donal brown

The 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that South Carolina’s ban on  political automated phone calls violated the First Amendment. A Republican consultant was arrested for calls he set up to sample opinion. The 4th Circuit said the anti-robocal law was unconstitutional since it only designated political and commercial speech. (Courthouse News Service, August 12, 2014, by Charly Himmel) Since the law did not apply to all robocalls, it was content-based and uncontitutional. (Law360,

Media organizations petitioned President Barack Obama to prevent federal agencies from withholding information from the public. The groups voiced their dissatisfaction with a list of grievances including agencies’ practice of vetting interview questions in advance and monitoring interviews.  (Poynter Institute, August 12, 2015, by James Warren) And this week Reporters Without Borders wrote a letter to the Defense Department objecting to their Law of War Manual released in June that potentially includes journalists in the

A three-member panel of the U.S. 6th Circuit of Appeals ruled that the Detroit Free Press could publish mug shots of criminal defendants charged in federal court. But the panel called for an en banc hearing on the matter, citing the need to examine the rights of defendants to prevent release of their mug shots during criminal trails. (Detroit Free Press, August 13, 2015, by Katrease Stafford) The Free Press had filed a Freedom of

A federal district judge dealt a blow to New Hampshire’s ballot selfie law on the grounds that it restricted political speech. The judge dismissed the state’s claims that the law was needed to fight vote buying and voter coercion. (The Washington Post, August 13, 2015, by Amber Phillips) Legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union-New Hampshire, Gilles Bissonnette, said the ruling was a win for free expression, “Political speech is essential to a functioning

With Governor Jerry Brown’s signature, California passed two laws relating to police use of force. SB227 prohibits grand juries from conducting secret hearings to determine whether  a law enforcement officer should be charged with a crime following use of force against a person detained or arrested. SB411 reaffirms the right of citizens to take videos of police providing that the citizens are not resisting or obstructing an officer and are in a public place they