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Jail Conditions Reports Released After FAC Joins Press and Community Members to Challenge Sealing

FAC July 22, 2023

Represented by Public Justice, in July 2023 FAC challenged the sealing of federal court records in Hernandez v. County of Monterey, a class action lawsuit filed in 2013 to address systemic problems at the Monterey County jail. After the Hernandez case was settled in 2015, the court appointed monitors to assess compliance. When the plaintiffs moved to enforce the settlement in 2023, they relied on the monitors’ reports to argue that “persistent noncompliance” with the

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Google proposes AI tool for writing news articles

donal brown July 21, 2023

Google is developing an AI tool to write news stories and has pitched it to the Times, Post and Wall Street Journal. Google said the AI tools would not replace journalists who report and fact-check but rather free up their time by writing headlines and providing news content based on details of current events. (The New York Times, July 19, 2023, by Benjamin Mullin and Nico Grant) Executive at the Times were concerned that the

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San José Spotlight v. City of San José

FAC July 19, 2023

Public business is the public’s business. That’s the heart of this lawsuit, filed in February 2022 by San José Spotlight and the First Amendment Coalition against the city and its former mayor, Sam Liccardo, to enforce the California Public Records Act (CPRA). The lawsuit took aim at Liccardo’s use of private texts and emails to do city business in secretive ways, charging that in response to CPRA requests, the city improperly withheld a range of

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Appeals court rules sex trafficking law does not violate First Amendment

donal brown July 18, 2023

The D.C U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the law allowing states and victims to fight online sex trafficking. Challenges to the law maintained that part of the law criminalized speech that would provide such services as health and safety information to sex workers, advocating for particular workers and decriminalization. But the court said the act targets conduct rather than speech, illegal activity as it pertains, in the court’s words, “to a person’s intent to aid

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