First Amendment News

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra warned two reporters that they illegally possess a list of convicted state law enforcement officers over the last ten years. The reporters obtained the list, in an error says Becerra, in response to public records requests. The reporters are researching the list to ensure accuracy before publication. (The San Jose Mercury News, February 26, 2019, by Robert Lewis and Jason Paladino of the UC Berkeley Investigative Reporting Program) Tim Cushing

The Dakota Access oil pipeline developer lost a $1 billion raketeering lawsuit against environment activists, a district federal judge ruling there was no coordinated criminal enterprise in the protests of Geenpeace, BankTrack and Earth First against the installation of a $3.8 billion pipeline. The judge wrote, “Donating to people whose cause you support does not create a RICO enterprise,” and “posting articles written by people with similar beliefs does not create a RICO enterprise.” (The

The national news media jumped on the incident in January outside the Lincoln Memorial where Kentucky Covington Catholic High School students were supposedly mocking a Native American elder who said he was confronting the students to prevent hostilities between the students and the Black Hebrew Israelites, a group known for its hatred of  whites, gays and Jewish people. Objecting to the coverage in the Washington Post, student Nicholas Sandmann filed a $250 million defamation suit.

FIRE released its 2019 list of colleges with the worst records for upholding free speech. In alphabetical order, they are Alabama A&M, Dixie State, Georgetown University Qatar, Liberty, Plymouth State, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Syracuse, Kansas, North Alabama and the University of Wisconsin System.  (The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, February 12, 2019, press release) Although a private university and not subject to the First Amendment, Liberty University claims to support free expression especially give

Former White House aide Cliff Sims is suing President Donald Trump for his attempts to invoke a nondisclosure agreement and possible damages for Sims’ publication of “Team of Vipers,” an account exposing Trump’s disfunctional administration. Sims signed a nondisclosure agreement as a member of Trump’s 2016 campaign staff but could not remember signing one for his White House job. Sims claimed that the demand for secret arbitration constituted state action to violate his First Amendment