Daily Archives: March 31, 2021

By Matthew T. Mangino| Beaver County Times

In 1987, U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. wrote in a ruling striking down a Houston ordinance that made it unlawful to oppose or interrupt a police officer, "The freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state."

In spite of Justice Brennan's admonition, 34 years after the decision the Kentucky Senate approved a measure that would make it a crime to insult or taunt a police officer.

Senate Bill 211 would make it a misdemeanor offense for someone to taunt "a law enforcement officer with offensive or derisive words, or by gestures or other physical contact, that would have a direct tendency to provoke a violent response from the perspective of a reasonable and prudent person."

The ACLU called the legislation "an extreme bill to stifle dissent."

Kentucky is part of the Federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Sixth Circuit has jurisdiction over federal appeals arising from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee.

In 2017, a Taylor, Mich., police officer pulled over a woman for speeding but gave her a ticket for a lesser violation. As the woman drove off she flashed the officer her middle finger flipped him the bird, i.e. shot him the finger. The officer pulled her over a second time and amended the ticket to the more serious speeding offense, reported the Detroit News.

"Fits of rudeness or lack of gratitude may violate the golden rule," Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote. "But that doesn't make them illegal or for that matter punishable or for that matter grounds for a seizure."

Judge Sutton said that, if the allegations are true, the officer violated her right to be free from an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment, as well as her free speech rights under the First Amendment.

"Any reasonable officer would know that a citizen who raises her middle finger engages in speech protected by the First Amendment," the court said.

Not that the Kentucky Senate cares there are a series of cases over the last half-century that have found that insulting police officers is protected speech.

The Sixth Circuit found, in 1997, that an individual has a First Amendment right to shout "f--- you" and "flip off" a police officer from a moving vehicle. The court relied on a 1971 landmark Supreme Court decision that upheld the right of a man to wear a jacket that said "f--- the draft" into a courthouse.

In 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in favor of a New York man who sued after he was arrested for disorderly conduct after making an obscene gesture to a police officer. The court held that the "ancient gesture of insult is not the basis for a reasonable suspicion of a traffic violation or impending criminal activity."

Even without a statute prohibiting the insult of police officers, more and more police departments are getting creative. In Pennsylvania, the police are using the state's hate crime statute "ethnic intimidation" defined as "malicious intention toward the race, color, religion or national origin of another individual or group of individuals" against people who direct insults toward the police.

According to The Appeal, a Pittsburgh man being arrested called police "Nazis," "skinheads" and "Gestapo." The police charged him with a hate crime.

"This is completely ridiculous," Mary Catherine Roper, deputy legal director for the ACLU of Pennsylvania, told The Appeal in 2018. "This is not what the hate crime statute was for. This is criminalizing pure speech and that violates the First Amendment."

In deference to Kentuckians, not everyone is on board in the state Senate. Minority Leader Morgan McGarvey told the Lexington Herald-Leader, "We are criminalizing speech."

Matthew T. Mangino is a counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. He is a former Lawrence County district attorney. His book "The Executioner's Toll, 2010" was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at http://www.mattmangino.comand follow him on Twitter at @MatthewTMangino.

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Matthew T. Mangino: Kentucky wants to criminalize free speech - The Times

WHICH is worse, a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed or hacking off an innocent teachers head?

The question from talkRADIO host Julia Hartley-Brewer scarcely needed a seconds thought.

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For Muslim charity worker Mohammad Sajad Hussain last week it was debatable.

Hussain had just publicly named and seriously endangered the Batley schoolteacher who showed the cartoon during a lesson covering blasphemy. Some might call it a fatwa.

It is likely Hussain would have known the shocking fate of French schoolmaster Samuel Paty, slaughtered in the street near Paris just six months ago for showing pupils a similar cartoon.

He too was named online. His killer tracked him down and filmed himself waving the severed head.

Hussains on-air hesitation reveals the shocking cultural gulf between Muslim hard-liners, the British public and members of his own faith.

It has reopened a row over free speech and the explosion of dubious laws against so-called hate crimes.

Offence needs merely to be taken by an alleged victim or even an uninvolved observer for hate crime to be committed. This turns justice on its head.

