‘The War On Words’ is out on Kindle! My TED Talk debuts! FIRE to court: ‘1A protects AI speech,’ & more!
Bringing you the latest free speech news (6/29/25)
Story of the week
The War On Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech—And Why They Fail is now available on Kindle!
Former ACLU President Nadine Strossen and my series refuting the most exasperatingly persistent, wrongheaded myths and criticisms about free speech has been updated and is now available as an eBook. If you’re a wood pulp-loyalist, it will be available in paperback sometime in late-July! And be sure to join Nadine and me on Substack LIVE this Tuesday at 4pm Eastern!
This week in
This week on
FIRE EVP &
host was joined by his colleagues—Legal Director Will Creeley, General Counsel Ronnie London, & Chief Counsel Bob Corn-Revere—to react to today’s breaking news of the Court’s decision in Free Speech v. Paxton.
This week in FIRE’s blog
Orchestrated silence: How one of America’s most elite music schools expelled a student for reporting harassment by William Harris
FIRE to court: AI speech is still speech — and the First Amendment still applies by
FIRE’s brief argues the court failed to appreciate the free speech implications of its decision, which breaks with a well-established tradition of applying the First Amendment to new technologies with the same strength and scope as applies to established communication methods like the printing press or even the humble town square. The significant ramifications of this error for the future of free speech make it important for higher courts to provide immediate input.
FIRE sued the district in 2024 on behalf of O.J., an LGBTQ+ student suspended for violating the district’s “hate speech” definition in its code of conduct because he used the words “faggot” and “twink” in a rap song recorded in his friend’s home after school. In the song, O.J. rapped the refrain, “faggot, fart, balls.” The song also included another person’s lyrics, which contained violent imagery. After O.J.’s friend uploaded the song to a music-sharing website, the school received three complaints and promptly suspended the student.
London Calling: Ronnie’s First Amendment Roundup
The Supreme Court upheld a Texas law requiring age verification for online adult content, ruling it constitutionally permissible under intermediate scrutiny despite longstanding precedent favoring strict scrutiny for content-based burdens.
The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a First Amendment challenge to a state law that requires all Texans to verify their age before accessing adult content online, in the name of preventing underage viewing of content that is “obscene as to minors” – that is, protected speech adults may lawfully consume. While the Court did not affirm the holding by the U.S. Court of Appeals for Fifth Circuit that the law is constitutional because it survives the lowest level of First Amendment scrutiny (rational basis review), it refused to apply the highest level, or strict scrutiny, rejecting decades of Supreme Court precedent in this area. The majority opinion by Justice Thomas made distinctions between the present case and 1997’s Reno v. ACLU and 2004’s Ashcroft v. ACLU, which invalidated similar federal laws restricting access to online adult content, on the ostensive ground they involved “bans” while Texas’ law only “burdened” adult access. But as Justice Kagan pointed out in dissent, the Court has long held — including in 2000’s United States v. Playboy, the five-vote majority of which Justice Thomas joined — that content-based burdens must satisfy the same rigorous scrutiny as content-based bans. Along the way, Justice Thomas’s opinion for the Court created new law by holding “accessing material obscene to minors without verifying age is not constitutionally protected,” and that “adults have no First Amendment right to avoid age verification” — the latter despite a long tradition, dating to the Federalist Papers, of strong protection for anonymous speech. (After all, age-verification cannot work without identify verification.) Ultimately, applying intermediate scrutiny, the Court held Texas satisfied the requirement of an important government interest in shielding children from sexual content, and that its age verification regime is sufficiently tailored to that interest as a “legitimate legislative choice,” notwithstanding the less restrictive alternatives of encouraging parents to install content filters on their children’s device or household- or other user-specific blocking. Not the result for which those at FIRE had hoped.
International free speech stories of the week
German police launch nationwide operation against online hate speech (DPA)
Activist lawyer’s jail time reaches 26 years (Bangkok Post)
CCLA launches Charter challenge against bubble zone protest bylaw in Vaughan, Ont. (CBC) by Rochelle Raveendran
Podcasts of the week
I was thrilled to join Pam Karlan on the Stanford Legal podcast to talk about the Trump administration’s moves against universities, law firms, and more.
Founder and chair of the Cosmos Institute
joined Kevin Gentry on the Going Big! podcast last month to talk about “AI: Autonomy, Truth, and the Future of Humanity.” Come for the artificial intelligence, stay for the stories from his 610-day stint on a submarine! And, in case you missed it, FIRE is partnering with the Cosmos Institute to give out $1 million in fast-grants to promote the development of truth-seeking AI.
ERI contributor
joined the Free Speech Forward podcast to talk “free speech & taking your ideas to the gym.”