An interesting and generally quite correct decision from the Ninth Circuit. The facts: On March 24, 2003, Plaintiffs Paul Kulas, a Bio-Ethical Reform employee, and Thomas Padberg, a Bio-Ethical Reform volunteer, drove to Dodson Middle School in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Kulas drove a truck that displayed the [large, graphic] photographic images of aborted fetuses […]
Search results for ""heckler's veto""
The Heckler’s Veto at Virginia Commonwealth University:
Meryl Yourish reports: A student group called Supporters of a Safe Israel at Virginia Commonwealth University wants to bring the [very controversial] Daniel Pipes to VCU for a lecture. However, due to the current anti-Israel climate on many college campuses, whenever a group brings a pro-Israel speaker, the colleges demand extra security due to the […]
Ohio School Apparently Banning Pro-Gay-Rights T-Shirt
Here’s the shirt, as photographed by one of the students who organized this: U.S. News & World Report reports: The debate at Celina High School started after two female high school students celebrated the high school’s “Twin Day” last week by wearing shirts to school that read “Lesbian 1” and “Lesbian 2” on the back. […]
Not Safe to Display an American Flag in an American High School
By Eugene Volokh on November 10, 2011 9:46 am in Freedom of Speech at K-12 Schools, Freedom of Speech Restricted by Thugs
Dariano v. Morgan Hill Unified School District (N.D. Cal.), decided the day before yesterday, upholds a California high school’s decision to forbid students from wearing American flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo. (See here and here for more on this case.) The decision might well be correct under Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School […]
“Islam Is of the Devil” T-Shirts in Junior High School and High School
Sapp v. School Board of Alachua County (N.D. Fla. Sept, 30, 2011), which was just made available on Westlaw today, holds that (1) a public school properly restricted the wearing of “Islam is of the Devil” T-shirts because they led to substantial disruption, and (2) the school’s broader policy banning “clothing or accessories that … […]
Return on Investment of Thuggery
Some of the comments to the Thugs Win Again post point out that there might not have been any specific threats that led to the Mansfield officials’ decision to kick out the an anti-radical-Islam / possibly anti-Islam and anti-Muslim speech. (The speech was on government property, but in a limited public forum that had generally […]
New Jersey Public Transit Employee Fired for Blasphemy
By Eugene Volokh on September 15, 2010 1:55 am in "Hate Speech", Blasphemy, Freedom of Speech, Religion and the Law
The New York Daily News reports: [Derek Fenton, t]he protester who burned pages from the Koran outside a planned mosque near Ground Zero has been fired from NJTransit, sources and authorities said Tuesday…. “Mr. Fenton’s public actions violated New Jersey Transit’s code of ethics,” an agency statement said. “NJ Transit concluded that Mr. Fenton violated […]
A Sad Victory for Thuggery in Texas
By Eugene Volokh on March 29, 2010 4:57 pm in Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Speech at Colleges and Universities
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reports: A student performance of an excerpt from Corpus Christi, a play positing Jesus Christ as a gay man, was canceled this past Friday at Tarleton State University (TSU) in Texas amid controversy and calls for censorship. The performance of the excerpt, which was to be directed by […]
Shouting Fire in a Crowded Theater:
People often argue some speech is unprotected by analogizing to shouting fire in a crowded theater. (Here’s the most recent example in the comments.) But of course shouting fire in a crowded theater is often constitutionally protected. For instance, if there is a fire, shouting fire may be good. (It may sometimes not be good, […]
As Professor Shmoe Says:
Here’s a tentative conjecture I have about effective legal writing: Legal writing tends to be better if you give scholars you quote credit in footnotes, not in the text. Thus, for instance, Professor X has insightfully expressed the argument that the disruption inquiry subjects speech to a “heckler’s veto”; that is, the “content- or viewpoint-based […]
Seemingly Troubling Behavior from NYU:
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a group whose accounts I have generally found quite accurate, reports (see here for the version with links): In violation of its own policies, New York University (NYU) is refusing to allow a student group to show the Danish cartoons of Mohammed at a public event tonight. Even […]
You Can’t Say That! in England:
Where America is heading, if the First Amendment is found to have a “hostile environment” exception: A UNIVERSITY lecturer who claimed that black people were less intelligent than whites was suspended from his post yesterday. Frank Ellis, a lecturer in Russian and Slavonic Studies, was sent home on full pay by the University of Leeds, […]
Two Reactions to the Gay Marriage Discussion:
An e-mail that I got today: Thank you . . . for inviting Maggie Gallagher to guest-blog at your website this week . . . . While it is true my first instinct would be to reflexively disagree with one such as Ms. Gallagher should she write that “water is wet,” I instead find myself […]
“Addicted to the Courts” — a Reminder to Liberals, Libertarians, and Conservatives:
NYU law professor Burt Neuborne — who has been, among other things, National Legal Director of the ACLU and Special Counsel to the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund — warns his fellow liberals in an article in The Nation not to rely too much on victories in court. He writes: In recent years, many […]
Speech in Britain:
According to a British newspaper, A PREACHER who spoke out against the “sin” of homosexuality — inflaming a Bournemouth crowd and sparking a furore over freedom of speech — was rightly convicted of a public order offence, top judges have ruled. . . . The late Mr Hammond, a preacher for 20 years, was prosecuted […]