First Amendment News

National Public Radio and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is asking the Supreme Court to release unredacted briefs in a case in which the court refused a stay in an execution of a murderer convicted in Alabama. The information the court withheld concerned the drugs and methods Alabama uses in its executions. The reporters committee said the redactions were unprecedented and made independently of Alabama officials who did not insist on them.

A federal district judge dismissed charges on First Amendment grounds against white nationalists charged with inciting riots across California. The judge found the Anti-Riot Act “unconstitutionally overbroad in violation of the First Amendment.” The judge found no relevance of the white nationalists’ statements to violence in Berkeley in April of 2017. Members of the white nationalist group The Rise Above Movement have attacked protesters and journalists at political protests. (Courthouse News Service, June 3, 2019, by Nathan

A New York Daily News editorial, June 5, 2019, alerted readers to an upcoming ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court on the right of corporations with government contracts to decide which information to disclose to the public. The case involved the South Dakota Sioux Falls Argus Leader seeking information about federal food stamps spent at local stores. The Food Marketing Institute representing retailers sued to keep the information secret without showing that the disclosure could harm

The Washington state Supreme Court ruled that under state anti-discrimination law florists must provide flower arranging services for same-sex weddings concluding that  flower arranging was not expressive enough to qualify for First Amendment protection. Last year the Supreme Court sent the case back to Washington for review in light of their Masterpiece Cakeshop decision that supported the need to fight LGBTQ discrimination in businesses open to the public but allowed a bakery to refuse to bake a

Law professor Garrett Epps, The Atlantic, June 3, 2019, criticized the recent Supreme Court decision Nieves v. Bartlett, for weakening the free speech rights of ordinary citizens when confronting police officers. Citing the frequency of such encounters and police abuse of citizen rights, Epps says the decision makes it more likely that police can get away with charges of “disorderly conduct” or “failure to obey a lawful order” in retaliation for speech they find egregious. Chief Justice