Supreme Court

HeraldNet: Justices uphold privacy, speech of charities’ donors

By Debra J. Saunders

After the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling Thursday that invalidated California’s practice of demanding that charities disclose their largest donors to the state attorney general, lawyer Casey Mattox of the conservative Americans for Prosperity Foundation marveled at the coalition that came together to fight the machine…

By the time the case, Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta, made it to the U.S. Supreme Court last fall, the American Civil Liberties Union, Southern Poverty Law Center and NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund were on board with their cause.

“With First Amendment rights, it’s always important to ask: Would I trust the person I like the least in politics to be responsible for making these determinations?” Mattox told me.

Washington Examiner: In a cancel culture, anonymity must be a civil right

By Editorial Board

Democrats and their media allies portrayed [the AFPF v. Bonta ruling] as a win for “wealthy donors.” It’s an odd characterization for a coalition of charities and nonprofit groups that includes the ACLU and the NAACP…

[C]onsider why these happy culture warriors would want to force disclosure of all donors to nonprofit organizations: They believe that government can and should repress the groups they see as blocking their idea of progress.

Fight for gun rights? You’re a bad guy. Stand up for the unborn? You’re an enemy of women. Oppose the teachers unions? You’re on the list.

Biden, Harris, Becerra, and Bonta want to use the power of the state to crush dissent.

Meanwhile, their allies in corporate America and the largest media outlets take up the cancel crusade with relish.

Donating to a Republican politician or a conservative ballot initiative is cause for dismissal and “cancellation” already. That one might donate anonymously to a disfavored charity, perhaps even something so disreputable as a pro-life clinic for pregnant women, is intolerable for our thought police in the press and state or federal government.

OpenSecrets: Supreme Court’s nonprofit donor disclosure ruling may have ‘dark money’ consequences

By Anna Massoglia

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that California’s nonprofit donor disclosure requirement is unconstitutional since it could chill the First Amendment rights of donors who might be deterred from contributing if their names became public. However, some argue the ruling may open the floodgates to even more “dark money” in politics after a record-breaking $1 billion from untraceable sources was spent during the 2020 election…

While it may not have an immediate effect on most members of the public, the Supreme Court’s ruling will enable politically active nonprofits to continue hiding their donors…

Experts have also speculated that similar laws in other states could be on the proverbial “chopping block” following the Court’s ruling. The decision may also help build momentum around counter-efforts by state lawmakers across the country pushing bills prohibiting government entities from requiring nonprofits to disclose their donors, efforts that are also boosted by dark money spending. 

The Media

Wisconsin Examiner: I covered protests in Wauwatosa, so the police put me on a list shared with the FBI

By Isiah Holmes

New details have emerged about the Wauwatosa Police Department’s (WPD) “protester list,” the existence of which was first reported by the Wisconsin Examiner in January. The list, created early last summer as protests over police killings focused on the Milwaukee suburb, grew from about 40 people last June to nearly 200 people. What’s more, I am one of them…

Although information included for each person on the list differs slightly, it all follows the same theme. My own entry includes my name, race, date of birth, along with “Wisconsin Examiner” next to that info in brackets. Both my driver’s license picture and my Facebook profile picture were also included, as well as hyperlinks to my personal Facebook profile and the Wisconsin Examiner’s Facebook page. Information on my car make and model were also included.

Free Speech

Psychology Today: The Rise of Self-Censorship

By Matthew Legge

A paper by two political scientists notes that from the 1950s (the height of McCarthyism in the U.S.) to 2019, self-censorship actually tripled. The paper provides several interesting insights into this trend.

Fear of government repression for speaking one’s mind is not a major factor leading people in the U.S. to self-censor. Rather, it’s fear that expressing an unpopular view will result in being isolated or alienated from family or friends…

[W]hile it can feel like just about everyone is confidently proclaiming their views to whoever will listen, about 4 in 10 people in the U.S. report going through their days carefully avoiding sharing their true political opinions.

Fascinatingly, there was no obvious connection among those surveyed between how intense their views were and their decision to keep silent about them. People with moderate views, more extreme views, those on the left, and those on the right were all about equally likely to self-censor.

What was a good predictor of self-censorship then? Education. Specifically, those with more formal education self-censor at much higher rates. This suggests that one thing they learned in college was to avoid saying the wrong thing.

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Journal of Free Speech Law Call For Papers: Symposium on the Freedom of Association and Disclosure Requirements

By Eugene Volokh

Americans for Prosperity v. Bonta just came down, and the Journal of Free Speech Law, a new peer-reviewed, faculty-edited journal, plans to quickly publish two to four articles on this case, as a symposium issue—not case notes as such, but rather articles on the broader subject (the future of disclosure requirements, or freedom of association more broadly) in light of the new decision. And given our publication speed, these will likely be the first such articles to be published in a full-fledged law journal.

Our plan:

Online Speech Platforms

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): The Political Shape of the Debate About Regulating Social Media

By Eugene Volokh

Another excerpt from my Social Media as Common Carriers? article (see also this thread):

[* * *]

These days, calls to treat social media platforms as common carriers are mostly coming from the Right, likely because such platforms are perceived (rightly or wrongly) as run by progressives who are especially likely to censor conservative voices. But the link to the argument in the Citizens United dissent may help explain why some top scholars on the Left, such as Erwin Chemerinsky, Michael Dorf, Genevieve Lakier, and Nelson Tebbe, have suggested similar regulations.

Some advocacy groups on the Left have likewise accused platforms of improperly restricting their speech. And of course even many conservatives, while generally more skeptical of government regulation of private actors, have long been open to some regulation, especially when the private companies have been seen as monopolies or close to it.

Wall Street Journal: Big Tech and Big Finance Breed Hubris

By Bret Swanson

The suppression of debate over the origin of the novel coronavirus highlights a broader problem. Governments were once the chief impediments to free speech and free markets, but extremely large private companies may have become the greater danger. These hyperscale firms serve as hubs and gateways in the highly networked knowledge economy. They are well-positioned to exert special control over information—and other companies…

What happens when the press and the internet aren’t so free? Over the past year, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook joined with a partisan press to block and throttle discussion across a range of Covid-19 topics. They discouraged and erased talk of the Wuhan lab-leak hypothesis, cheap and safe generic treatments such as ivermectin, Sweden’s heterodox decision to stay mostly open, and the inefficacy (and cruelty) of school closures.