In the News

Gettysburg Times: Littlestown school board reviewing public comment policy

By Harry Hartman

[Parent Janell] Ressler was the first to speak during the public comment portion of the meeting and referenced the letter she received from [solicitor P. Daniel] Altland.

“By now you should have received and reviewed the response from my attorney. In the response, you can clearly see how Policy 903 is a blatant violation of the first amendment rights for every resident of this school district. As my attorney’s letter mentioned, this precedent has been set in a decision by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania: Marshall v. Amuso, No. 21-4336. In light of this I am requesting that Policy 903 be revised to not try and attempt to violate the citizens of this districts First Amendment rights,” said Ressler.

[Ed. note: Read more about our victory in Marshall v. Amuso here.]

Supreme Court

Washington Post (“The Early 202”): The ‘dark money’ showdown over this week’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing

By Theodoric Meyer and Jacqueline Alemany

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has criticized Jackson for being backed by “fringe groups” that are “spending dark money to raise her profile” — a reference to her support from Demand Justice, a progressive group started in 2018 to push Democrats to the left on judicial issues…

McConnell’s line of attack echoes criticisms made by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) in 2020 during Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Whitehouse decried the influence of conservative groups that don’t disclose their donors over Supreme Court nominations — a criticism he repeated last month in a Washington Post op-ed.

Democrats have responded by criticizing McConnell as hypocritical. But Demand Justice and other progressive legal groups have also deployed an unusual rebuttal: We’re not as powerful as you think we are…

Whitehouse, who held a hearing last year on the influence of “dark money” on the Supreme Court, said he agreed with [executive director of Demand Justice Brian] Fallon that liberal groups have been outmatched by conservative ones.

“They’re the ones who have been effectual in controlling the makeup of the court and planting selected justices onto the court,” he told The Early in an interview on Friday. “There’s no such achievement on the progressive side. Yes, some groups have anonymous donors. But they haven’t accomplished much other than to express themselves.”

The Courts

Newsweek: Amici for Freedom and the Fate of Free Speech

By Philip Hamburger

What will be the fate of free speech in the United States? The answer is coming soon from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Netchoice v. Paxton.

Last year, Texas protected free speech from Big Tech censorship by passing a statute finding that the largest social media platforms are “common carriers” and barring them from discriminating against speech on grounds of viewpoint. Common carriers are publicly accessible conduits for the goods or communications of others. Traditionally, because they are open to the public, serve a public function, enjoy legal privileges or have market dominance, they can be regulated to bar them from discriminating.

Rather than comply with the Texas law, the social media platforms secured a preliminary injunction against its enforcement. A district court judge granted the injunction, saying the anti-discrimination regulation violated the social media platform’s First Amendment rights.

But the district court opinion is not exactly dispositive. Although the Texas statute expressly found that the affected companies were common carriers, the district court simply declared that the statute’s “pronouncement that social media companies are common carriers…does not impact this Court’s legal analysis.”

That’s astonishing…

The Texas anti-discrimination law is thus entirely compatible with the First Amendment…

This is why the amici for freedom are taking a stand with Galileo. Especially when censors flourish in China and Russia, it once again is essential to resist any tyranny of the mind.

The Media

Politico: Washington Post wields speech-protection law to fight reporter’s discrimination suit

By Josh Gerstein

The Washington Post is wielding a law aimed at protecting free and open debate on public controversies to throw out a lawsuit brought by one of its own reporters claiming she was discriminated against because of her status as a sexual assault victim.

A District of Columbia Superior Court judge conducted hourlong arguments Friday on the Post’s unusual bid to use a district statute known as the anti-SLAPP law to dismiss the case filed last July by writer Felicia Sonmez over the newspaper’s decision to block her from covering sexual-assault-related stories.

Free Expression

Washington Examiner: At Yale Law School, speech gets silenced

By Nicole Russell

Free speech is a bedrock of our nation’s health.

Unfortunately, this truth appears to have been forgotten at Yale Law School. On March 10, Kristen Waggoner, an attorney at Alliance Defending Freedom, and Monica Miller, of the American Humanist Association, attended a bipartisan panel on civil liberties. The event was hosted by the Yale Federalist Society.

As Kate Stith, a First Amendment law professor at Yale, attempted to introduce Waggoner, video shows students yelling and shouting at her. Stith remains calm and reminds the students of Yale’s free speech policies, which the students blatantly ignore. 

Over 100 students continued to shout down Waggoner as she attempted to speak, calling out her support of women in athletics and smearing her reputation. Alliance Defending Freedom represents several female track athletes in a lawsuit that hopes to protect women’s sports from unfair competition. Waggoner has argued in front of the Supreme Court twice, no small feat. These students should admire Waggoner’s accomplishments. Instead, they fear her views and restrict her ability to speak.

Eventually, the panel concluded. Police officers escorted Waggoner and Miller out of the building. Yale Law School released a statement claiming that Yale police officers were not necessary for security but for aiding in noise reduction. It is clear that it sought to downplay the severity of the event. 

