Campuses need scholars over activists! Teenage plaintiff stands up to hospital SLAPP threat! & more!
Bringing you the latest free speech news (11/10/24)
Story of the week
How to save free speech on campus (The Dispatch) by me
Our institutions of higher education should protect their activists, but they should also prioritize recruiting scholars. The ideal student should think more like a field anthropologist, someone who is trying to figure out where the other side is coming from, rather than a strident warrior in a battle of good versus evil. That open, curious, intellectually humble, and receptive mindset is the foundation of actual learning, and is critical to fostering an educational environment that lives up to its intended purpose.
This week in FIRE’s blog
Samson spoke out when the hospital fired his mother, Dr. Anne Yered, after she raised concerns about lagging pediatric-patient safety protocols. Northern Light Health responded to Samson’s writings by threatening to sue his mother for defamation, under the false accusation that she had ghostwritten Samson’s advocacy.
FIRE reminds Michigan town that residents have the right to ‘concealed carry’ campaign literature in polling places by Stephanie Jablonsky
Commitment to democracy doesn’t end at the ballot box by Carrie Robison
Columbia needs to stop doing politics and start doing higher education by
Columbia was the birthplace of the pro-Palestinian encampments that started this spring. Campus leaders, including then-President Minouche Shafik, handled the situation so poorly that it ended only when the NYPD stormed a building taken over by the protesting students and arrested more than a hundred of them—56 years to the day after they stormed the same building because of anti-war protests in 1968.
FIRE in the press!
What the First Amendment is for (Law & Liberty) by
Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton: Regulating Access to Adult Content Doesn’t Justify Flouting the First Amendment and Long-Established Precedent (FedSoc) by David Rubin
International free speech stories of the week
UK police arrest Israeli academic after pro-Palestine speech (Middle East Eye)
Swedish court jails far-right leader who burned Qur’an (The Guardian) by Miranda Bryant
London Calling: Ronnie’s First Amendment Roundup
Well, not a case, per se, but a case development this week. In the wake of the Supreme Court holding there is no social media exception to the First Amendment, and vacating a decision upholding a Texas law that aims to force viewpoint neutrality on the platforms (but also an Eleventh Circuit decision invalidating a similar Florida law), the Fifth Circuit returned the case to its originating Texas federal district court. This is among the first attempts by lower courts to apply the Supreme Court's elucidation in this case of how to bring facial pre-enforcement challenges to speech regulations framed as broadly as Texas’s law (like, in many respects, Florida’s similar law). Although a Supreme Court majority found it “necessary to say more about how the First Amendment relates to the laws’ content-moderation provisions, to ensure that … analysis proceeds on the right path in the courts below” – a need deemed “especially stark for the Fifth Circuit” – that court appears not particularly chastised. That’s especially so in its appearing to suggest a successful facial challenge is an uphill battle, and giving what feels like a lot of homework to NetChoice and the trial court. It instructs the court that NetChoice “cannot succeed on their First Amendment facial claims by focusing on” the law’s “‘heartland applications,’” and that it “expect[s] the district court to reject” that theory, as well as NetChoice’s position that the law’s parameters are “easy to draw.” Rather, citing “serious need for factual development,” especially around the platforms’ algorithms, and noting it is “hard to see how the district court could possibly determine whether each and every covered actor on each and every one of its covered services is facing an undue burden on its expression without considering” the “precise burdens on the specific online services,” the Fifth Circuit seems to have a heavy lift in mind for NetChoice’s “burden to develop a factual record to support” enjoining Texas’s law. It would therefore not be a surprise if it takes a while before we see the next substantive court decision in this case.
Song of the month
ERI readers (or as we like to call you, “Free Radicals”) may recall this song from a past weekend update, but since I’ve gained a lot of new followers since then, I thought the time was ripe to re-up this fantastic song and music video. Enjoy!