First Amendment News

Eugene Linden in the Columbia Journalism Review, March 5, 2024, observes that recent Supreme Court decisions are based on flawed data that could have been corrected had there been vigorous local reporting on the issue. Linden cites several instances including the lawsuit to overturn President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. At the time, to establish standing, Missouri’s attorney general claimed the plan would hurt a local nonprofit group servicing student loans. Actually the group

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a case from Virginia Tech over a policy enabling students to report incidents of perceived bias on campus. An appeals court backed Virginia Tech, but the Supreme Court said the policy had been discontinued so was moot. (NBC News, March 4, 2024, by Lawrence Hurley) The nonprofit Speech First brought the case and several others challenging universities on policies they contend are intolerant of conservative views on such

A federal appeals court ruled unconstitutional that part of Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act” preventing private employers and schools from holding mandatory work meetings endorsing viewpoints the state disapproved of. The law targeted so-called progressive ideas including that a person is “inherently racist, sexist or oppressive” by virtue of his race or that anyone should feel guilty about the acts of their ancestors. (Courthouse News Service, March 4, 2024, by Kayla Goggin) A panel of the

Legal scholars contend that when the Supreme Court ruled to protect the religious from compelled speech, their rulings may have unwelcome consequences. The scholars write, “The range of ‘speakers’ protected by this expansive jurisprudence will include information technology companies that generate algorithms and artificial intelligence – speech producers with no conscience at all, much less the kind of sincere religious conviction that the Roberts Court has seen fit to protect against government regulation. As we

A Texas district court judge ruled that an18-year-old Black high school student could not wear his hair in locs curled around his head since if let fall, it would be below his shirt collar, eyebrows or head in violation of the district dress code policy. The judge found that the dress code did not violate Texas’ CROWN Act that district policies “may not discriminate against a hair texture or protective hairstyle commonly or historically associated