Category Archives: First Amendment

Attorney talks First Amendment rights and the SAE video
Bob Nelon, a leading resource on Media and First Amendment Law issues, looks at First Amendment issues regarding OU dismissing students for their part in the racist video.

By: NewsOK

Follow this link:
Attorney talks First Amendment rights and the SAE video - Video

13-15791 Michael Oster v. County Of Solano
Michael Oster, a former sheriff #39;s deputy, appeals from the district court #39;s Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) dismissal of his action alleging a First Amendment retaliation claim against his former...

By: United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

See the article here:
13-15791 Michael Oster v. County Of Solano - Video

Vietnam War Symposium: They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967
A March 10 symposium on the Vietnam War was held at the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt, based on "They Marched Into Sunlight," a book by David Maraniss. Maraniss, Distinguished Visiting...

By: Vanderbilt University

Follow this link:
Vietnam War Symposium: They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 - Video

The Supreme Court's interpretation of the First Amendment would protect even the racist chant at the University of Oklahomabut it shouldn't.

Members of a fraternity at the University of Oklahoma were recently filmed chanting that theyd rather see a black student lynched than as a member of their clan. The now viral video of dapper, privileged white men shouting, There will never be a nigger at SAE, you can hang him from a tree reminds us of our greatest national shame. The chant has been roundly condemned as abhorrent. But after university president David Boren announced the expulsion of two students leading the chants, prominent legal scholars from the right and left have come to their defense. The university is a public institution, they say, and punishing the students for what they saidno matter how vileviolates the First Amendments commitment to uninhibited, robust, and wide-open discourse.

Oklahoma could make a decent argument that the students chant created a hostile educational environment and was thus unprotected speech, but these scholars are likely correct as a predictive matter. If this situation were litigated before the current Supreme Court, the students would almost certainly win. The frat boys howls are reminiscent of the Westboro Baptist Churchs God hates fags protests near military funerals, which the Supreme Court protected a few years ago. And while public university hate-speech codes have never been litigated at the Supreme Court, they have been trounced in lower courts.

A Brief and Recent History of Bigotry at Fraternities

We are told the First Amendment protects the odious because we cannot trust the government to make choices about content on our behalf. That protections of speech will inevitably be overinclusive. But that this is a cost we must bear. If we start punishing speech, advocates argue, then we will slide down the slippery slope to tyranny.

If that is what the First Amendment means, then we have a problem greater than bigoted frat boys. The problem would be the First Amendment.

No one with a frontal lobe would mistake this drunken anthem for part of an uninhibited and robust debate about race relations. The chant was a spew of hatred, a promise to discriminate, a celebration of privilege, and an assertion of the right to violenceall wrapped up in a catchy ditty. If the First Amendment has become so bloated, so ham-fisted, that it cannot distinguish between such filth and earnest public debate about race, then it is time we rethink what it means.

The way we interpret the First Amendment need not be simplistic and empty of nuance, and was not always so. The Supreme Court unanimously held over eighty years ago that those words which by their very utterance inflict injury are no essential part of any exposition of ideas. And in 1952 the Court upheld an Illinois statute punishing false or malicious defamation of racial and religious groups. These rulings, while never officially reversed, have shrunk to historical trinkets. But they mark a range of the possible, where one can be a staunch defender of full-throated discourse but still recognize the difference between dialogue and vomitus.

When frat boys delight in singing about lynching in Oklahoma, or loop a noose around the statue of James Meredith at Ole Miss, or publish a rape guide at Dartmouth, the First Amendment tells us our remedy to these expressions of hatred is to grimace and bear it. Or ignore it. Or speak out against it. But punish it we cannot. That would go too far; we would slide down the slippery slope to tyranny.

Those not targeted by the speech can sit back and recite how distasteful such racism or sexism is, and isnt it too bad so little can be done. Meanwhile, those targeted by the speech are forced to speak out, yet again, to reassert their right to be treated equally, to be free to learn or work or live in an environment that does not threaten them with violence. The First Amendments reliance on counterspeech as remedy forces the most marginalized among us to bear the costs of the bigots speech. Counterspeech is exhausting and distracting, but if you are the target of hatred you have little choice. Speak up! Remind us why you should not be lynched. Speak up! Remind us why you should not be raped. You can stay silent, but that internalizes the taunt. The First Amendment tells us the government cannot force us either to remain silent or to speak, but its reliance on counterspeech effectively forces that very choice onto victims of hate speech.

