A federal appeals court ruled that a professor fired for claiming in his blog that the mass shootings at Andy Hook Elementary School were a hoax was not fired for exercising his First Amendment rights. Florida Atlantic University fired James Tracy when he put a disclaimer to the blog as requested but failed to report on his outside activities. (The Palm Beach Post, November 17, 2020, by Hannah Winston)
The editor-in-chief of a student newspaper at Haskell Indian Nations University is resisting orders from the university president telling him to stop reporting. In making the order, the president cited a time when the editor called the police department to solicit information on a deceased Haskell employee. (Kansas Reflector, November 14, 2020, by AJ Dome)
A federal appeals court in Charlotte, North Carolina rejected an injunction aimed at stopping the teaching of The Poet X, that parents claimed violated their freedom of religion. The court upheld the lower court’s decision that there was no proof the book harmed their child or that the school endorsed the novel’s criticism of religion. (Charlotte Observer, November 10, 2020, by Michael Gordon)
A citizen journalist who plumbs the streets of Laredo, Texas for newsworthy stories including those on crime, accidents, and immigration is filing a lawsuit against the police department for charging her for committing two felonies under the state’s Misuse of Official Information Statue. The city claimed she was reporting information from a government source not authorized to release it. A judge soon dismissed the charges, but, now the journalist, Priscilla Villarreal, who has over 170,000 followers, is asking the U.S. 5th Circuit Court to rule “that those responsible for her arrest either knew or are culpable for not knowing that the law she was accused of breaking by gathering news was unconstitutional.” (The Washington Post, November 18, 2020, by George Will)
A Wisconsin district court dismissed President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against a TV station for defamation for running a @prioritiesUSA ad. The ad was critical of Trump’s handling of the pandemic. (Wisconsin Examiner, November 16, 2020, by Melanie Conklin)
The American Civil Liberties Union is filing an amicus brief in a rap singer’s appeal of a murder conviction protesting that the prosecution erred in using the lyrics of his songs to show the rapper’s criminal intent in the trial. (ACLU, November 9, 2020, by Emerson Sykes and Leila Rafei)
A college student who came to the U.S. when he was three years old is fighting his deportation. Jose Bellow contends that ICE arrested him after he read a poem at a meeting of the Kern County Board of Supervisors that condemned government immigration policies. Bello claims that his detention violates his free speech rights. (Business Insider, November 16, 2020, by Charles Davis)