First Amendment News

The U.S. Postal Service is refusing to allow Democrats in Congress to inspect postal facilities before the November election. At least five lawmakers around the country were denied access and given inconsistent reasons for the denial, but the Postal Service had earlier cited the Hatch Act forbidding federal employees from engaging in political activity. The Postal Service said they had arranged for 60 congressional visits since June and were committed to transparency. (NBC News, October

YouTube stepped up to prevent QAnon from harassing and targeting people according to its conspiracy theories. Content inciting violence will be deep sixed although other QAnon content will remain. Facebook, Pinterest and Peloton are among other platforms to ban QAnon content. (The Verge, October 15, 2020, by Julia Alexander) YouTube will ban “content that threatens or harasses someone by suggesting they are complicit” in such make-believe theories as the one claiming that Democrats and celebrities

Twitter altered its hacked content policy after harsh criticism over its blocking of the New York Post story about president candidate Joe Biden’s son. It will now label tweets to provide context rather than blocking them and not remove hacked content unless it is directly shared by hackers and associates. They will still block the Post story since the article contains e-mail addresses and phone numbers. (CNBC, October 15, 2020, by Arjun Kharpal) Republicans vented

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett has taken part in a small number of cases involving the First Amendment making it difficult to tell how she would rule once on the Court. She has not faced press rights issues such as reporter’s privilege. She did join a ruling that Chicago’s bubble-zone ordinance restricting certain speech near abortion clinics was constitutional. She also agreed that coronavirus restrictions did not infringe on rights to gather in public.

The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that federal agents could not assault or arrest journalists and legal observers during protests in Portland. The government is appealing the case involving continuing protests against unwarranted police killings and racism. (Courthouse News Service, October 9, 2020, by Karina Brown) Journalists and legal observers stated in affidavits that they were shot by federal agents with non-lethal weapons. During the protests working journalists complained they were hit