The Courts

GPB: Kemp and Perdue both say their free speech is at risk in suit over governor’s uncapped fundraising

By Ross Williams

Lawyers for Gov. Brian Kemp and former Sen. David Perdue continued their arguments last week over the governor’s access to an uncapped spending account, setting the stage for a potential return to the courtroom the week of Valentine’s Day.

Perdue’s lawyers say a bill signed into law by Kemp last year leaves the former senator at an unfair fundraising disadvantage. It allows high-ranking elected officials, including the sitting governor, to raise unlimited cash during the three-month legislative session leading up to the party primary using special “leadership committees.” …

In the days since, both sets of lawyers made First Amendment arguments in court filings, with Kemp’s side arguing that halting his committee would stifle the free speech of people who want to donate.

“Perdue essentially asks this Court to silence members of the public who wish to directly support Governor Kemp during a significant portion of the primary election process, when the duly enacted statutory framework had provided them assurances that they would have a mechanism, both operationally and temporally, to express that support,” they write. “Perdue’s requested relief would now deprive them of the opportunity to exercise their First Amendment rights.”

Citing Supreme Court cases including the 2010 Citizens United ruling, Perdue’s lawyers said limiting the former senator’s ability to raise money essentially limits his free speech.

“There can be no serious dispute that these ‘asymmetrical limits’ severely burden Senator Perdue’s freedom of speech and association,” they argue.

Indianapolis Star: Rokita barred Abdul-Hakim Shabazz from media events. Here’s why the ACLU says that’s illegal

By Kaitlin Lange

The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana filed a lawsuit Monday accusing Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita of violating the First Amendment by blocking a political writer from a news conference.

Abdul-Hakim Shabazz, a WIBC radio host and editor and publisher of news website Indy Politics, said in the lawsuit he was told by a spokesperson that he could not enter the attorney general’s office for a news conference in October because he was not “credentialed media.” …

[Shabazz also] publishes the Cheat Sheet, a political newsletter, which he advertises as a “compilation of pure gossip, rumor and blatant innuendo.” Shabazz is largely viewed as a conservative, however, he has been critical of Rokita…

Ken Falk, the ACLU of Indiana Legal Director, said the media operates as a “watchdog,” and Rokita’s decision to bar Shabazz threatens that concept.

[“The] attorney general’s decision to ban Mr. Shabazz from press events is not viewpoint neutral. Blocking a journalist from attending a press conference because one does not agree with their reporting is a clear violation of the First Amendment.”

Free Expression

Common Sense: When Artists Become the Censors

By Winston Marshall

[I]n 2022, the censors are not in charge of governments. Something resembling a bottom-up authoritarianism has become the norm. Or perhaps one could call it lateral censorship. It’s artists shutting down other artists—or trying to…

How can any artist possibly create without free speech? ….

I found myself in such a tangle last year. I put out a tweet praising a book critical of far-left extremism in the United States. In doing so, I unwittingly broke with industry orthodoxy. Antifa—which was at the forefront of much nationwide violence throughout 2020—is not to be criticized. 

My bandmates in Mumford & Sons got a lot of flack for my tweet. Radio stations threatened to drop us, and I was canceled from DJ-ing a festival because the headliner had publicly condemned me.

I could have stayed in the band. But it would’ve meant self-censorship. Or lying. So I left.

The Dispatch: Our Nation Cannot Censor Its Way Back to Cultural Health

By David French

Yet the worst examples of cancel culture don’t apply to famous or prominent people at all. The most haunting piece I’ve read about rising American intolerance was penned by my friend Yascha Mounk in The Atlantic. Called “Stop Firing the Innocent,” it details the ordeals of ordinary people who become involuntarily notorious…

At the same time that the evidence of far-left intolerance is overwhelming, a few of us have been on a very lonely corner of conservatism, jumping up and down and yelling about the new right, “Censorship is coming! Censorship is coming!”

And we were correct.

First, it’s long been clear that the new right was replicating many of the tactics of the far-left, often proudly and intentionally. How many times have I heard “Fight fire with fire. Make the other side play by its own rules”? Since 2015, right-wing cancel culture has been mainly aimed at conservative Trump critics, but now it’s metastasizing. 