The popular 29-year-old West Yorkshire teacher had gone out of his way to avoid offence, giving notice of his plan to display the image.

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Yet his career is in ruins despite his apology and support from pupils and parents, many of them Muslim.

One Muslim dad wrote: I would like to convey my support for the school and also the teacher. I am confident the teacher did not mean any offence.

A petition backing the rugby-playing family man has been signed by 50,000 people.

At the centre of the row is an image of the founder of Islam as a terrorist deeply offensive to Muslims who bar all images of the Prophet.

Staff at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo learned this the hard way, gunned down for publishing a similar cartoon in 2015.

This time, the image was shown during a lesson on blasphemy, part of the school curriculum. Other teachers had produced it previously without incident.

Angry protestors, parents and a local imam turned up at the school gates demanding, figuratively, the teachers head, saying he should be sacked on the spot.

After the Paty atrocity, police feared it might be taken literally and swept the teacher into hiding for his own safety.

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To his credit, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has stepped in, denouncing the mob protest as completely unacceptable.

Equalities chief Baroness Kishwer Falkner weighed in, branding the teachers treatment unacceptable and urging police to act. BBC presenter Nicky Campbell slammed the lunacy of blasphemy.

And atheist comic Ricky Gervais tweeted: What next? People being punished for insulting unicorns? Everyone has the right to believe anything they want. And everyone else has the right to find it f***ing ridiculous.

Free speech is no small thing. Without it, democracy dies.

At its heart lies the right to offend a principle which is being extinguished by human rights activists in the divisive culture wars on racism, sexism and gender definition.

Islam, far more than Christianity and Judaism, is an assertive faith. It demands respect from both believers and non-believers.

There have been calls for it to be protected by a specific hate law against Islamaphobia.

The clash with freedom of speech is inevitable. Which will prevail?

Gavin Williamson is planning new legislation to protect universities and schools from woke campaigners and the cancel culture. Staff will be given the right to sue if gagged.

Batley is an absolute test of whether we believe in freedom of speech, says a senior minister involved.

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Life or death decision

PERHAPS to his own surprise, Tory Europhile and arch-Remainer Tom Tugendhat found himself telling Sun readers this week they were right to vote for Brexit.

Not in so many words of course, but the Tory MP conceded there is one big advantage to leaving the European Union effectively the difference between life and death.

I would be prepared to offer this column space for diehards Michael Heseltine or Ken Clarke to follow suit and say whether they would argue today for Britain to rejoin this undemocratic gang of lethal incompetents.

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If you threaten people aggressively, you win more often than not. It is not always a physical threat. People simply get howled down.

The siege of Batley Grammar School may well be the acid test for Boris Johnsons love of Britains hard-won freedoms.

Headteacher Gary Kibbles instant and unequivocal apology does not offer grounds for optimism.

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Free speech is no small thing without it, our democracy dies... - The Sun

There were angry protests outside Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire after a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad was shown in class(Picture: PA)

The RE teacher suspended over a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad reportedly defended his right to freedom of speech in a heated telephone call with a parent.

The teacher, who has not been named,is believed to have told the parent British values allowed him to show the cartoon to his class of year nine students.

Protests erupted outside Bately Grammar School in West Yorkshire on Thursday after it was claimed a cartoon of Muhammad, thought to have previously been published by French satirical magazineCharlie Hebdo, was shown in a religious studies class.

Any depiction of the prophet is deeply offensive to Muslims but some have defended the use of the image using freedom of speech arguments.

According to the Mail Online, the teacher allegedly called an upset father who had left a message with the school asking to speak with him following the incident.

He told the parent that he had warned his pupils that some would find it offensive but his aim was to pose a question to his class.

He believed he was right to show the cartoon as he wanted to discuss whether the cartoonist was to blame or the terrorists who had committed murder over it in France in 2015.

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In a group Whatsapp message shared among parents and protesters who have demonstrated outside the school, the father said he was not satisfied with this explanation.

The messages, seen by Mail Online, read: I expressed I was not happy with his actions and he had caused offence to the community. He should have known better, after all these images caused international outrage.

