First Amendment News

A little-noticed Justice Department report of the warrants and subpoenas against journalists shows a slowdown of actions involving journalists in 2021 but also ramped up actions against reporters during the regime of former President Donald Trump. Reporters were investigated for various crimes, including financial crimes, stalking and child exploitation raising the possibility that the investigations were in retaliation for their reporting. (Yahoo! News, November 16, 2022, by Tim Dickinson of Rolling Stone) For related FAC

A federal judge ruled for former President Donald Trump in rejecting Michael Cohen’s free speech lawsuit. Cohen sued Trump and others in his administration for putting him back in jail when, in home confinement, he published a book about his years with Trump. (CNN, November 15, 2022, by Kara Scannell) The judge said Supreme Court precedent prevented a favorable ruling for Cohen but noted the damage to Cohen’s constitutional rights,”Cohen’s complaint alleges an egregious violation

Law professor Alan Rozenshtein says that Twitter should follow the model of Mastodon to achieve a workable moderation protocol. Mastodon works like e-mail. Using the ActivityPub protocol, their users can choose to interact with users “on other Mastodon instances. And while a Mastodon instance can choose not to communicate with some other instance…, there is no central authority that can block a Mastodon user or instance from the network entirely. At the same time, no

The 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ordered the Kentucky Judicial Conduct Commission to stop investigating two judicial candidates for stating their Republican connections and their support from anti-abortion groups during their campaigns. The court said the investigation would chill the candidates’ First Amendment rights. (ABA Journal, October 31, 2022, by Debra Cassens Weiss) Two citizens had complained that the candidates had taken positions on issues likely to come before the court. The court said