We’re Hiring!
Legal Director – Institute for Free Speech – Washington, DC or Virtual Office
The Institute for Free Speech anticipates the need for a highly experienced attorney to direct its litigation and legal advocacy. In September, President Trump announced the nomination of our longtime Legal Director to the Federal Election Commission, and it is likely he would be confirmed this fall. Once the hearing for that nomination is officially announced, the Institute for Free Speech will move forward with interviewing applicants.
This is a rare opportunity to develop and implement a long-term legal strategy directed toward the protection of Constitutional rights. You would work to create legal precedents clearing away a thicket of laws and regulations that suppress speech about government and candidates for political office, that threaten citizens’ privacy if they speak or join groups, and that impose heavy burdens on organized political activity.
The Legal Director will direct our litigation and legal advocacy, lead our in-house legal team, and manage and expand our network of volunteer attorneys.
A strong preference will be given to candidates who can work in our Washington, D.C. headquarters. However, we will consider exceptionally strong candidates living and working virtually from anywhere in the country.
In the News
The College Fix: SCOTUS campus free speech case unites adversaries in polarized times
By Ryan Everson
Legal powerhouses of liberal, conservative, and libertarian persuasions have filed briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court’s first campus free speech case in over a decade.
In early 2021, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski. The case concerns former Georgia Gwinnett College student Chike Uzuegbunam, who was twice silenced from peacefully sharing his Christian beliefs with fellow students…
[L]eft-leaning organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State have filed a brief highlighting the importance nominal damages play in addressing the violation of a wide range of constitutional rights, including free speech, gun rights, unreasonable searches and seizures, and others.
Addressing the issue from another angle, the Institute for Free Speech, which exists largely to protect political speech, filed a brief to explain the case’s likely effect on its work.
Supreme Court
SCOTUSblog: Barrett sworn in as newest justice as court weighs urgent election cases
By Katie Barlow
Amy Coney Barrett took the judicial oath Tuesday morning to become the Supreme Court’s 115th justice, joining the bench at a time when the court is being asked to rule on pressing issues related to next week’s presidential election. Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath in a ceremony in the East Conference Room at 1 First Street. Barrett was sworn in using a family bible held by her husband, Jesse.
The judicial oath is the second of two oaths required of every new justice. Justice Clarence Thomas delivered the constitutional oath Monday night on the South Lawn of the White House alongside President Donald Trump.
Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Justice Barrett: “I love the Constitution and the democratic republic that it establishes, and I will devote myself to preserving it.”
By Josh Blackman
After her oath, Justice Barrett offered remarks, which I have done my best to transcribe…
She continues to impress me in ways that I frankly hadn’t expected. There is a sincerity behind every word that really resonates…
No matter how many new seats are added to the Court, Justice Barrett will still loom large over the others. Her greatest contribution will be to enrich our constitutional culture. I mean that sincerely. She has the charisma and presence to elevate legal discourse to the next level. And I think she will inspire generations of conservative women to aspire to greatness, without eschewing their beliefs. With time, she may even be able be able to fill the titanic void left by Justice Scalia.
DOJ
Wall Street Journal: Justice Department Cites Treatment of Hunter Biden Articles in Call to Change Law Protecting Online Platforms
By Brent Kendall and Aruna Viswanatha
The Justice Department said it was concerned that Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. restricted access to recent New York Post stories about the son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, telling lawmakers the department supported bipartisan interest in changing a law providing legal protections to online platforms.
The department made the comments Tuesday in a letter to Capitol Hill leaders ahead of a high-profile Senate hearing Wednesday in which Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will testify.
The letter, signed by Stephen E. Boyd, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, said online platforms “hold tremendous power over information” and must “be honest and transparent with users about how they use that power. And when they are not, it is critical that they can be held accountable.”
Congress
Politico: Facebook embraces updating tech’s legal shield while Twitter, Google urge restraint
By Cristiano Lima
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is calling on Congress to “update” a crucial legal shield for the online industry, while Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey says lawmakers should show “restraint” in changing the rules, according to the executives’ written testimony for a Senate Commerce Committee hearing
Wednesday, obtained by POLITICO on Tuesday…
“Eroding the foundation of Section 230 could collapse how we communicate on the Internet, leaving only a small number of giant and well-funded technology companies,” Dorsey wrote…
Zuckerberg, meanwhile, warned that scrapping Section 230 altogether could have vast unintended consequences and lead platforms to “censor more content to avoid legal risk.” But he said he supports Congress updating the law.
“Section 230 made it possible for every major internet service to be built and ensured important values like free expression and openness were part of how platforms operate,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Changing it is a significant decision.”
“However,” he added, “I believe Congress should update the law to make sure it’s working as intended.”