Continue reading here:
The Limits of Free Speech

Civics Class 1st Hour "First Amendment"
This was a video for a civics class.

By: Bailey luckett

Continue reading here:
Civics Class 1st Hour "First Amendment" - Video

First Amendment advocates want more marathon bombing trial video released
First Amendment advocates are fighting to have more of the video and photos being shown in the Boston Marathon bombing trial released to the public. The vide...

By: WCVB Channel 5 Boston

Read more here:
First Amendment advocates want more marathon bombing trial video released - Video

My project for the First Amendment #2 project

By: shelbychristineflint

Link:
My project for the First Amendment #2 project - Video

ACLU watches as KingCast delivers First Amendment smackdown on SJC 1:19 cameras in court.
http://christopher-king.blogspot.com/2012/03/kingcast-watches-as-clifford-pisano.html Hearing on Wednesday 28 March 2p. http://christopher-king.blogspot.com/...

By: mr rzd Putra

See the original post here:
ACLU watches as KingCast delivers First Amendment smackdown on SJC 1:19 cameras in court. - Video

RTDNA/F Executive Director Mike Cavender on the 25th Annual First Amendment Awards

By: RTDNA

Original post:
RTDNA/F Executive Director Mike Cavender on the 25th Annual First Amendment Awards - Video

University of Oklahoma President David Boren has expelled two members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity on his campus for leading a horrifying racist chant. Does his decision violate their First Amendment rights? And if it does, what's wrong with this picture, in which a public university wouldn't be able to sanction students who not only bar blacks from their organization, but also refer to lynching in the process?

A public university is bound by the First Amendment because it's an organ of the state. Admittedly, there is something weird about this fact, because a public campus isn't inherently different from a private one with respect to educational function and goals. Some strange free-speech anomalies can arise from treating a university like the government. For example, professors sanction speech based on its content all the time, by grading wrong answers lower than right ones. But usually free speech bars such content discrimination.

Discipline is another anomaly. A university is meant to be a community of learning, and making such a community work requires rules of decorum that are more restrictive than those that should apply in the public square. The First Amendment generally guarantees us the right to yell, scream, insult, offend, condemn and denounce. None of these forms of speech belong in the classroom, and few belong on a well-functioning campus.

In a perfect world, there might be a broad First Amendment exemption for public campuses. But there isn't so Boren's decision has to be judged by First Amendment standards.

Applying ordinary free-speech doctrine, the expulsion looks unconstitutional, as professor Eugene Volokh has pointed out. Racist speech is still protected speech under the First Amendment, no matter how repulsive. The fraternity can be banned for race discrimination, which is prohibited conduct. Speaking in favor of discrimination, however, is generally protected.

But Boren's explanation for the expulsion rests on a different theory. He said specifically that the students were being expelled for their "leadership role in leading a racist and exclusionary chant, which has created a hostile educational environment for others."

The important words here are "hostile educational environment." Under federal anti-discrimination law, as interpreted by the Department of Education, a university has an affirmative duty to guarantee students an educational environment in which they are free of hostility based on race or sex.

You may have heard about this principle in connection with Title IX, which prohibits discrimination based on sex. The law has similarly been interpreted by the Education Department to require universities to protect students against a hostile educational environment based on sex discrimination, including sexual harassment.

In the business context, the analogy would be to an employer's obligation to protect against a hostile workplace environment.

So Boren was saying that the students are being expelled not for their opinions per se, but because their speech was a form of discriminatory conduct that would create a hostile educational environment for black students. Given that the speech was literally designed to inculcate the value of racial discrimination by making pledges recite their commitment never to admit a black member to the fraternity, this conclusion seems plausible. Removing the chant leaders from campus is aimed to fulfill the educational goal of creating a nonhostile educational environment.

See the article here:
Balancing the First Amendment vs. racist chants at the University of Oklahoma