FCC won’t let ABC be, Gwar draws Secret Service ire, Battle for Your Brain wins Ashurbanipal award, & more!

Bringing you the latest free speech news (6/28/26)

Story of the week

• Tell the government: Hands off our TV stations

The American people don’t need Brendan Carr to appoint himself as the nation’s speech police. Whether the FCC is targeting The View, conservative talk radio, or your local TV station, the danger is the same: When the government exerts power over editorial decisions, broadcasters are pressured to follow only the government-approved narratives. Viewers have less choice, see fewer perspectives, and hear fewer voices.

• Cosmos Grants are back! (Cosmos Institute)

Truth is found in the open, by many people testing each other’s claims. AI can replace that contest with a single confident answer, and the disagreement that catches error begins to thin out.

• Gwar you kidding me? Secret Service reportedly investigates metal band for mock Trump execution by Angel Eduardo

Despite the anger it inspired among some Trump supporters, and despite drawing the attention of the Secret Service, Gwar’s onstage antics are First Amendment-protected speech. While true threats aren’t protected, a true threat is a serious expression of intent to commit unlawful violence against an individual. It doesn’t include hyperbole, satire, or artistic expression that simply references or depicts violence, however provocative it may be.

This week in ERI

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This week in Expression

• J. Edgar Hoover and the war on dissent by Aaron Terr

• The ‘papers, please’ era of the internet will decimate your privacy by Sarah McLaughlin

• Cassius Marcellus Clay brought cannons to a free press fight by Angela Erickson

• How does the First Amendment apply to AI? by Tyler Tone

Far from a simple probabilistic machine, AI models are the direct result of human judgments about what information it should absorb, what values it should prioritize, what tone it should adopt, and what kinds of answers it should avoid.

• Law professors say they support free speech. Many are afraid to practice it by Nate Honeycutt

This week in FIRE’s blog

• STATEMENT: ICE tracked down a New York woman who posted information she saw in a newspaper. Why her fight is everyone’s fight.

A free America doesn’t dispatch federal law enforcement agents to intimidate someone for an Instagram post of publicly available information. Free speech is the bedrock of a free society, and the First Amendment squarely prohibits ICE agents from intimidating Americans for nothing more than repeating information from a newspaper report. As we approach the 250th anniversary of our independence from England, where police now hassle residents over social media posts, let’s not follow their lead.

• VICTORY: FIRE, press freedom advocates win settlement over California law prohibiting anyone from sharing lawfully obtained information about sealed arrest records

“The First Amendment right to publish lawfully obtained information on matters of public concern is a cornerstone of an informed public, and California’s lawyers looked at the law and recognized it was indefensible under the First Amendment,” Steinbaugh said. “California’s legislature should follow their lead by rescinding this provision.”

• UW-Madison barks up the wrong tree by investigating student group for beagle rescue flier

FIRE in the press!

• Oakland County’s Adopt-a-Road controversy is a First Amendment lesson (The Detroit News) by Jeff Zeman

But if the government prohibited speech every time it made someone uncomfortable, free speech would mean little. Public colleges could shut down both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian speakers. High schools could censor students for supporting or opposing ICE. Police could throw people in jail for posting a meme about the president. The First Amendment protects all of us from all of that. Protecting our free speech rights means sometimes standing up for speech we don’t like — not demanding it be taken down.

London Calling: Ronnie’s First Amendment Roundup

• Merriott v. City of Bossier City

Fifth Circuit revives First Amendment challenge to city council public-meeting open-comment speech restrictions all-too-frequently maintained by local bodies, such as against “personal,” “impertinent” or “slanderous” remarks

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed the dismissal of First Amendment claims brought by a Bossier Parish (La.) online journalist and City Council meeting participant against a public-comment policy that purports to ban “personal,” “impertinent,” “slanderous,” or “boisterous” remarks, holding he sufficiently alleged the restrictions are unconstitutionally overbroad, vague, and viewpoint-based.

The court deemed the facial overbreadth challenge to the personal remarks ban to be plausibly alleged, holding it “captured nothing more than bold criticism of City Council members,” in contravention of the “bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment ... that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” Based on “the ordinary meaning of ‘personal remarks,’” the court held, the policy “prohibits speakers from uttering an infinite number of protected, relevant statements or questions,” including: “(1) using a councilmember’s name for the record; (2) mentioning that a councilmember may have a personal stake in the outcome of a vote; (3) stating that a councilmember engaged in a corrupt act; (4) highlighting that a councilmember had recently been convicted of a crime; (5) claiming that a councilmember lied to the public; (6) suggesting that a councilmember had a conflict of interest; and (7) bringing to public attention that a councilmember had been sued—just to name a few.” In short, the court held the policy’s “possible applications are unquantifiable, especially when not harnessed by any limiting principle” and insofar as it “forbids a citizen from noting that a councilmember has—even questionably—done anything that may be relevant to the public.”