FEC
Law360: Reforming The FEC: Effective Commissioners Are Needed
By Trevor Potter
Since 2012, the FEC has issued one substantive new regulation: REG 2014-02, regarding how to report multistate independent expenditures and electioneering communications.
Despite their dominance in our current state of politics, super PACs are still not even mentioned in FEC rules.
Free Speech
GBH News: “Mighty Ira:” A Documentary About The Man Who Defined American Civil Liberties
By Harvey Silverglate
Ira Glasser is well-known (indeed, fabled) in civil liberties circles as the long-time (1978-2001) Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union during the period of its biggest growth spurt and most potent influence on the protection of freedom of speech and other civil liberties in America…
“Mighty Ira” is as much a documentary about the essential First Amendment and the esteemed Ira Glasser as it is a tale of the decline of the national ACLU that began with Glasser’s retirement as that organization’s executive director. One has to thank Glasser and the filmmakers for giving us a documentary that is both a lesson in history and free speech law, as well as a warning that protection of the First Amendment is a long-term endeavor. The battle for free speech never ends.
(“Mighty Ira” can be watched through Angelika Film Center’s Virtual Cinema program. Ticket pre-orders are now available. The film will also be available to stream on iTunes, Amazon, and Google Play on Oct. 23 and will be on DVD and Blu-ray on Oct. 27.)
Washington Examiner: The right to remain silent
By David C. Rose
One of our greatest freedoms is the right to remain silent – to mind our own business. But today, some activists threaten shaming and even violence against those who don’t take the initiative to endorse what they deem to be politically correct.
Not long ago, if someone made such threats, others would automatically say, “Hey, leave that guy alone. He has a right to his opinion, and he has the right to keep it to himself.”
Not long ago, most adults believed that not having an opinion was often a sign of maturity, an indication of waiting to hear all sides on an issue before making a judgment. Such persons were not presumed to be cowards. They were presumed to be thoughtful, mature, and wise…
The internet has allowed a great deal of opining to be done anonymously, which has dramatically sped up positive reinforcement for repeating popular ideas and negative reinforcement for failing to do so. Because we are hard-wired to crave acceptance, this has produced several generations of cowed adults. We are, as a society, forgetting how to think for ourselves and how to have civil arguments over important matters.
Right to Protest
Washington Post: Does the right to protest include the right to hound someone in their home?
By Charles Lane
Demonstrations at people’s homes bring freedom of assembly into tension with the right to privacy. There is no denying the expressive power of such protests. There is also no denying that they can, and do, harass, annoy and intimidate, sometimes intentionally.
The notion that people have a right to assemble and speak out everywhere is democratic; the notion that there should be no boundary between the public square and the private sphere is totalitarian…
Only four states have anti-residential picketing laws, while city and county ordinances on the practice vary widely in both content and actual enforcement. Partly this reflects the inherent difficulty of writing consistent rules for everything from candlelight vigils to obscenity-chanting crowds.
Partly it shows that law can do only so much to balance people’s right to be heard and their right to be left alone. If citizens themselves do not value, and practice, mutual respect, self-restraint and empathy, there won’t be any safe space left for anyone.
Online Speech Platforms
Washington Post: Google says it will ban political ads following election
By Rachel Lerman
Google said Tuesday it will ban all ads related to the U.S. election after polls close Nov. 3, adding that it expects the ban to last at least a week.
The company cited its “sensitive events” policy, which seeks to stop brands from profiting from fast-moving, critical events. Election results will probably take longer to confirm this year as more people vote by mail, and Google said in a blog post Tuesday that the ban is necessary “to limit the potential for ads to increase confusion post-election.”
The ban will cover any ad that mentions a candidate, a political party or an election, among other election-related content. Google used the same policy to halt political ads when protests broke out following the election in Belarus in August.
Protocol: Facebook’s botched election ad ban already blocked preapproved ads, including Biden’s
By Issie Lapowsky
Facebook’s ban on all new political and social issue ads leading up to the U.S. election is already causing chaos. On Tuesday, the company began prohibiting all new ads related to politics and social issues from running on the platform, instantly prompting an outcry from political groups who said some of their ads which were already running on the platform ended up getting blocked too. That included ads from Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign, according to a source familiar with the situation…
On Tuesday morning, Mark Jablonowski, managing partner of the digital targeting firm DSPolitical, said he noticed ads that had been running on behalf of a range of his Democratic campaign clients were suddenly blocked…
Chris Herbert, who runs Facebook ads for the group Defending Democracy Together, said 75 percent of his ads were blocked on Tuesday, despite the fact that they were running before the cutoff…
Don Haas, director of teacher programs at the Museum of the Earth in upstate New York, said ads for the museum’s upcoming climate change exhibit were also blocked.
