In the News
Seattle Times: Democracy vouchers: a flawed law
By David Keating
Imagine a special tax was levied on newspapers to fund vouchers that people could use to buy Fox News Channel subscriptions. Would that impact free-press rights?
The new lawsuit challenging Seattle’s “democracy vouchers” [“Suit challenges city vouchers for campaign contributions,” NWThursday, June 29] makes such hypotheticals worth pondering.
The article on the lawsuit claims that “Under the complaint’s rationale, virtually any public financing of campaigns that relies on tax revenue would be impermissible.”
But the lawsuit makes a more nuanced argument. The funding mechanism for this voucher program is unusual – a special property tax was levied to pay for it. The law does not allow that tax to be used for any other purpose.
The voucher law allows the program to be funded from general city funds. But that option is not being used. The lawsuit hasn’t challenged the use of general funds.
There are important First Amendment questions raised by the poorly drafted voucher law. Governments shouldn’t pass a special tax on a few to fund speech some oppose.
Hopefully, the court will agree.
CCP
Amicus Brief: Minnesota Voters Alliance, et al. v. Joe Mansky, et al.
The Petition asks whether it is acceptable for a government to bar issue speech inside a polling place, even when the issue speech is unrelated to any candidate campaign. This question is of critical interest to Amicus Center for Competitive Politics, a nonprofit corporation dedicated to the protection and defense of the political rights ensured by the First Amendment. Amicus often represents clients in state and federal courts, including before this Court, on matters related to the regulation or suppression of issue speech…
In-person voting always has, and hopefully always will, require citizens with disagreements about policy and politics to share a communal space as they wait to cast their ballots. The State of Minnesota believes that apparel conveying any “political” idea threatens to destroy this harmony and cause chaos at the polling place. Consequently, it has banned such messages, a policy enforced by election judges…
Declining review will only encourage the illiberal assumption behind Minnesota’s law: that Americans are incapable of being around those with whom they disagree. That assumption is unproven, and cannot survive strict scrutiny. The Petition should be granted.
The Courts
Reuters: Facebook fights U.S. gag order that it says chills free speech
By David Ingram and Dustin Volz
Facebook Inc is challenging a gag order from a U.S. court that is preventing the company from talking about three government search warrants that it said pose a threat to freedom of speech, according to court documents.
Facebook said it wants to notify three users about the search warrants seeking their communications and information and also give those users an opportunity to object to the warrants, according to a filing in a Washington, D.C., appeals court seen by Reuters.
“We believe there are important First Amendment concerns with this case, including the government’s refusal to let us notify three people of broad requests for their account information in connection with public events,” Facebook said in a statement on Monday…
The precise nature of the government’s investigation is not known. One document in the case said the timing of proceedings coincides with charges against people who protested President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January…
Facebook is getting support in court papers from several organizations including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as eight tech companies such as Microsoft and Apple Inc.
Congress
Bloomberg BNA: House Bill Would Ax Election Panel, Bar Limits on Money in Politics
By Kenneth P. Doyle
Republicans in Congress are supporting provisions in a new House spending bill that would eliminate the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), restrict the Internal Revenue Service from limiting political activities of tax-exempt organizations and churches, and bar the Securities and Exchange Commission from requiring disclosure of corporate political spending…
The appropriations bill was advanced in a House Appropriations subcommittee markup on June 29…
The new campaign finance provision in the bill would prevent the FEC from spending any money to enforce a longstanding legal requirement that a trade association make a written request to each member corporation for permission to solicit PAC contributions from the company’s executives and others eligible to give to a PAC.
The Intercept: Cory Booker Will “Pause” Fundraising From Big Pharma Becasue It “Arouses So Much Criticism”
By Zaid Jilani
During an interview on NPR’s Morning Edition on Friday, New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker announced that he will be pausing fundraising from pharmaceutical companies, a move that comes after months of activist criticism for his vote against allowing drug reimportation to the United States.
NPR’s Rachel Martin prompted the news by asking about his funding from the industry. “You’re in politics so you know that optics matter. You yourself have faced some criticism for taking donations from drug companies. Last month, you suggested you might give some of those back. Have you done that?”
“We’ve put a pause on even receiving contributions from pharma companies, because it arouses so much criticism, and just stop taking it,” he replied, adding that he would prefer to focus on pulling in small donations from regular people.
Free Speech
Wall Street Journal: Germany to Social Networks: Delete Hate Speech Faster or Face Fines
By Anton Troianovski and Sam Schechner
German lawmakers passed legislation Friday that would fine social-media companies up to $57 million if they fail to quickly delete hate speech, libel and other illegal content, one of the most aggressive efforts in the West to regulate content posted online.
Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Facebook Inc. and civil-rights groups criticized the law, warning it would stifle freedom of speech by encouraging social networks to delete controversial but legal posts. The law, some critics warned, could set the stage for authoritarian regimes to force tech firms to remove more content faster…
The new liability could test Facebook, Google and Twitter’s highly automated business models by forcing them to deploy more human expertise to make judgment calls on myriad individual posts. How they tackle this challenge could, in turn, set a costly template for the policing of social network posts world-wide.
The Media
CNN: Sasse warns of ‘weaponizing distrust’ after Trump’s media attacks
By Deena Zaru
Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse said Sunday that he is troubled by President Donald Trump’s latest attacks on the news media because he is concerned about the danger of “weaponizing distrust,” which can harm the freedoms that define a democracy.
“There’s an important distinction to draw between bad stories or crappy coverage and the right that citizens have to argue about that and complain about that and trying to weaponize distrust,” Sasse said in an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “The First Amendment is the beating heart of the American experiment, and you don’t get to separate the freedoms that are in there.”…
Sasse added that while “(t)here are a whole bunch of particular journalists who should be called out for particular stories that aren’t good enough,” it is “not helpful to call the press the enemy of the American people” – a direct reference to language used by the President to describe journalists…
“We differ about really big and important things in this country and then we come together around the First Amendment, which is an affirmation of the fact that people are free before government,” he added.
The States
Austin Statesman: Texas Supreme Court denies tea party challenge to election laws
By Chuck Lindell
Denying a challenge by a tea party group, the Texas Supreme Court on Friday upheld several decades-old campaign finance and election laws, including state limits on political contributions from corporations.
The state’s highest civil court also affirmed donor-disclosure rules, denying arguments that they were based on vague definitions, and upheld the right of private organizations to file suit over alleged violations of election law.
The case began in 2010 when the Texas Democratic Party filed a lawsuit accusing King Street Patriots, a Houston tea party-affiliated organization, of failing to register as a political committee and failing to disclose its donors as required by state law.
There was a nugget of good news for the tea party group, however, the Supreme Court declined to consider its argument that the state definition of “political committee” is unconstitutional – but only because King Street Patriots did not appear to meet the definition.
Santa Fe New Mexican: Va.-based group challenges dark money proposal in N.M.
By Steve Terrell
A conservative group is running online ads in opposition to Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver’s proposed rule that would force so-called dark money groups to disclose some information about financial backers and spending if they purchase more than $1,000 in political advertising during an election.
Concerned Veterans of America, based in Virginia, said in a news release late last week that the regulation would make contributors “subject to harassment and intimidation.”…
“The First Amendment is the foundation of American democracy for a reason,” said Dan Caldwell, the policy director for Concerned Veterans of America.
“When you strip people of their fundamental right to express themselves – publicly or anonymously – you take away their ability to collaborate, debate and drive change. Secretary [Toulouse] Oliver is circumventing the legislative process in an attempt to intimidate New Mexicans into silence. This is America, and no one should be forced to report their personal beliefs to the government.”
