First Amendment News

A First Amendment Center senior scholar says that a recent decision ending a school-sponsored religious service in a Florida school strengthens religious freedom and does nothing to prevent students from exercising their free speech rights in praying by themselves or in groups so long as their prayers do not disrupt the school or interfere with the rights of others. -DB First Amendment Center March 29, 2009 Commentary By Charles C. Haynes Hundreds of Christians rallied

Efforts are underway to insure that university campus speakers with unpopular messages in some quarters will not have to pay higher fees for security. The Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that fees should not be based on a speaker’s content. -DB San Francisco Chronicle March 29, 2009 By Bob Egelko When a UC Berkeley student group invited a speaker known for his hard-line pro-Israel stance, the university feared clashes with Palestinian supporters and billed the

The Citizen Media Law Project uses a Canadian free speech case to argue that so far the United States has done a commendable job in protecting the right to anonymous expression. The argument comes as a challenge is emerging to this freedom in the case of an Illinois suit seeking the identities of anonymous bloggers -DB Citizen Media Law Project March 26, 2009 Commentary By CMLP Staff Over the past few weeks everyone at the

No one paid much attention to a story about Tibetan protesters being beaten by Chinese police until China censored a YouTube video showing the beatings. -DB Citizen Media Law Project March 27, 2009 Commentary By Arthur Bright Everyone knows that China’s not fond of the Tibetan protestors. As a result, sad as it is to say, the world’s press just doesn’t pay much attention when China does something to smack the Tibetans down. So long

The Federal Aviation Administration is trying to keep the public from seeing records of aircraft and bird collisions after the accident in January that forced a passenger jet to crash land in the Hudson River. -DB USA Today March 27, 2009 By Alan Levin WASHINGTON, D.C. — The federal government plans to block public access to its records of aircraft and bird collisions such as the one that forced a US Airways jet to splashdown