The Federal Judicial Center released a guide for federal judges deciding whether to seal court records and proceedings. The 22-page booklet includes a history of case law on secret proceedings and a list of First and Sixth Amendment issues. -db From The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, February 25, 2011, by Lyndsey Wajert. Full Story
Three faculty members at Southwestern College had reprimands removed from their files and their First Amendment rights restored by a new Governing Board. The faculty members were banned from campus, placed on leave and reprimanded for straying from the “Free Speech Patio” during a student protest in 2009. The college is working to revise its protest policy with help from First Amendment groups. -db From the FIRE, February 23, 2011, by Adam Kissel. Full Story
A Solano county supervisor said her colleagues have resorted to back-room meetings to discuss future plans for the Solano County Fairgrounds. She complained that since there were no reports on the issue from the staff for the last six months that secret meetings must have been convened to instruct the staff. A staff member said there were only two meetings on the issue, both in January and both were properly noticed to the public. -db
A Superior Court judge ruled that Monrovia had not violated open meetings laws by making changes to public documents in secret before approving revisions to a development project. The judge said the changes were minor so did not violate the letter and the spirit of the Brown Act, the state’s open meeting law. -db From Monrovia Patch, February 21, 2011, by Nathan McIntire. Full Story
Federal prosecutors have indicted a former chemistry professor for jury tampering in distributing pamphlets to prospective jurors urging them to ignore law if they disagree with it and base their verdicts on conscience. Writing in The New York Times, Benjamin Weiser quotes Christopher T. Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, about the pamphleteering, “This is classic political advocacy. Unless the government can show that he’s singling out jurors to influence a