First Amendment News

With the MeToo movement encouraging victims of sexual harassment to speak out, those accused have fought back by suing accusers. Since 2014 there has been at least 100 defamation lawsuits filed against accusers. Only California and Louisiana have enacted laws to protect accusers. California’s law protects employers from defamation lawsuits for reporting sexual harassment to employers. Louisiana’s law freezes defamation lawsuits until criminal, civil and administrative hearings have run their course. (Mother Jones, March/April 2020,

Public records show that contrary to the Trump administration’s claims, the administration is billing the public full tariff and then some for the Secret Services rooms when staying at Trump properties. The Secret Service has not been listing their payments to Trump’s enterprises in public databases as required by law so the Washington Post compiled data from other sources. These records show $471,000 paid from January 2017 to April 2018, but that accounts for only

A request for public records from the San Francisco Chronicle garnered an unexpected result, a volley of threats and obscenities. The Chronicle asked the Sutter County sheriff for documents of the county’s estimated 3,700 concealed weapons permit holders and soon felt it necessary to increase newsroom security. Sutter County permit owners feared the Chronicle was intent on violating their privacy by publishing their names and addresses. The Chronicle instead only wanted the information to look

Four Republican senators are demanding that given sanctions on Iran, Twitter must not provide a forum to Iranians leaders. Because Twitter is providing a service to leaders, it falls under the sanction. (TechCrunch, February 7, 2020, by Devin Coldewey) Republicans have made Twitter a target for its alleged bias towards conservatives and the Trump administration, but Twitter has allowed U.S. political figures to make questionable statements in its forum, particularly Trump who has broken Twitter

Ten Wuhan professors argued for free speech after a doctor died who had been reprimanded by the police for warning about the Wuhan coronavirus. The professors with other academics from throughout China demanded the government apologize and compensate coronavirus whistleblowers. (Business Insider, February 8, 2020, by Kat Tenbarge) The Communist party announced it was sending a team to Wuhan to investigate, but public anger escalated. The professors wrote “Where there is no free speech, there