He was not apologetic and was arrogant in his response that what he did was right. He stated that he knew some of the pupils would tell their parents.

The school has apologised for what happened and said the teacher has been suspended pending an independent formal investigation.

The teacher, 29, has allegedly gone into hiding, and has not been seen at his home for several days, according to neighbours.

Protesters say they will continue demonstrating until the teacher is sacked.

But past students and parents have defended him, saying hes been singled out and the image has been used as a resource by different teachers previously, without attracting the same controversy.

One parent told The Times: This was taught last year to my daughter by a different teacher. I know its been taught in other years, in other lessons. Why single this teacher out?

The protests have sparked a major debate in the country, with even the Education Secretary Gavin Williamson weighing in and condemning the threats and intimidation.

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Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick also called for the deeply unsettling scenes outside the school to come to an end.

It must be right that a teacher can appropriately show images of the Prophet Muhammad, he told the BBC.

In a free society, we want religions to be taught to children and for children to be able to question and query them.

Meanwhile, a petition to reinstate the teacher has over 44,000 signatures.

The organisers behind the petition claim to be students at the West Yorkshire school.

They said the teacher was trying to educate students about racism and blasphemy and was not racist and did not support the Islamophobic cartoons in any manner.

It added: This has got out of hand and due to this, students have missed out on lessons because of peaceful protestors .

The school was forced to close for the rest of the week after the protests started on Thursday.

A protester speaking on behalf of the Muslim community read out a statement outside of the school on Friday, in which he said: The teachers have breached the position of trust and failed their duty of safeguarding, and this issue must be addressed as a matter of urgency.

We do not accept that the school has taken this issue seriously, given that its taken them four days to merely suspend only one of the teachers involved.

He called on the entire British Muslim community to review the materials being taught in their childrens schools.

Dr Shazad Amin, deputy chair of Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND), said it had been helping several parents liaise with the school.

He said he saw no problem with blasphemy being discussed at the school but said the particular image shown to pupils was deeply offensive and furthered stereotypes and anti-Islamic tropes.

As a result, he said, people in the local community had a right to feel hurt and a right to feel angry but called for them to allow the matter to be properly investigated.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us atwebnews@metro.co.uk.

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Prophet Muhammad cartoon row: Teacher 'defended right to free speech' - Metro.co.uk

LISBON The Ohio Attorney Generals Office has indicated it intends to appeal the recent decision by visiting Judge David E. Stucki to dismiss violations of election law charges against John Gamble.

As a candidate for the county prosecutors office, Gamble had been accused of four counts of complicity to violate Ohios Little Hatch Act, which regulates the participation of civil service employees in partisan politics. Gamble had used photos on his campaign Facebook page, including at least one that pictured him with many law enforcement officers in the county and a caption Pictured here over 500 years of law enforcement experience standing with John Gamble. They have his back in this election because hes had their backs for the last 30 years.

Gamble was a longtime assistant county prosecutor.

Some of the officers were from East Liverpool, which has prospective officers apply by civil service. No charges were filed against the officers, but Gamble was charged with four counts of complicity to violate the Little Hatch Act.

Arguing on behalf of Gamble in early March, his defense attorneys, John Juhasz and Ronald Yarwood, had contended Gamble is not a classified employee and therefore not subject to the regulations of Ohios Little Hatch Act. Additionally, they had noted Gamble is entitled to the constitutional right to freedom of speech as well as associate with others.

Following arguments for and against dismissal, Stucki, a retired judge from Stark County who heard the case in county Municipal Court, had issued a written decision date March 8, which dismissed the complaint against Gamble.

In order for the State of Ohio to restrict/infringe on these individual freedoms, they must show a compelling state interest to do so, Stucki had written in regard to one of his reasons for dismissal. The states interest does not rise to that level herein.

Daniel M. Kasaris, the attorney from the Ohio Attorney Generals Office who had argued for the prosecution of the case, has now filed his intent to have the dismissal of the four misdemeanor charges appealed to the Seventh District Court of Appeals.

In his request, Kasaris said the issues he is asking the appeals court to determine are whether the allegations of violations of the Little Hatch Act were committed and whether by charging Gamble with complicity it violated his First Amendment right to free speech.

