The Courier-Journal (Louisville) reports: Defense attorneys for two boys who pleaded guilty to assaulting a 17-year-old Savannah Dietrich have withdrawn their motion that she be held in contempt for tweeting the names of her attackers in defiance of a court order…. Emily Farrar-Crockett, deputy division chief of the public defender’s juvenile division and one of […]
Archive | Freedom of Speech
The Dark Side of Privacy
[UPDATE: The contempt motion has been withdrawn, though the gag order remains.] The Courier-Journal (Louisville) reports: Frustrated by what she felt was a lenient plea bargain for two teens who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting her and circulating pictures of the incident, a Louisville 17-year-old lashed out on Twitter. “There you go, lock me up,” […]
Acquittal of Man Who Stripped Naked at Airport as Protest Against TSA Screening
So reports The Portland Mercury: The judge ruled this afternoon that protester John Brennan is not guilty of incident exposure charges for stripping down at the PDX security station. The issue basically came down to whether Brennan’s striptease was meant to be a protest or whether, as the state’s prosecuting attorney argued, he retroactively claimed […]
Elane Photography, LLC v. Willock Petition for Review to the New Mexico Supreme Court
The petition is here; for more on the case, and why I think the New Mexico Court of Appeals decision is wrong, see here. See also this post by Hans Bader (CEI’s OpenMarket.org)
Stolen Valor Act Struck Down
By Jonathan H. Adler on June 28, 2012 10:19 am in First Amendment, Freedom of Speech, Knowingly False Statements of Fact
In United States v. Alvarez the Supreme Court has held that the Stolen Valor Act is unconstitutional. Justice Kennedy wrote for the Court, joined by the Chief Justice, and Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor. Justice Breyer, joined by Justice Kagan, concurred in the judgment concluding the law is unconstitutional as written, but also suggesting that a […]
A Free Speech Victory in Maryland
The peace order barring blogger Aaron Walker (aka Aaron Worthing) from blogging about Brett Kimberlin has been modified pending a hearing in July. As Popehat notes, the circuit order included a benchslap at the lower court judge, C.J. Vaughey, for disregarding the Supreme Court’s seminal First Amendment decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio. For background, see […]
Freedom of Speech and Information Produced Using Computer Algorithms
Prof. Tim Wu, writing in the New York Times yesterday, argues that the government should generally have a free hand in regulating speech produced by Google, Facebook, Amazon, and others when that speech is the product of “computerized decisions.” This is partly a response to an argument in a Google-commissioned white paper that I cowrote […]
FCC v. Fox Television Decided Narrowly on Lack-of-Fair-Notice Grounds
Right now, over-the-airwaves radio and television broadcasting is the stepchild of First Amendment law — a medium that the Court has viewed as uniquely less protected when it comes to content-based restrictions. Most significantly, in FCC v. Pacifica Foundation (1978) the Court upheld limits on vulgarity in broadcasting that it would have (and has) struck […]
Interesting Fair Use Case
Northland Family Planning Clinic v. Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (C.D. Cal. June 15, 2012) rejected a copyright claim, finding (I think correctly) that defendant’s use was a fair use as a matter of law. Northland Family Planning Clinic created a video (apparently this one) titled “Every Day, Good Women Choose Abortion,” which, true to its […]
Do Nude Drawings Sent to Your Five-Year-Old Daughter Appeal to “a Prurient Interest in Sex of Minors”
Utah law, like the law of many states, bans the distribution to minors of “harmful-to-minors” material (for more on this, see this post). The Utah statute reads, “Harmful to minors” means that quality of any description or representation, in whatsoever form, of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse when it: (i) taken as […]
State Constitutional Free Speech Vis-a-Vis Private Landowners
Apropos the post about the New Jersey homeowners’ association case, here’s a quick summary, as of a few years ago, of the approaches taken by the few states that have applied their state free speech clauses to limit not just government action but also some private landowner action: 1. Under California law, large multi-store shopping […]
N.J. Supreme Court: Homeowners’ Association May Not Ban Homeowners From Displaying Political Signs
So holds today’s opinion in Mazdabrook Commons Homeowners’ Ass’n v. Khan (N.J. June 13, 2012), interpreting the New Jersey Constitution. The New Jersey Supreme Court is one of the few state courts that has interpreted its state constitution as restricting at least some private property owners, such as privately owned shopping malls and private universities. […]
“[Not] Every Statement That Causes a Hearer Fear or Painful Memories Is … a Threat”
“[O]ur interpretation of the law of criminal threats must leave some room for speech that is less than perfectly sensitive.” So says the D.C. Court of Appeals (the highest court in D.C. analog to a state court system), reversing a conviction in In re S.W. (D.C. June 7, 2012). Naturally, such generalities don’t by themselves […]
Consulting on the Aaron Walker / Brett Kimberlin Case
I’m pleased to say that I’ll be consulting with Aaron Walker’s defense lawyer in the case I discussed last week, in which a Maryland judge issued a “peace order” — in other states, generally called a “restraining order” — that the judge seemed to interpret as limiting Aaron Walker’s blogging about Brett Kimberlin. (See, e.g., […]
Wedding Photographer May Be Required (on Pain of Legal Liability) to Photograph Same-Sex Commitment Ceremonies
So the New Mexico Court of Appeals held last week in the long-pending Elane Photography v. Willock (N.M. Ct. App. May 31, 2012). The court began by holding that the state law that bans sexual orientation discrimination in places of public accommodation applies to professional wedding photographers’ decisions not to photograph same-sex commitment ceremonies: Such […]