First Amendment News

When a veteran Baltimore police officer gave a reporter a memo on a police shooting in his district, he was fired. His newly reinstated suit contends he wrote the memo as a private citizen rather than as a private citizen. -DB The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press April 3, 2009 By Kathleen Cullinan A former Baltimore police official’s lawsuit, alleging his free-speech rights were violated when he was fired after leaking a memo

When a UC Berkeley student expressed her dislike of her hometown on myspace.com, her comment ended up in the newspaper. A federal court ruled that she cannot sue the newspaper but can pursue a claim against the high school principal for sending the comment to the newspaper which could be found to intentionally inflict emotional distress. -DB Metropolitan News-Enterprise April 6, 2009 By Kenneth Ofgang Comments posted on a publicly accessible website are not private,

Reacting to recent scandals, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is requiring staff and agency executives to put travel reimbursement claims and gift reports online. But when the information is put into pdfs, it is not possible to access it in any intelligible way. -DB CalAware April 2, 2009 CalAware Commentary OPEN GOVERNMENT — We’re going to be a nag about this. Putting public officials’ travel expense claims and other integrity-sensitive information on the Internet as pdfs is

Democatic Senator Gloria Romero has introduced a bill requiring webcasts of monthly meetings that decide how state bond funds are allocated for public school construction and modernization. -DB CalAware April 2, 2009 OPEN GOVERNMENT — Meetings of the State Board of Education and the State Allocation Board—which convenes monthly in the Capitol to decide how state bond funds are allocated for public school construction and modernization—would be videocast live on the Internet and the cable

A school board vice president makes a number of recommendations for making the school board business more open and transparent. -DB Press Banner April 2, 2009 Commentary By Jondi Gumz It’s time to press the reset button on the Scotts Valley Unified School District. The board’s governance handbook says: “We want to be perceived by our community as a governance team that is open and transparent in decision making.” Unfortunately, that might not be the