Juhasz commented on the case Tuesday, stating they really thought Stuckis decision was the only possible decision that could have been made and he was uncertain what kind of record the Ohio Attorney Generals Office intended to make to try to overturn it.

It will still be interesting to watch, Juhasz said.

djohnson@mojonews.com

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State appeals Gamble decision | News, Sports, Jobs - The Review - The Review

The hallmark of a healthy democracy is civil debate, protest, civic engagement, and an unwavering right to voice ones beliefs even when there is disagreement especially when there is disagreement. Free speech and assembly are fundamental to a functioning democracy. Their placement in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution implies their importance. It comes as a surprise then to see that the Missouri House is poised to pass a bill that would silence the voices of those rising in defense of Black lives by enacting criminal penalties on the right to protest.

Not only that, but it is particularly targeted at protests that we led in St. Louis this past summer as leaders of the protest group #ExpectUS.

We serve in the General Assembly and the United States House of Representatives. Yet, we have been called terrorists, thugs, and monsters for affirming what should be clear: Black lives matter. Theyve always mattered, but time and time again, generation after generation, Black folks have had to take to acts of protest to affirm our humanity and civil rights. Like our ancestors before us, we are both products of mass protests, taking to the streets demanding that our communities be heard and our lives protected. Our protest has always been an act of love.

We have organized together in a protest group that begins each protest with a giant circle of love, people dancing and clapping. A protest group that cares for one another and brings snacks and water for one another. One that is rooted in the Ferguson Uprising and one that continues to grow. In our ranks are public officials, clergy, local leaders, business owners, students, parents, and people of all races and socioeconomic backgrounds. Our protest is an act of love, but it is also a demand that elected leaders do more to ensure we no longer need to take to the streets. To absolve us of the fear that our loved ones will leave home and will not make it safely back. Both of us ran for office because the policies coming out of Jefferson City and Washington, D.C., not only fell short but failed to center the reality on the ground faced by so many people in our community so many people who look like us and share our pain.

SB 26 is a continuation of policies that fail to protect Black and brown communities. It must not pass the Missouri House of Representatives or be signed into law by Gov. Mike Parson. Rather than take up this bill, lawmakers should play a critical role in supporting and encouraging robust speech and protest. Ultimately, what gets lost in the consideration of this anti-democratic, anti-protest legislation is why we protest in the first place.

We protest because the St. Louis Police Department leads the nation in police killings per capita, disproportionately killing Black people. Year after year after year. Weve seen none of our demands met by our government.

We protest because Black lives are not safe in Missouri. They werent safe in 2014 when an officer in Ferguson murdered Mike Brown, Jr. They werent safe in 2015 in Mississippi County when Tory Sanders got lost, ran out of gas, and was effectively tortured to death in a jail cell hours later. They werent safe in 2018 when Black people were 91 percent more likely to be pulled over by the police across the state a number that has increased over the years. They werent safe in 2020 when police killed Donnie Sanders in Kansas City. They have never been safe under the violence of starvation wages that we disproportionately receive wages that must be increased to at least $15.

Some proponents of this legislation have said that it would keep protesters and the general public safe. But silencing dissent cements the status quo. And for Black people in Missouri, there is nothing more dangerous to our livelihoods than the status quo. If public safety is truly at the heart of this legislation, then the Missouri State Legislature must waste no time addressing the series of initiatives protesters and activists have proposed to remedy the cycles of violence that are so rampant in our state and in our communities.

We invite members of the state legislature to engage with us and our communities in a good faith effort to build a better Missouri. We appeal to the fundamental constitutional values of free speech and free assembly as we implore our leaders and Missourians everywhere to reject SB 26 and, instead, focus on building a more robust and inclusive democracy that meets the needs of Black Missourians who are ready and eager for a chance to build strong communities and enact policies that will truly keep our families safe. The right to assemble is the bedrock of any healthy democracy, and it must be protected at all costs, not rolled back.

Rep. Rasheen Aldridge represents HD 78 in the Missouri House; Congresswoman Cori Bush serves Missouris 1st congressional district.

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Opinion: The right to assemble is the bedrock of our democracy Vote NO on SB 26 - The Missouri Times