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First Amendment Coalition

Trump and the First Amendment – David Snyder interviewed on WNYC’s “On the Media”

Trump and the First Amendment – David Snyder interviewed on “On the Media”

FAC Executive Director David Snyder discusses the real-world effects of Trump’s rhetoric with WNYC’s On The Media host Bob Garfield. [Listen Now!]

Watch Now: "Fake News & The First Amendment"

There was a sell-out crowd for our Sept. 19 Fake News Forum at Sonoma State University as our panel of legal and media professionals delved into the fake news phenomena. [Watch the Video Now!]

FAC Prompts Disclosure of California Governor Jerry Brown’s Social Media ‘Block Lists’

FAC Forces Disclosure of Gov. Brown’s Social Media ‘Block Lists’

FAC has forced the release of documents from California Governor Jerry Brown showing that he blocked more than 1,500 individual accounts on his Twitter and Facebook accounts. [Read more]

First Amendment News

Opinion /Coalition News/1st Amendment News/Asked & Answered

On Access
Opinion from Executive Director David Snyder

Memo to Future Historians of the Trump Presidency: Good Luck. You’ll Need It.

BY DAVID SNYDER --Tucked into a February 13 Washington Post article about internal chaos at the White House is a stunning sentence, slipped in almost as an aside: White House “[s]taffers, meanwhile, are so fearful of being accused of talking to the media that some have resorted to a secret… ∞

How Trump’s War on Free Speech Threatens the Republic

BY DAVID SNYDER—On May 17, while delivering a graduation speech to cadets at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, a scandal-plagued President Donald Trump took the opportunity to complain, yet again, about the news media. No leader in history, he said, has been treated as unfairly as he… ∞

Gmail Nation: The Privatization of Public Records and Public Access

By DAVID SNYDER—The California Supreme Court ruled last month that records stored on government officials’ personal email accounts are subject to the California Public Records Act. This answer seems obvious: government officials should not be able to conceal otherwise public records by simply using Gmail. And yet the law has… ∞

First Amendment News
Headlines from Across the Country

U.S. senate bill bids for transparency in election social media ads

The U.S. senate will consider a bill requiring companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter to deliver more information about political advertising on their networks. The Honest Ads Act will require the companies to create a public registry with the names and contact information of any person or group that spends… ∞

Campus free speech under extreme duress

University of Oregon students who claimed they were not violating the First Amendment in preventing the university's president form speaking said since the repression came from students not the state, it was in itself an act of free speech. Law professors Howard Gillman and Erwin Chemerinsky write that the so… ∞

Free press: ‘Gawker effect’ may be alive and stifling

Stories that could be challenged in the courts are going unpublished or hiding behind paywalls, writes Mike Masnick in techdirt, October 17, 2017. He claims the "Gawker effect" is responsible as publishers run scared after the March 2016 $140 million award for Hulk Hogan in his defamation lawsuit against Gawker… ∞

Coalition News
FAC News & Initiatives

Trump and the First Amendment – David Snyder interviewed on WNYC’s “On the Media”

President Trump has again taken to Twitter to threaten the media, including a tweet suggesting NBC should lose its broadcasting license, resurfacing concerns about his understanding of, and respect for, the First Amendment. FAC Executive Director David Snyder discussed the real-world effects of Trump's rhetoric with host Bob Garfield on… ∞

FAC Partners with Artists United to Provide Legal Help to Artists Nationwide

The First Amendment Coalition is pleased to announce a partnership with Artists United to provide AU members – artists working in all media across the nation – with legal help on First Amendment issues through FAC’s Legal Hotline service. The Legal Hotline is a legal consultation service available on FAC’s… ∞

FAC Prompts Disclosure of California Governor Jerry Brown’s Social Media ‘Block Lists’

The First Amendment Coalition today released documents from California Governor Jerry Brown showing that he blocked more than 1,500 individual accounts on his Twitter and Facebook accounts--a practice that excluded those people from participating in a vital forum for political discussion and debate surrounding the state’s highest elected official. In… ∞

Asked & Answered
Questions Answered by FAC Lawyers

A&A: Are state Task Force meetings covered under the Brown Act?

Q: The state has assembled a Task Force and advertises its meetings (quietly) but claims they are not public meetings. They’ve said I can’t attend. In fact I don’t even know whether the meetings take place at a physical location or are mere conference calls. I believe they are public meetings because the Task Force is […]

A&A: Does Brown Act allow vote to be changed after a meeting adjourns?

Q: I recently witnessed a Planning Commission vote which was changed after adjournment. There is a “protocol” listed on the city’s website that says a vote can be changed within 48 hours. That sounds like a violation of the Brown Act to me. A: Given that, per the Brown Act, legislative bodies are generally required to conduct […]

A&A: Requests for crime reports denied by police department

Q: I am a reporter, and I’ve been having trouble obtaining crime reports from our local police department. I’ve requested crime reports twice and both times I’m told that they are being withheld because of Government Code section 6254(f). To be clear, one time I requested all crime reports that had been filed over a […]

Legal Hotline

The Legal Hotline gives users quick, free access to FAC’s lawyers for questions about access to public records; your right to attend government meetings; access to court documents and proceedings; and first amendment protections for freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Asked & Answered

A searchable database of questions posed by users like you about their rights under public records laws, open government laws, and first amendment safeguards that have been answered by FAC’s attorneys.

Access to Records

FAC’s incomparable resources for using California and federal to obtain public records, including FAC’s CPRA Primer; the text of the CPRA, and a template for a CPRA request letter for use in requesting public records

Access to Meetings

Links to all of FAC’S resources for California’s open-meetings law, the Brown Act, including our Brown Act Primer on how the law works; the text of the The Ralph M. Brown Act, and a sample “Cure & Correct” demand letter to report a violation of the law.

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