Wall Street Journal: Campaigns Rush to Submit Facebook Ads Ahead of Limits
By Emily Glazer, Patience Haggin and Alexandra Bruell
Political groups might not be able to respond to attacks from opponents, share information about changes to polling sites’ locations or hours or react to other unexpected moves in the last few days before Election Day.
Republicans and Democrats also said Facebook’s move [to ban political ads in the week before Election Day] favors incumbents or those with larger followings that can blast out messages from their own accounts or pages instead of relying on advertisements.
“Smaller campaigns are the ones who will be most negatively impacted by these changes,” said Reid Vineis, vice president of Majority Strategies, a digital ad-buying firm serving Republicans. “Larger campaigns have digital teams, agencies and more resources to run ads through other platforms…whereas local campaigns frequently put all their eggs in the Facebook basket.” …
Political campaigns typically raise-and then spend-a lot of money in their final weeks. Facebook didn’t disclose political ad spending specific to the weeks ahead of the 2018 election. But on Google platforms, 56% of such spending happened a month ahead of the 2018 election and 42% of advertisers started spending in the final four weeks, according to an analysis of Google ad archive data by Tech for Campaigns.
Axios: Facebook says new pre-election political ad rules apply to boosted posts
By Sara Fischer
Facebook clarified Monday to Axios that its pre-Election Day ban on new political ads, going into effect Tuesday at midnight, applies to any political content with ad spend behind it – including boosted posts as well as ads created in Facebook’s ad manager system.
Washington Post: Facebook serves as an echo chamber, especially for conservatives. Blame its algorithm.
By Steven L. Johnson, Brent Kitchens and Peter Gray
Zuckerberg has recently denied that Facebook is a right-wing echo chamber…
Zuckerberg’s public comments have dodged a crucial question: What effect does Facebook have on the political slant of the news and information its users read? Our peer-reviewed research shows that the more time someone spends on Facebook, the more polarized their online news consumption becomes. What’s more, we find Facebook usage is five times more polarizing for conservatives than for liberals. This evidence suggests Facebook indeed serves as an echo chamber, especially for its conservative users.
Politico: Despite cries of censorship, conservatives dominate social media
By Mark Scott
Republicans have turned alleged liberal bias in Silicon Valley into a major closing theme of the election cycle, hauling tech CEOs in for virtual grillings on Capitol Hill while President Donald Trump threatens legal punishment for companies that censor his supporters.
But a POLITICO analysis of millions of social media posts shows that conservatives still rule online.
Candidates and Campaigns
New York Times: The Two Americas Financing the Trump and Biden Campaigns
By Shane Goldmacher, Ella Koeze, Rachel Shorey and Lazaro Gamio
The findings paint a portrait of two candidates who are, in many ways, financing their campaigns from two different Americas.
It is not just that much of Mr. Biden’s strongest support comes overwhelmingly from the two coasts, which it does. Or that Mr. Trump’s financial base is in Texas, which it is. It is that across the country, down to the ZIP code level, some of the same cleavages that are driving the 2020 election – along class and education lines – are also fundamentally reshaping how the two parties pay for their campaigns.
Ricochet: New Website Doxxes Trump Campaign Contributors
By “Bucknelldad”
Allow me to introduce you to a cute little website: Donald Trump Watch.
It’s a website designed to name, shame, intimidate, and target those who have made reportable contributions to the official Trump-Pence campaign account.
I’m on that website.
As a federal campaign election veteran, I knew full well when I made my two contributions that they would be publicly disclosed. I knew the risk that I was taking in doing so. I was also smart enough to list a Post Office Box as my address…
It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to realize the intent. We have seen reports from Kansas City and New Hampshire of warning letters being left on homes of people who have been identified as Trump supporters and warned to make sure their home insurance policies protect them against fire damage…
You don’t have to be a contributor to be a target of threatened violence. You just need a yard sign. And people wonder why so many are “silent Trump supporters.”
The States
Bloomberg Government: Billionaires Pay Up To Get Voters’ Attention on Ballot Questions
By Tiffany Stecker
The super-rich are paying to get the attention of everyday Americans before they vote on new tax law, minimum wage, affirmative action, information-selling, and more.
In some states, almost all of the money devoted to influencing the outcome of targeted ballot issues has come from a single donor. In Illinois, billionaires on opposing sides of a tax question have driven the cost of ballot-issue messaging above $100 million…
Across the U.S., at least 19 individuals or couples have spent $1 million or more on ballot issue campaigns this year, according to a Bloomberg Government analysis of filings on state campaign finance websites and data compiled by the National Institute on Money in State Politics.
