Surprise! Justice in Arizona! Looking back on the Berkeley FSM, & more!
Bringing you the latest free speech news (10/27/24)
Story of the week
“For more than two months I’ve been living with the threat of punishment and jail time — being taken away from my kids, even — for doing nothing more than criticizing the government,” said Rebekah. “Free speech still matters in America, and I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have people on my side standing up for our rights with me.”
This week in FIRE’s blog
Minnesota state agency must drop investigation of employee’s Facebook post by
Civil liberties orgs line up to support professor’s appeal in land acknowledgement suit by Sara Berinhout
Overnight, Penn State simply absconded with 35 newsstands for its primary student paper, The Daily Collegian, taking away the large, steel racks, along with all the newspapers inside of them. Once Penn State got around to actually telling The Collegian it took the racks, it claimed that having ads on the racks’ poster frame violated two university policies restricting “commercial sales activities.” At the time they were removed, three racks held ads for Kamala Harris, while six others displayed voter registration ads.
This week in ERI
Bonus: Check out this fantastic thread from FIRE Senior Fellow
detailing all the flaws & omissions in Franks’ assessment of the First Amendment.This week on ‘So to Speak’
This week on So to Speak, Nico Perrino is joined by FIRE General Counsel (and ERI ‘London Calling’ contributor!) Ronnie London as well as FIRE Chief Counsel Bob Corn-Revere,to hash out which (if any) of the First Amendment’s categorical exceptions (obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement, fighting words, true threats, speech integral to criminal conduct, and child pornography) are necessary or helpful.
International free speech stories of the week
U.S. Charges Iranian Revolutionary Guards Official in Assassination Plot (NYT) by Benjamin Weiser & Harubie Meko
China cracks down on ‘uncivilised’ online puns used to discuss sensitive topics (The Guardian) by Helen Davidson
London Calling: Ronnie’s First Amendment Roundup
Put another in the win column of the mixed bag of outcomes in cases challenging the spate of state adult-content age-verification laws, this time in Montana, where a court rejected the Attorney General’s attempt to have the case dismissed. The cases harken back to litigation over similar federal statutes in the late 1990s and early 2000s that the Supreme Court and federal appellate courts invalidated on First Amendment grounds. The Montana law similarly requires commercial entities that publish or distribute material harmful to minors online to use “reasonable … methods to verify the age of individuals attempting to access the material.” The court agreed with FSC that “invoking the innocence of children is not, and cannot be, a magic incantation sufficient for legislatures to run roughshod over the First Amendment rights of adults,” and that because the Act burdens protected speech, it implicates the First Amendment. The court cited FSC’s allegations that filtering or device-level limits may be viable, less-restrictive alternatives to state-mandated age-verification, and that use of VPNs and/or the dark web can easily evade state-level restrictions on adult content, as well as its claim that the law is underinclusive in not reaching search engines or social media platforms where children are most likely to encounter pornography in the first place. Along the way, the court rejected at every turn the state’s attempts to invoke truly a divorced-from-precedent Fifth Circuit decision that allowed Texas’ age-verification law to stand, and which is now under Supreme Court review.
Short film of the month
FIRE proudly presents a new short documentary, "Bodies Upon The Gears." The film is directed by Oscar-winner Paul Wagner and explores the birth of the Free Speech Movement, the turning point in recognizing college students' First Amendment rights on campuses. Its premiere this year marks the movement's 60th anniversary. You can watch it now exclusively on FIRE's website.
I’m so happy to hear justice was done in Surprise. I own land in Surprise and have plans to build a house there in the next few years. I was appalled at this story. People in the US should not be arrested for criticizing the government.
Professor Mchangama’s book (Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media) and his related podcast (Clear and Present Danger) were outstanding! I have re-read and re-listened to parts repeatedly. About Professor Franks, though, I think something is off. I haven’t read Professor Mchangama’s thread on X (so far, I don’t use X), about Professor Franks. But if the substance of his critique was represented in the prior piece, above re: Professor Franks, then something is seriously off.
I'm still trying to understand the source of the hostility to Professor Franks. I heard what she said and thought she was inviting people to think bigger and better than the mere First Amendment. I didn't see anything wrong that she said about anything. I did see some things that were wrong with the prior piece's mischaracterization of Professor Franks's statements.
The first was the first sentence in the prior piece. It clearly did not quote Professor Franks. She simply did not (in the embedded clip) say any such thing. But it is understandable that the use of quotation marks in the prior piece misled people to conclude otherwise:
When powerful people tell you that “freedom of speech exists only to protect the powerful,” you should probably be suspicious.
The second was a naked presumption in the prior piece:
Franks posits that we should protect “fearless speech” (that is, speech the oppressed use to challenge their oppressors), and not “reckless speech,” which is, presumably, everything that isn’t fearless.
I did not hear Professor Franks advocate elimination of protection (e.g., under the First Amendment) for "reckless speech." I also did not presume that contrasting "fearless speech" with "reckless speech" advocated official restriction. I thought it advocated self-restraint. I thought that, being a professor speaking to young people, Professor Franks was encouraging students to be fearless but not foolish. The line between fearless and foolish (or reckless) speech opposing entrenched power obviously is not an easy line to draw. But I saw no reason presume that Professor Franks would advocate giving such power to public officials. One of her primary points was that officials with power abuse it to repress viewpoints that they consider offensive.