Wall Street Journal: Why Colleges Don’t Care About Free Speech

By John Hasnas

Why do universities make grandiloquent commitments to freedom of speech, then fail to honor them? It isn’t so much an issue of ideology as a problem of incentives…

The solution is to create an incentive for schools to protect open inquiry—the fear of lawsuits. First, universities should add a “safe harbor” provision to their speech policies stating: “The university will summarily dismiss any allegation that an individual or group has violated a university policy if the allegation is based solely on the individual’s or group’s expression of religious, philosophical, literary, artistic, political, or scientific viewpoints.” This language would be contractually binding.

Online Speech Platforms

New York Times: Peter Thiel to Exit Meta’s Board to Support Trump-Aligned Candidates

By Ryan Mac and Mike Isaac

Peter Thiel, one of the longest-serving board members of Meta, the parent of Facebook, plans to step down, the company said on Monday…

The departure means Meta loses its board’s most prominent conservative voice…

He has also been seen as the contrarian who has Mr. Zuckerberg’s ear, championing unfettered speech across digital platforms when it suited him. His conservative views also gave Facebook’s board what Mr. Zuckerberg saw as ideological diversity.

In 2019 and 2020, as Facebook grappled with how to deal with political speech and claims made in political advertising, Mr. Thiel urged Mr. Zuckerberg to withstand the public pressure to take down those ads, even as other executives and board members thought the company should change its position. Mr. Zuckerberg sided with Mr. Thiel.

But Mr. Thiel’s views on speech were at times contradictory. He funded a secret war against the media website Gawker, eventually resulting in the site’s bankruptcy…

Recently, Mr. Thiel has publicly voiced his disagreement with content moderation decisions at Facebook and other major social media platforms. In October at a Miami event organized by a conservative technology association, he said he would “take QAnon and Pizzagate conspiracy theories any day over a Ministry of Truth.”

Fox News: Big Tech to make conservatives ‘second-class citizens’ without pushback, Heritage Foundation warns

By Houston Keene

The Heritage Foundation warns in a new report that Big Tech censorship will make conservatives “second-class citizens” without mounted pushback.

Fox News Digital exclusively obtained the new report by the conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., which it calls “an authoritative assessment” on how Big Tech has “weaponized unprecedented power and influence to silence Americans,” undermined freedom and “fundamentally” reshaped American society.

The States

Bangor Daily News: We need to protect Maine elections from foreign influence

By Ken Fredette

[T]he Federal Election Commission recently blew the doors wide open for widespread interference in states with referendum processes across the country by ruling that statewide ballot measures aren’t “elections” under federal law, and therefore don’t qualify for the protections afforded to all other types of election funding protections. The effect of this FEC ruling instead means that it’s up to individual states to pass laws protecting statewide and local elections from undue foreign government interference.

A number of states are fortunate enough to have already passed measures to protect their elections from this problem. Now, it’s time for Mainers to do the same. State legislators and the governor couldn’t get this done, so I have joined in the  effort to put a referendum question before the voters of this state to decide this issue for themselves. That’s why I’ve joined my good friend, Sen. Rick Bennett, as a lead signer of a referendum to Protect Maine Elections from unwelcome foreign interference.

Charlotte Observer: Jury awards $50 million to SC mayor in defamation lawsuit

By Associated Press

A jury in South Carolina awarded $50 million in damages to a mayor in a defamation case against a longtime critic. The Beaufort County jury decided Thursday that Skip Hoagland has to pay Bluffton Mayor Lisa Sulka $40 million in actual damages and $10 million in punitive damages, The Island Packet reported. Hoagland — who wasn’t in the courtroom throughout the trial or when the verdicts were read — laughed when the newspaper informed him of the outcome.

“That’s a joke, right? … That’s insanity,” he said. Sulka filed the lawsuit against Hoagland over emails he sent in 2015 and 2017 to several people including the state attorney general. The mayor claimed there were defamatory statements in the messages, such as accusations that she committed a crime and was unfit for office…

“There is zero evidence I defamed anyone,” Hoagland wrote Wednesday night. “The first amendment allows me to exercise my free speech rights to criticize, and shed light on, public corruption.”