First Amendment News

The New York Times published a special section on the failure of local newspapers and the effect on their communities in their Sunday edition, August 4, 2019. Here are summaries of two articles in the section.  When the Warroad Pioneer closed down May 7, it left its small Minnesota town just below the Canadian border with no one to write obituaries or stories on the high school hockey team and no one to report on

California Republican Congressman Devin Nunes is suing “dark money” groups claiming they are conspiring to hurt his election campaign. The group had unsuccessfully tried to get Nunes’ “farmer” title removed from the ballot. One prominent lawyer thinks the lawsuit won’t survive the state’s anti-SLAPP protections. (Sacramento Bee, August 3, 2019, by Brianna Calix) Mike Masnick in techdirt, August 5, 2019, notes the irony of Nunes’ lawsuits against critics while he votes in Congress to protect free

The Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that a satirical Facebook page of a Ohio police department was protected by the First Amendment. The court found that the Ohio law cited by the police wrongly criminalized speech in arresting the man publishing the parody. The court said the law was broad and vague allowing police to file criminal charges when they object to speech they find objectionable “under the banner of probable cause.”(Courthouse News

Local governments are monitoring citizens’ sign posting at their residents and businesses and fining them for expressions that are protected under the First Amendment. The Supreme Court ruled in the 2015 decision Reed v. Gilbert that towns cannot enforce ordinances against signs that discriminate on the basis of content. Yet  towns all over the U.S. are objecting to political signs on lawns and businesses’ colorful murals. (Forbes, July 30, 2019, by Andrew Wimer of the

The First Amendment Coalition and Working Partnerships USA appeared in court to make arguments in their jointly filed lawsuit against San Jose over the city’s failure to disclose information regarding negotiations with Google to sell public land for a downtown development. “The people are the boss of the government, not the other way around,” FAC Executive Director David Snyder told a reporter after the hearing in Santa Clara Superior Court. The judge’s ruling is forthcoming. (The