This one is Freeman v. Morris (D. Me. Dec. 7, 2011), which dealt with the Occupy Augusta encampment. As with the other cases, the court held that the Supreme Court’s Clark v. CCNV (1984) decision is dispositive. Clark also involved people claiming a right to demonstrate in a park by putting up a tent city […]
Archive | Freedom of Speech
Suppression of Allegedly Offensive Speech
The New York Daily News reports: More than 100 Occupy Wall Street demonstrators stormed the set for “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” across from the Manhattan State Supreme Courthouse, shutting down production of an OWS-themed episode. “We made it so that they could not exploit us and that’s awesome,” said Tammy Schapiro, 29, of […]
Proposed Constitutional Amendment Would Ban Editorials About Candidates or Ballot Measures by Nearly All Newspapers
By Eugene Volokh on December 9, 2011 3:16 am in Freedom of Speech, Restrictions on Campaign Contrbs. and Expenses
That’s one of the effects of HJR 90, proposed by Reps. Theodore Deutch, Peter DeFazio, Alcee Hastings, and Jim McDermott, and a similar Senate proposal by Sen. Bernie Sanders: Section 1. The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons and do not extend to for-profit corporations, limited […]
Police Are Entitled to Evict Occupy Boston
So holds today’s Occupy Boston v. City of Boston (Mass. Super. Ct. Dec. 7, 2011) (see this Boston Herald news story): The city’s content-neutral ban on overnight sleeping in parks is consistent with the First Amendment. This seems to me to be the clearly correct result, given the Supreme Court’s decision in Clark v. CCNV […]
“The Result Is a Stew of Confusion and Hypocrisy Unworthy of Such a Proud Agency as the SEC”
That’s from Judge Rakoff’s opinion in SEC v. Vitesse Semiconductor Corp., 771 F. Supp. 2d 304 (S.D.N.Y. 2011), which was decided in March but which I just ran across. First the background: Long before 1972, the S.E.C. had already begun entering into consent decrees in which the defendants neither admitted nor denied the allegations. This […]
Writer Enjoined from Publishing Stories Based on Contractually Confidential Material Learned While Working as a Law Student Intern
From Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center v. Marzano-Lesnevich (E.D. La. Nov. 23, 2011): Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich served as an unpaid summer law clerk at the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center (“LCAC”) while she was a law student at Harvard University in 2003. LCAC is a nonprofit organization providing legal representation to indigent capital defendants. As a summer law […]
Court Grants Temporary Restraining Order Against Possible Removal of Occupy Boston Encampment
The decision came in Occupy Boston v. City of Boston (Mass. Super. Ct. Nov. 17, 2011); the hearing on the preliminary injunction is set for Dec. 1. The First Amendment analysis in the decision is quite thin: The court concludes that the plaintiffs have the requisite likelihood of success on their First Amendment claim because […]
Judge Upholds Eviction of Occupy Wall Street
From In re Application of Waller (N.Y. trial ct. Nov. 15, 2011): It would appear that Zuccotti Park is a privately owned public-access plaza, created in 1968 by a City Planning special permit issued pursuant to then existing authority of the New York City Zoning Resolution, which encouraged the creation of space for public use […]
Court Rejects Occupy Sacramento’s Challenge to Ordinance Barring Park Use Between 11 pm and 5 am
The case is Occupy Sacramento v. City of Sacramento (E.D. Cal. Nov. 4, 2011) (just posted a few days ago on Westlaw); technically, the decision holds that Occupy Sacramento hasn’t shown a likelihood of success on the merits — the standard used when plaintiffs seek a temporary restraining order — but the court’s reasoning suggests […]
Interesting Threat-of-Future-Bad-Conduct Case
In the Matter of the Detention of Danforth (Wash. Nov. 10, 2011) raises an interesting question about when someone with a history of sex crimes can be coercively incarcerated as a sexually violent predator based on his statement that he is worried that he’ll commit another crime. The facts: Danforth, “a 64-year-old, mildly retarded blind […]
Tattoos as Speech
The act of tattooing is generally protected by the First Amendment, holds Coleman v. City of Mesa (Ariz. Ct. App. Nov. 3, 2011, following a Ninth Circuit decision from last year and disagreeing with several federal district court decisions and appellate decisions from Indiana, New York, and South Carolina. The reasoning sounds quite right to […]
Publicly Criticize Discrimination Lawsuit Against You — Risk a Retaliation Lawsuit Based on Your Speech
That’s what Booth v. Pasco County (M.D. Fla. Oct. 28, 2011) concludes. Two fire department employees sued their employer for discrimination and harassment; they asked their union for help, but the union declined. The employees then filed an EEOC charge against the union for discrimination, to which the union responded by circulating to its members […]
“Three Young People Talking About Bisexuality Were Kicked off a Spokane Transit Authority Bus Last Month”
The Spokane Transit Authority just apologized for the incident; I quote the Spokane Spokesman-Tribune article: Two women in their 20s and a teenage boy were talking among themselves about a friend’s sexual orientation during a bus ride on Oct. 20. After other passengers got off the bus, the young people got into a dispute with […]
French Weekly Publishes Cartoon of Mohammed, Gets Firebombed
Agence France Press reported: The offices of a French satirical newspaper that published a special Arab Spring edition with the Prophet Mohammed on the cover as “guest editor” were destroyed in a suspected firebomb attack Wednesday. The attack came after Charlie Hebdo renamed the weekly newspaper Charia (Sharia) Hebdo for the occasion and featured a […]
May Judges — Elected in Partisan Elections — Chair Political Caucuses?
This question is part of the general matter of the First Amendment rights of elected judges who are required to be political and yet expected to be in certain ways apolitical; In re Young (N.Y. Comm’n on Judicial Conduct Oct. 7, 2011) has a long discussion in a concurrence that says New York’s elected trial […]