First Amendment News

Dominion Voting Systems sued President Donald Trump’s lawyer, Sidney Powell, for spreading malicious and unfounded lies about the company. She claimed the company was founded with Venezuelan communist money to rig elections and that they stuffed the ballot box to boost President-elect Joe Biden. Powell’s lawyer said the lawsuit was intended to censor speech and keep the truth closeted. Dominion wants the case to go to trial to reveal the truth about the electoral process.

Eugene Volokh in Reason, January 7, 2020, writes that under the Supreme Court’s Brandenburg v. Ohio that even advocating the use of force can’t be punished unless it “is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” Since President Donald Trump did not specifically call for violent invasion of the Capitol, it would be difficult for prosecutors to prove that was his intent. That is not

A Pennsylvania school district is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take a case they lost in federal appeals court. The lower court ruled the school officials could not publish a high school freshman for profane expressions on social media even though the target was the school and school officials. The student’s lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union told the Supreme Court that their client was protected by the First Amendment since there was

Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced a bill for repeal of Section 230, opportunistically tying the repeal to increasing stimulus payments to $2000. Section 230 exempts computer companies from liability for third-party content. (The Verge, December 29, 2020, by Makena Kelly) Big tech companies like Facebook can handle liability without Section 230 protection. The less powerful companies like WordPress, eBay, Etsy, nextdoor, Pinterest, TripAdvisor and Wikimedia have most at stake. (techdirt, December 28, 2020, by

A federal judge ruled that public safety outweighed a tattoo show owners’ free speech rights in upholding California’s closure of tattoo shops. (New York Post, December 26, 2020, by Kathianne Boniello) An Iowa preacher took his free speech case to the Eight Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals after a lower court refused a petition for an injunction on police action removing him from a street festival. Davenport city lawyers contended the preacher was removed for