We’ve gotten a lot more submissions to the Journal of Free Speech Law over the last month and a half than we had been getting before, and we’ve just accepted two of them (and are still considering a third): one of the accepted articles is on the history of Beauharnais v. Illinois (the group libel case), […]
In this week’s The Reason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, and Nick Gillespie discuss the Facebook Files, which revealed the considerable influence the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) wielded in regard to what users were allowed to say on Meta platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic. 0:55: The CDC silenced COVID-19 […]
From Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain’s opinion respecting rehearing en banc released today (and joined by Judges Sandra Ikuta, Ryan Nelson, and Lawrence VanDyke) in Tingley v. Ferguson: Is therapeutic speech speech? Does a tradition of licensing a given profession override all First Amendment limits on licensing requirements? The three-judge panel answered ‘no’ to the first question, […]
Resolution 21-01, modeled on the American Bar Association’s proposed Rule 8.4(g), would allow lawyers to be punished for “engag[ing] in … harassment,” defined as “in representing a client or operating or managing a law practice or in the course and scope of employment in a law practice, engag[ing] in conduct that the lawyer knows or […]
From Project Veritas v. Thibodeau, decided Friday by New York trial court judge Sabrina Kraus: Petitioner commenced this Article 75 Proceeding seeking a preliminary injunction in aid of arbitration. Petitioner asks that the court to prevent Respondent from publicly disclosing Petitioner’s confidential information and publicly disparaging Petitioner and its personnel, in what Petitioner alleges is […]
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis violated the First Amendment and the Florida Constitution when he suspended a progressive Tampa-area state attorney, a federal judge ruled today, but the judge found he did not have the authority to reinstate the prosecutor. U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Florida Robert Hinkle pilloried the DeSantis administration’s […]
Here’s the Summary of Argument: An interactive computer service’s automated recommendations qualify for statutory immunity under Section 230(c)(1). Congress enacted this policy choice in clear text, supported by powerful statutory context, including express findings and purposes that it wrote into the statute itself. And Congress did so in service of a national policy favoring free […]
A rule that Attorney General Merrick Garland issued in 2021 notionally requires people to do things that are plainly impossible. If they have been convicted of a sex offense, they must register with their state, even when the state neither requires nor allows them to do so. They also must supply the state with all […]
From the New York Times (Jennifer Schuessler & Marc Tracy): The Harvard Kennedy School reversed course on Thursday and said it would offer a fellowship to a leading human rights advocate it had previously rejected, after news of the decision touched off a public outcry over academic freedom, donor influence and the boundaries of criticism of Israel…. […]
“If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment,” the U.S. Supreme Court said in Texas v Johnson (1989), “it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” What that principle means in practice is that all sorts of vile […]