warrant her liability in his death. According to Massachusetts state law, involuntary manslaughter is defined as "an unlawful killing that was unintentionally caused as the result of the defendant's wanton or reckless conduct" and is punishable "by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than 20 years or by a fine of not more than $1,000 and imprisonment in jail or a house of correction for not more than two-and-one-half years."

This ruling is not sitting well with the Massachusetts branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). "It presents a number of problems, both from the criminal-justice standpoint and from a freedom-of-speech standpoint," ACLU of Massachusetts Legal Director Matthew Segal said. "For criminal justice, this is a very aggressive charge. You don't have to believe that what Ms. Carter said is appropriate. In fact, you can believe that what she said was awful and still believe that it isn't manslaughter."

Professor Robert Weisberg, faculty co-director at the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, isn't so sure. "I think it's a perfectly plausible interpretation of the involuntary-manslaughter statute," he said. "The attraction of it for the prosecutor was that, although we now have lots of very specific cyberbullying statutes in various states, there's nothing in our homicide statutes, generally, which limits the crime to a particular way of causing death. You have to cause death and you have to cause it with a certain mental state in which, in this case, it's a kind of version of recklessness."

From the free-speech standpoint, the ACLU is concerned that if this conviction is upheld, it may lead to "all kinds of other prosecutions." Legal issues aside, he worries that this prosecution may dissuade people from engaging in uncomfortable but necessary dialogues with their loved ones, such as discussions about end-of-life decisions.

"The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has seemingly committed itself to the view that should one spouse convince the other to commit suicide because, say, her spouse was in horrible pain and suffering, she could be found guilty of manslaughter," Segal argued. "It really shouldn't be within the prosecutor's discretion whether to charge them. ... And the mere possibility that this would be a crime in Massachusetts would make people afraid to even have that [end-of-life] discussion."

Here again, Weiberg disagrees. "My guess is that this will have very little effect on free speech," he said. "If anything, it's likely to embolden prosecutors" to try to imitate this interpretation in similar cases of suicide.

And whether this verdict even holds up on appeal is very much still up in the air. "There's a good chance that the case the conviction can be overturned," Weisberg said. "The boldest thing that the prosecutor did was argue that [Roy] would not have killed himself had it not been for her influence. Appellate-case law about causation makes it difficult to prove cause when there's a suicide. There are cases where somebody commits a horrible assault on somebody else, like a sexual assault, and then the victim of the assault commits suicide. This is a different kind of case. This is kind of persuasion."

The ACLU is also concerned that the youth of the commonwealth could be adversely affected by this ruling. Segal points out that the prosecution did not attempt to try Carter under more-constrained cyberbullying laws but rather a more expansive theory of what constitutes criminally negligent homicide.

"I don't remember the defense for Ms. Carter asking the judge to condone what she said; 17-year-olds across this country say all sorts of horrible things to each other and urge each other to do things that are unwise. The consequence is that all that talk could be charged as crimes. ... There's no limit to the kinds of crimes our children can be charged with."

However, it isn't that different from yelling fire in a crowded theater, Dr. Sameer Hinduja, professor of criminology and criminal justice at Florida Atlantic University and co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, argues. It's akin to joking about bomb plots on Capitol Hill. "Sometimes you do have certain situations where the bigger-picture goals call for censorship or a bit of control over what is being said," he said. "We don't want everyone to say just whatever they want."

Hinduja believes that Carter's words and text constituted cyberbullying, which he defines as "intentional and repeated harm inflicted through the use of electronic devices." Hinduja said that harm "is typically insults, name calling or threats, or are forms of embarrassment and humiliation."

What Carter did was "inducing him to feel awful enough about himself to the point that he took his own life, that would be harm," he said. "[Roy] was harmed psychologically and emotionally based on those words. He did research the methods and made some sort of a plan, but at some point he also wanted to not kill himself and demonstrated that as well," Hinduja added "So her words, not exclusively but maybe indirectly, led him to follow through" with his plan.

Cyberbullying is typically more of an offshoot or companion of physical bullying, Hinduja said, wherein the aggressor tends to be someone from school or the neighborhood who continues his attacks and harassment from the day on social media. "It's very easy to continue that cruelty online," Hinduja said.

Criminalization certainly didn't work on the war on drugs, but perhaps it could work in the war on being a jerk online. "I actually think if there were a legal intervention, that would make a difference [in moderating harassment and abuse online]," Weisberg said. "The involuntary-manslaughter case would be very rare (though, fortunately, very few people may end up like the victim here) but I think a serious threat of low-level cyberbullying convictions, misdemeanor convictions, could change behavior. I think that's probably the way to go."

So what's to be done to curb this behavior outside of criminalizing it? Hinduja hopes that social mores will change sufficiently to dissuade people from constantly encouraging each other to go die in various fires. If not, Hinduja said, "based on this verdict, maybe we're opening a Pandora's box, where if you do say something like that to another individual repeatedly" and can be identified by law enforcement, "maybe you share in the guilt or are culpable to some degree." The threat of prosecution could be sufficient to stifle this sort of harassment online.

Segal, however, doesn't think curbing such speech will be easily accomplished through censorship and threats of prison time. "We all know that even if there is a chilling effect [brought on by legal liabilities]," he said, "kids are going to continue to be kids."

More:
Death by text: How the Michelle Carter case will impact free speech - Engadget

The City of Minneapolis has established a hot line to report speech and conduct that are deemed hateful. The citys press release says:

Through its 311 service, the City of Minneapolis has opened a new hotline for reporting hate crimes, which are harassing behaviors motivated by prejudice.

That is wrong. Harassing behaviors may or may not be crimes; in many cases, depending on how the phrase is understood by people using the hot line, they probably arent.

The Director of Minneapoliss Department of Civil Rights, Velma Korbel, explains the rationale behind the new reporting system:

Since the general election, many of us have experienced, witnessed firsthand or heard of actions of: racism, xenophobia, sexism and bigotry directed at people here and in cities across the United States.

So this is all about the Resistance to President Trumps administration, a fact that is reaffirmed in the next paragraph.

In no uncertain terms, hate-motivated speech and actions have no place in Minneapolis nor will they be tolerated. Activities such as these are against the law.

No, they arent. Hate speech is, in general, protected by the First Amendment, as the Supreme Court reaffirmed only days ago. And what hate-motivated speech might be, I have no idea. Likewise with hate-motivated actions. If such actions are crimes, they certainly are against the law; if they are not crimes, they are not against the law. There is no general prohibition against saying or doing things that are motivated by hate, nor can there be.

No one is above the law.

An ironic observation, given that in this instance the City attempts to place itself (and perhaps certain categories of people expected to use the hot line) above the law.

More from the same Message to the Minneapolis Community by Ms. Korbel:

Minneapolis is committed to human rights and racial equity for anyone who lives, works, and visits our city. We want everyone to feel safe and welcome here. This department echoes Minneapolis mayor, Betsy Hodges resolve and commitment when she stated: I will not compromise the public safety of the people of Minneapolis to satisfy Trumps desire to put politics before public safety. Minneapolis is being built and strengthened by people from all over the world and I am grateful for their commitment to our city. I stand with them today and will continue to take that stand as the President-elect prepares to take office.

Again, it is all about Trump. Which makes you wonder whether expressions of support for President Trump and his agenda would be considered hate-motivated speech by those who man Minneapoliss hot line, or by the citys misguidedto give her the benefit of the doubtDirector of the Department of Civil Rights.

Follow this link:
Free Speech? Not In Minneapolis! - Power Line (blog)