A First Amendment Kiss-off to Judge Judith Bartnoff. The Washington, DC Superior Court judge must have missed school the day her law school class learned about the First Amendment.
In a recent case involving a dispute between a law firm and its former client, the judge issued a TRO forbidding a legal newspaper, the National Law Journal, from publishing information about a Federal Trade Commission investigation of the client, even though the newspaper had obtained the information legally.
Such an order is a classic “prior restraint,” which ranks near the top of the hierarchy of First Amendment violations. To the objection that the TRO infringed free speech safeguards, Judge Bartnoff reportedly said: “If I am throwing 80 years of First Amendment jurisprudence on its head, so be it.” The Law Journal’s emergency appeal–backed by an amicus brief on behalf of multiple news organizations–was cut short when lawyers for the client company, perhaps realizing that their efforts to suppress a news story had only increased public interest in it, requested that the TRO be withdrawn.
Some advice to judges who preside over cases that generate media interest: It’s OK to ask a journalist not to include something in an article or posting, as long as it’s clear that the choice remains with the journalist (or her employer). What a judge may not do, consistent with the First Amendment, is dictate to a reporter what she may, or may not, write.– ps
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Judge Bartnoff has spoken loudly in suggesting that, while consumers should be protected, abusive lawsuits like this will not be tolerated,” said the Chungs’ attorney, Chris Manning. “Judge Bartnoff has chosen common sense and reasonableness over irrationality and unbridled venom..
Surely Steve Hunt above meant to say, “Judge Bartnoff has chosen irrationality and unbridled venom over common sense and reasonableness”; in stead than, “Judge Bartnoff has chosen common sense and reasonableness over irrationality and unbridled venom.”
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