News & Opinion

Two attorneys sued the St. Louis police for violating their rights to free speech and assembly after they were teargassed at a demonstration while wearing green hats identifying them as legal observers. The 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed a lower court decision in favor of the attorneys contending that the message on their hats “National Lawyers Guild Legal Observer” did not convey a clear message and so was not entitled to First Amendment

A federal judge rejected Elon Musk’s attempt to invoke his free speech rights to defeat a California law requiring X, formerly Twitter, to reveal its policies and report regularly on hate speech, false information, harassment and extremism on its site. (The Hill, December 29, 2023, by Nick Robertson) Earlier this month the European Union began investigating X over its lack of transparency and failure to combat false information and hate speech while maintaining free speech

Special counsel Jack Smith filed a motion asking Judge Tanya Chutkan to prevent former president Donald Trump and his attorneys from introducing arguments irrelevant or unsupported by evidence in Trump’s trial over his role in the January 6 insurrection. In his stump speeches Trump has erroneously contended many false claims including that President Joe Biden worked with the Justice Department to indict him and that law enforcement was poorly prepared and so responsible for the

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to clarify the role of government over the issue of coercing social media companies to censor content in violation of the First Amendment. EFF Director David Greene says, “Government co-option of content moderation systems is a serious threat to freedom of speech, but there are clearly times when it is permissible, appropriate, and even good public policy for government agencies and officials to inform,