First Amendment News

A New York State Supreme Court judge ruled that a lawsuit against President Donald Trump could go forward charging the president with defaming Summer Zervos, a former reality show contestant, who alleged he groped and kissed her without consent. Trump called her allegations fabrications and lies. Trump’s lawyer claimed that Trumps denials in October of 2016 during the presidential campaign were political speech protected by the First Amendment and didn’t rise to the level of

President Donald Trump asked senior staff members to sign nondisclosure agreements prohibiting them from revealing non-public information during and after their government service. The American Civil Liberties Union asserts that the agreements are not enforceable since government operations are of public concern. The public should know about the inner workings of a presidential administration to ensure accountability. Even if not enforced, the agreements could chill expression of information and opinions vital to understanding how governments

In the wake a scandal over the conservative Cambridge Analytica’s use of data of Facebook users to help Donald Trump in the 2016 election, Facebook is struggling with transparency issues, balancing the need for protecting their reputation over against the need for truth-telling about how Russia used the platform to influence the election. (The New York Times, March 19, 2018, by Nicole Perlroth, Sheera Frenkel and Scott Shane) A MIT social media expert, Professor Sinan

A bill introduced in the California legislature to counter the Trump administration’s ending of net neutrality would stop internet service providers (ISPs) “from slowing access and exempting certain content from customers’ data plans.” (Courthouse News Service, March 14, 2018, by Nick Cahill) In drafting the bill, state Senator Scott Wiener consulted Stanford law professor Barbara van Schewick who said the bill would close a key loophole by preventing service providers from charging access fess for

President Donald Trump takes front stage for the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s annual worst in government transparency awards. Trump has spent over 55 days so far at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, prompting queries about how his presence there affects his family’s financial bottom line. So far the administration has not released visitor logs for the resort. Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed also garnered a reward for releasing 1.476 million documents concerning a corruption investigation in a