Free Speech catastrophizing in the NYT, Rapper must submit lyrics for judicial approval, & did SCOTUS punt on NetChoice?

Bringing you the latest free speech news (7/6/24)

Stories of the week

• The New York Times is wrong to attack the First Amendment (UnHerd) by me and

  Adam Goldstein

Professor Tim Wu’s piece this week, “The First Amendment Is Out of Control”, was in this troubling tradition of free-speech catastrophising. As he notes at the beginning of the article, “[n]early any law that has to do with the movement of information can be attacked in the name of the First Amendment.” Well, sure. Fear of government power over the free flow of information was a big part of the reason why “Congress shall make no law.”

For more on the SCOTUS decision in NetChoice, check out FIRE’s statement and ‘London Calling’ below!

• Judge rules rapper B.G. must submit all lyrics to the feds before he records or performs them by David Rubin & Jordan Howell

Dorsey’s attorneys understood this, arguing the government’s view amounts to “an unconstitutional prior restraint of free speech,” requiring state approval before Dorsey can express himself. A federal district judge in Louisiana agreed that outright prohibiting Dorsey from “glorifying” criminal activity in his lyrics as a condition of his parole would be constitutionally suspect. 

This week in FIRE’s blog

• How the First Amendment bolstered the animal rights movement by Blake Fox

• Fed investigation of Lafayette College over Israel-Hamas protests highlights new threat to free speech by Robert Shibley

• House Oversight Committee continues chilling investigation into student groups and nonprofits by Tyler Coward

• FIRE statement on Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton

This week on ‘So to Speak’

• This week on

  So to Speak
  , host and FIRE Executive Vice President
  Nico Perrino
  , Institute for Justice Deputy Litigation Director Robert McNamara, FIRE General Counsel Ronnie London, and FIRE Chief Counsel Bob Corn-Revere reflect on the First Amendment cases tried before the Supreme Court over the past term (including Moody v. NetChoice, NetChoice v. Paxton, NRA v. Vullo, Murthy v. Missouri, Gonzalez v. Trevino, Vidal v. Elster, O’Connor-Ratliff v. Garnier, Lindke v. Freed, Loper Bright Enterprised v. Raimondo, and the upcoming Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton).

 ‘Canceling’ in the news

• It was an absolute pleasure joining the ‘Wild with Sarah Wilson’ podcast to talk free speech, cancel culture, and parenting!

• I had a good time talking to Ami Kozak on the ‘Ami’s House’ podcast about free speech, anti-Semitism in higher ed, and a whole lot more. Enjoy!

International free speech stories of the week

• Cambodia court jails activists for plotting against government, insulting king (Reuters)

• Police seize coconuts and arrest protesters outside court appearance of woman charged over placard (The Standard) by Anthony France

London Calling: Ronnie’s First Amendment Rundown

Moody v. NetChoice, LLC

Emphatically stating the government “may not interfere with private actors’ speech to advance its own vision of ideological balance,” the Supreme Court reaffirmed there’s no social media exception to the First Amendment, while rejecting any notion that lawmakers have more authority over speech online than off. Though the Court ultimately did not decide the constitutionality of Texas’ and Florida’s laws that seek to force social media to host speech on a viewpoint-neutral basis – including that which the platforms would exclude left to their own devices – it was pretty clear how a majority of Justices view those laws’ core elements. The opinion of the Court made plain the government does not have any valid interest overriding speech rules of social media platforms, let alone a substantial one:  “On the spectrum of dangers to free expression, there are few greater than allowing the government to change the speech of private actors in order to achieve its own conception of speech nirvana.” Just like the FIRE amicus brief explained.

FIRE in the press!

• How ‘Misinformation’ Becomes Common Knowledge (The Free Press) by FIRE Advisory Council member Timur Kuran

• What I Am Celebrating on July 4, 2024 (AEI) by FIRE Board member Sam Abrams

• Recent Op-Ed Misreads the Moment: Free Speech is Worth Defending (The Chronicle of Philanthropy) by FIRE Legal Director Will Creeley

Speech of the century

In honor of Independence Day, here is Judge Learned Hand’s 1944 speech, “The Spirit of Liberty,” my single favorite speech of the last century. Enjoy!

We have gathered here to affirm a faith, a faith in a common purpose, a common conviction, a common devotion. Some of us have chosen America as the land of our adoption; the rest have come from those who did the same. For this reason we have some right to consider ourselves a picked group, a group of those who had the courage to break from the past and brave the dangers and the loneliness of a strange land. What was the object that nerved us, or those who went before us, to this choice? We sought liberty; freedoms from oppression, freedom from want, freedom to be ourselves. This we then sought; this we now believe that we are by way of winning. What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it. And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few; as we have learned to our sorrow.

What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the mind of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned but never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest. And now in that spirit, that spirit of an America which has never been, and which may never be; nay, which never will be except as the conscience and courage of Americans create it; yet in the spirit of that America which lies hidden in some form in the aspirations of us all; in the spirit of that America for which our young men are at this moment fighting and dying; in that spirit of liberty and of America I ask you to rise and with me pledge our faith in the glorious destiny of our beloved country.