The court similarly held that in barring “impertinent” remarks – i.e., those “given to or characterized by insolent rudeness” or “not restrained within due or proper bounds especially of propriety or good taste” – the policy “runs afoul of the Constitution,” because it “is so unbounded and covers a substantial amount of core First Amendment activity in relation to its legitimate sweep.” “With no limiting principle, this provision effectively allows the City Council to decide which comments are permissible at its whim,” because: “If a councilmember is offended by comments that the Council does ‘not have the citizenry’s best interest in mind,’ or it is ‘breaking the law,’ or ‘not listening to the demands of its constituents,’ the Council could simply silence the speaker.” In the same vein, in banning “slanderous” comments, “used in the same way against the same backdrop” of New York Times v. Sullivan and its progeny, the policy “creates the same chill” on speech the Supreme Court identified, so, “standing alone, this proscription is overbroad.”

The court also holds “a standalone prohibition on ‘becom[ing] boisterous’ is too broad to be constitutionally permissible.” Under its “expansive definition” that “refers to both traditional speech and conduct, … banging one’s hand on the podium, emphatic hand gestures, pointing, crying, clapping, or simply shifting one’s tone could trigger application … as could any remark deemed ‘rowdy’ or inflammatory.” As with the personal remarks ban, the court held, “potential applications are limitless.”

The court next held the constitutional vagueness challenges to be plausibly pled, as “the terms ‘personal’ and ‘impertinent’—which are undefined—fail to provide speakers with a reasonable opportunity to know what conduct is prohibited,” with “boisterous” being vague for the same reason—violations “turn only on the listener’s discretion.” Further, the court held, “absent any explicit standards for those who apply the Policy to safeguard against its arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement by the City Council, the Policy’s other terms are likewise unconstitutionally vague.”

Finally, the court holds plaintiff also plausibly alleges the bans on personal, impertinent, and slanderous remarks are viewpoint-based, and thus unconstitutional in any public forum, including the limited public forum that city council meetings represent. Similar to the vagueness analysis, the court holds any such prohibition “turns on the perception of the individual councilmembers” and in doing so “constitutes unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.” And because those prohibitions are viewpoint-based, “they are also content based to an impermissible degree and unreasonable” for a limited public forum. The court did, however, affirm dismissal of the viewpoint-discrimination challenge to the policy against boisterousness to the extent it can apply to speech without reference to viewpoint or content (as well as the dismissal of plaintiff’s state open meetings law claim).

The case thus returns to U.S. District Court for Western Louisiana to proceed on the plaintiff’s facial challenges.

International free speech stories of the week

• Paris Police Ban Far-Left Concert Over Anti-Police Violence Fears (NewsFire) by Dimitris Papafotis

• Japan’s Flag Desecration Bill Threatens Rights (HRW) by Teppei Kasai

• South Korea’s ‘fake news’ law tests press autonomy (DW) by Julian Ryall

Among the key changes to the law are the obligatory removal from online sites of comments deemed to be false or defamatory by the Korea Media and Communications Commission, which is also able to impose fines of up to 1 billion won (around €584,000, $690,000).

One of the most controversial additions to the law — which South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party refers to as the “anti-fake news act” — is the right to demand corrections or rebuttals to editorials or opinion pieces.

Book of the month

The winner of this month’s Prestigious Ashurbanipal Award — yes, the most prestigious of all fake literary prizes — is Nita Farahany’s The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotech (2023). It is a terrific, urgent, and skillfully written book about one of the next great frontiers of liberty: cognitive liberty. Farahany argues that freedom of thought, mental privacy, and self-determination are not abstract philosophical luxuries. They are going to become very practical legal and cultural questions as brain-sensing technology, AI, neurotech, and behavioral prediction all get better, cheaper, and more intimate.

And while “mind reading” still sounds like science fiction, the distance between crude inference and meaningful access to our inner lives may be shorter than most people think. That’s why this book matters now. Farahany provides brilliant insight on how to translate liberty into the age of supertech — how to preserve the private space where thought, dissent, conscience, and individuality actually begin. Read The Battle for Your Brain, and pre-order her next book, Cognitive Extinction: Saving Human Thought While We Still Can. Let’s make sure we are not traipsing into dystopia while congratulating ourselves for being innovative.