First Amendment News

A federal judge prodded the Trump administration to produce evidence that the new commission of election fraud is observing public-disclosure laws. The Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights Under Law demanded that the election fraud commission release all materials from its first meeting on July 19. The judge rejected the administration’s lame excuses, and the Justice Department attorney apologized that not all commission members were up to speed on their obligations. (Courthouse News Service, August 30,

Third-party candidates lost in federal appeals court as the D.C. Circuit ruled that their First Amendment rights had not been violated during the 2012 presidential race when they were denied participation in the presidential debates. Since the nonprofit Commission on Presidential Debates operated the debates, the court wrote that if they were forced to include particular candidates, it could be reasonably argued that it would violate the commission’s First Amendment rights. (The Hill, August 29,

Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against the New York Times failed the actual malice test as federal judge Jed Rakoff dismissed it with the comment, “Responsible journals will promptly correct their errors; others will not. But if political journalism is to achieve its constitutionally endorsed role of challenging the powerful, legal redress by a public figure must be limited to those cases where the public figure has a plausible factual basis for complaining that the mistake

The Trump administration wants to expedite erasure of records of immigrant detention and human rights abuses. ICE is asking the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) for permission to destroy records documenting sexual assaults and deaths in detention after 20 years and solitary confinement after three years. (If You Only News, August 29, 2017, by Tim Abel) ICE also wants to destroy records of alternatives to detention, detention monitoring reports, logs about detainees, and complaints

Developers of the Dakota Access oil pipeline are suing environmental groups for obstruction, disseminating false information and damaging the company’s reputation and finances, charges that the environmentalists say violate their free speech rights. The Texas company Energy Transfer Partners is suing Greenpeace, BankTrack and Earth First. BankTrack issued this statement, “BankTrack considers the lawsuit an attempt … to silence civil society organizations, and to curb their crucial role in helping to foster business conduct globally