Laurence Silberman, a circuit judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, reportedly sent an email to all Article III judges in the United States recommending that all federal judges “committed to free speech” “carefully consider” whether the Yale law students who participated in the protest should be “disqualified for potential clerkships.”

Original Jurisdiction: An Open Letter To Yale Law Dean Heather Gerken

By David Lat

There’s been a problem with the intellectual climate at Yale Law School for several years now. Some of it flows from the fact that progressive students (“Progressives”) view those who disagree with them—definitely conservatives, and even some moderates—as bad people (“Bad People”).

Progressives are free to think that their opponents are Bad People. They can exclude them from social gatherings. They can make Bad People feel unwelcome in affinity groups (already happening at YLS, with members of certain affinity groups being forced to choose between affinity-group and FedSoc membership). They can make fun of Bad People with satirical fliers.

But it’s your job, as the Dean of Yale Law School, to tell Progressives that in an academic community based on free expression, there are limits to how much they can act on the view that their opponents are Bad People. Progressives can’t shut down duly organized events because they disagree with the speakers. They can’t weaponize anti-discrimination policies to punish the protected speech of their opponents. They can’t make up and spread lies about professors with unpopular views (or the students who dare to associate with those professors). It’s your job, as the Dean of Yale Law School, to remind Progressives of all this—even if they complain, call you “complicit,” or say you’re a Bad Person too.

Online Speech Platforms

New York Post: Babylon Bee editor: We refuse to bow to Twitter’s censorship of a joke

By Kyle Mann

Well, it finally happened (we’re kind of surprised it didn’t happen sooner): The Babylon Bee has been locked out of our Twitter account.

The satirical article that offended the Twitter overlords? “The Babylon Bee’s Man Of The Year Is Rachel Levine.” For the simple offense of labeling a biological man a man, through a satirical headline, we have lost access to all 1.3 million of our followers on Twitter.

A world where you can state a simple biological fact and face censorship, the loss of revenue and your livelihood, and excommunication from the public square for stating truth, no matter how satirical tongue-in-cheek your tone is, is a scary one indeed. As the famous Ron Paul saying goes, “Truth is treason in the empire of lies.”

The States

OPB: Oregon Supreme Court ruling likely dooms campaign finance limits this year

By Dirk VanderHart

The Oregon Supreme Court has likely closed off any chance Oregon voters will limit political spending this year, declining on Friday to hear a challenge that might have paved the way for such a proposal on the November ballot.

In a 5-page ruling, the state’s high court said it would not take up a challenge to a decision Secretary of State Shemia Fagan made last month. Fagan rejected three proposed ballot measures to institute limits on campaign contributions, saying they did not meet technical requirements.

Three proponents of the measures – Jason Kafoury, James Ofsink and Rebecca Gladstone – challenged the determination; they asked the Supreme Court to step in and rule that Fagan’s interpretation of the state Constitution was incorrect. If justices had agreed, it might have given the group enough time to collect signatures and put one of their proposals before voters.

But the court ruled Friday that intervening in the case would not be appropriate. In the written decision, justices said that stepping in to rule on Fagan’s decision – rather than allowing the matter to first be heard in Marion County Circuit Court, as is the normal process – was not warranted.

Associated Press: Cowboys for Trump co-founder charged with campaign violation

A New Mexico elected official was charged Friday with a misdemeanor campaign finance violation for refusing to register his political group Cowboys for Trump, the state’s attorney general announced.

Couy Griffin, a Republican county commissioner from Tularosa in southern New Mexico, has been facing off with state election regulators for more than a year over whether he needs to register the group as a political committee. Griffin expressed concern that registering may lead to other disclosure requirements about contributions and spending and in 2020 sued the New Mexico secretary of state after she insisted the group must register.

A federal appeals court last month rejected his arguments, upholding a lower court ruling that the reporting requirement is valid. Attorney General Hector Balderas said Friday that leaves Griffin out of compliance with court orders to register the group.

“We live in a nation that ensures that no elected official is above the law,” Balderas, a Democrat, said in a statement. “Citizens have the right to expect reporting and disclosure transparency from all elected officials.”

Desert Sun: How we can stop foreign meddling in California elections

By Michele Sutter and Courtney Hostetler

But the Citizens United ruling created a loophole to foreign election spending bans. Luckily, there is a solution to close this loophole, and it is one that Assemblymember Alex Lee, a Democrat from Milpitas, has proposed in AB 1819, the Stop Foreign Influence in California Elections Act. 

This bill will create a bright line rule to prevent foreign influence over California elections: if a single foreign entity owns 1% or more of a U.S. corporation, it will be prohibited from spending money on California’s elections. If two or more foreign entities together own 5% or more of a U.S. corporation, that corporation also will be prohibited from spending money on California elections. 

Even at 1% ownership, shareholders can exert enormous direct and indirect influence over corporations, including corporate spending to influence candidate elections. Similar legislation has been introduced in New York, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Hawaii and in Congress.