First Amendment News

In Popehat, July 10, 2018, Ken White finds Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s positions on the First Amendment laudable with a few caveats. Kavanaugh has protected speech of protestors and has favored limiting defamation suits in instances to prevent chilling speech. He could be expected to apply First Amendment protections in the case of government regulation and uphold Citizens United. He opposes net neutrality rules as a violation of the First Amendment. Damon Root in

The following were noteworthy First Amendment stories from the last week and a half when the editor was on vacation. Justice Elena Kagan said that conservatives were “weaponizing the First Amendment” in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling against labor unions in its practice of requiring workers opposed to the union to pay collective bargaining fees. The New York Times found that the Roberts court was far more likely to rule for conservative speech

News outlets seeking access to child detention centers housing immigrant children separated from parents have found it difficult to take photos showing how the children are faring. In denying photos, the Department of Health and Human Services cites a 2015 policy to protect the children’s privacy. News outlets say photos without faces released by the government don’t show much. They also the photos are woefully inadequate in that all the children depicted are boys. The

 The American Civil Liberties Union notched a victory in its bid to obtain records on a 2017 U.S. military raid in Yemen when a federal judge ruled that the CIA could not refuse to acknowledge the existence of records given a White House press secretary’s remarks about the raid shortly after it was conducted. The ACLU had filed a Freedom of Information Act request for records of the raid that resulted in numerous civilian deaths

The U.S. Supreme Court weakened unions in ruling 5-4 that workers cannot be forced to pay fees for the costs of collective bargaining of public sector unions. An Illinois government employee objected to paying fees to his union arguing that that would violate his First Amendment rights by forcing him to support the union’s other stances. Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority, “Compelling individuals to mouth support for views they find objectionable violates that