From the Gilroy Dispatch: Five Live Oak High School students’ First Amendment rights were challenged this morning when they were asked to leave school because they donned American flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo. Officials at the school chose not to comment on the situation, but one student said an official called the T-shirts “incendiary.” […]
Archive | Freedom of Speech
California Court Rejects Santa Barbara Beach Club’s Attempts to Suppress Criticism
An interesting unpublished decision, handed down Monday. The court’s opinion strikes me as clearly correct, both in rejecting the plaintiff’s unsound constitutional tension method argument and in more broadly rejecting the defamation claim and related tort claims. As the court concludes, “Residents of a community seeking to express their disagreement with what they perceive to […]
Street Preacher Arrested in England for Public Statements That Homosexuality is a Sin
From the Daily Mail: [Dale McAlpine] was charged with using abusive or insulting words or behaviour contrary to the Public Order Act 1986…. Mr Mcalpine[ and two others were preaching and leafletting in] the pedestrianised shopping precinct in the centre of Workington…. Mr Mcalpine said a woman came up to him [as he was leafletting] […]
Flag Desecration
In Fall 2007, I blogged about a flag desecration prosecution involving the Phelpsians: [Shirley Phelps-Roper] appeared in Sarpy County Court to answer charges that she mutilated a flag and put her child in danger while protesting at the funeral of a Bellevue soldier…. According to Bellevue police, Phelps-Roper had her 10-year-old son stomp on an […]
Supreme Court Agrees to Review Constitutionality of Ban on Distributing Violent Video Games to Minors
The opinion below is Video Software Dealers Ass’n v. Schwarzenegger (9th Cir. Feb. 20, 2009) (see here for my brief summary of that opinion). Should be a very important First Amendment case, and on a subject — speech to minors — that the Court has discussed relatively rarely. Hope to have more on this later […]
Criminal Conviction in England for Leaving Anti-Religious Leaflets in Airport Prayer Room
By Eugene Volokh on April 25, 2010 12:37 am in "Hate Speech", Freedom of Speech, Religion and the Law
Harry Taylor was convicted of “causing religiously aggravated harassment, alarm or distress,” and sentenced to six months in jail (suspended for two years), 100 hours of community service, and 250 pounds in costs; he was also barred from “carrying religiously offensive material in a public place.” A few details on the leaflets, from Asian News […]
(Maybe) Racist Vanity Plates and the First Amendment
The Washington Post reports: The owner of a Ford truck bearing the license plate 14CV88 will have to find a new message after the DMV on Wednesday canceled its earlier approval of that series of letters and numbers. A photo of the truck hit the Web a few days ago, went viral on car and […]
State v. Wetmore (Conn. 1802)
A very interesting case, which was to my knowledge not reported in any print reporter, but which was covered in the Litchfield Monitor, Sept. 8, 1802, at 3 (some paragraph breaks added): At the Superior Court, which sat in this Town and rose last week, Maj. Seth Wetmore of Winchester, was tried and found guilty […]
Official Miami-Dade Transit Approval of the “Leaving Islam” Ads
The Miami-Dade County Attorney’s Office got back to me in response to my e-mail, and confirmed that the ad has indeed been approved: Dear Mr. Shilling: Please be advised that CBS Outdoor failed to comply with Sections 4.01 and 4.02 of Contract No. TR03-ADV “Advertising Contract,” specifically, CBS did not obtain approval from the Miami-Dade […]
Canadian University Restricting Graphic Posters That Compare Abortion to Genocide
By Eugene Volokh on April 21, 2010 1:20 pm in Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Speech at Colleges and Universities
From the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: The University of Calgary is threatening to expel a group of students who refused to move a graphic anti-abortion display on campus…. [In november 2008, the group] refused university administrators’ requests to make the posters [of aborted fetuses] — which compared abortion to the Holocaust and the genocide in Rwanda […]
First Amendment Exceptions and History
The Court has repeatedly held that some kinds of speech is categorically excluded from First Amendment protection (at least setting aside certain kinds of content-based discriminations within those exceptions, see R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, which I won’t discuss here). The standard list is obscenity, incitement, libel (or, more precisely, false statements of fact), […]
The Future of “Serious Value” Safe Harbors
The legislature bans a certain kind of speech — for instance, depictions of animal cruelty, or publication of leaked trade secrets — but recognizes that the ban would on its face be very broad, and would cover certain kinds of journalism, art, research, and the like. The legislature therefore exempts works which have “serious religious, […]
United States v. Stevens: A Brief Analysis, Plus the Future of Animal Cruelty Depiction Bans
In today’s United States v. Stevens decision, the Court struck down on overbreadth grounds 18 U.S.C. § 48, which reads: (a) Whoever knowingly creates, sells, or possesses a depiction of animal cruelty with the intention of placing that depiction in interstate or foreign commerce for commercial gain, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned […]
Big First Amendment win in United States v. Stevens
At issue: a federal statute bans commercials depictions of “animal cruelty,” namely a depiction “in which a living animal is intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded, or killed,” if killing or other action violates the law where the “the creation, sale, or possession takes place.” The statute would therefore outlaw the sale in the United States […]
Wise Words About Prosecutorial Discretion and Speech Restrictions
After a long discussion of the breadth of the speech restriction involved in the case, Chief Justice Roberts’ majority in United States v. Stevens goes on: Not to worry, the Government says: The Executive Branch construes §48 to reach only “extreme” cruelty, and it “neither has brought nor will bring a prosecution for anything less,” […]