donal brown

The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that Los Angeles erred in arresting a protester at a event known as the Skid Row Walk in 2011. The walk was intended to convene the community to find solutions to homelessness, but many of the homeless thought it was designed to bring homeless out so they could be arrested for low-level crimes, hence the protest and the arrest. (Courthouse News Service, March 11, 2015, by Lorraine

Two University of Oklahoma students were expelled for leading their fraternity brothers in singing a racist chant.  A ten-second video of the chant went onto Twitter where it was widely viewed and condemned. In justifying the expulsions, the university’s president said the chant created “a hostile learning environment” on campus.  (Bloomberg News, March 10, 2015, by Akane Otani) Eugene Volokh of The Volokh Conspiracy, Washington Post, March 10, 2015, wrote that in expelling the students,

Protesters against the Catholic church won a victory as the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ended Missouri’s limits on demonstrations outside of places of worship. The House of Worship Protection Act had banned profane, rude or indecent behavior that would disturb church services. A number of groups with grievances against the church including survivors of abuse by priests had challenged the act on First Amendment grounds. The 8th Circuit found that the act was

Anonymous Twitter users won a round in federal court when a judge ruled that their criticism of a music company and its CEO were protected under the First Amendment. The Twitter users had posted tweets saying that the company’s products were designed to break prematurely, the company encourages domestic violence and that the CEO engages in prostitution. The company, Music Group Macao Commercial Offshore Ltd., received permission from the Seattle Federal Court to find the

A federal appeals court ordered the removal of a gag order in the criminal trial of a former coal mining company executive indicted after a 2010 mine explosion that killed 29 men. The court commended the trial judge for her efforts to insure a fair trial but said that there was not sufficient showing that withholding trial documents would damage the executive’s rights or prevent the impaneling of an impartial jury. (Courthouse News Service, March