Read our 2021 Impact Report, highlighting our effective advocacy, education and litigation to advance and defend the First Amendment and your right to know.
James C. Nelson, retired Montana Supreme Court justice, COUNTERPUNCH, February 21, 2022, suggests that the right to vote is a right of free speech. The Constitution protects symbolic speech, that is, nonverbal expressions in the form of protests, demonstrations, wearing buttons, t-shirts with messages, etc. Nelson says that voting is clearly a from of symbolic speech. For a Supreme Court that rules in Citizens United that money equals speech, it would seem that it should
The Supreme Court will decide if Colorado’s public accommodation law banning discrimination against gays violates the First Amendment. A woman who wants to start a business for wedding websites is asking the courts to rule that she can reject business from same-sex couples. Mark Joseph Stern in Slate, February 22, 2022, notes that heretofore the Supreme Court has rejected the idea that civil rights laws compelled expression. “It has instead described such measures as regulations
The Fourth District appeals court ruled that the public had the right to the records of private immigrant detention centers in California. Immigration lawyers cited the Public Records Act in seeking records of a facility in Imperial County where 680 immigrants were held under decent conditions but without mental health services or much access to legal aid. For related FAC coverage, click here and here.
The State Bar’s public statements after a data disclosure represent unacceptable veiled threats for publishing information of public concern.