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Coalition News

Court rules CA counties must disclose pension amounts paid to government retirees

Peter Scheer November 6, 2009

Nov 6, 2009—In a case filed by the First Amendment Coalition, the Modesto Bee and the California Newspaper Publishers Association, a California Superior Court has ruled that county governments, upon request, must disclose–by name–their retirees’ pension payments. The Superior Court for Stanislaus County reasoned that the public interest in access to government employees’ pensions outweighs the public interest in protecting the confidentiality of that information. In 2007 the California Supreme Court ruled that government employees’

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First Amendment panel finds promise, pitfalls in social media

FAC November 3, 2009

By Donal Brown The panel on journalists and social media at the First Amendment Coatition Assembly offered wise advice and a few emphatic warnings, chief among them: everything a journalist puts up on Twitter or Facebook or other social media is public. Speaking at the assembly October 24 in Los Angeles on the panel entitled “Twitter with Care: Journalists and Social Media,” prominent Southern California media attorney Kelli Sager suggests that journalists put nothing up

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FAC names free speech award winners–and one loser

FAC October 22, 2009

The First Amendment Coalition, a California-based non-profit public interest group, has named the 2009 recipients of its awards for service in the cause of free speech, open government and the public’s right to know. In contrast, the Coalition also has presented its “Darkness Award,” given in recognition of conduct that thwarts freedom of speech. The Bill Farr Award, given jointly with the California Society of Newspaper Editors, goes to Carl Malamud, whose campaigns to put

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First Amendment advocates criticize draft of new rules granting access to judicial records

donal brown October 2, 2009

Senate Bill X4 13 required that the California Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) adopt new policies to provide public access to nonadjudicative court records, budget and management information. A 19-page draft has now been released for public comment from the present until October 29. So far First Amendment defenders say there should be no charge for providing documents and that the draft provides an overbroad exemption of “deliberative process” that would too easily block

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NEW name, NEW website, Bigger role, Same mission

Peter Scheer September 22, 2009

Welcome to our new website. In addition to a new home (and address) on the internet, we are also announcing our new name. Instead of “California First Amendment Coalition,” the name given this organization at its birth in 1988, we are now just “FIRST AMENDMENT COALITION.” We shrunk our name to confirm our expanding role in First Amendment litigation and policy, and to acknowledge the diminished relevance of any state’s borders in an era when

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