News & Opinion

The Supreme Court was divided in hearing arguments on a federal law that makes it a crime to encourage or induce an immigrant to come to or remain in the U.S. Plaintiffs argue that the law is too broad and may chill speech, an argument that some justices found wanting as the Deputy Solicitor General indicated that there was no history of prosecuting family members encouraging an immigrant to stay in the U.S. (SCOTUSblog, March

Leaked documents show how Russia intelligence is working with a contractor, NTC Vulkan, to launch cyberattacks and distribute false information on the internet. The leak came from a Russian upset about the invasion of Ukraine. The documents reveal programs to create phony social media pages and included a map of the U.S. with what seemed to be clusters of internet servers, presumably identified for possible cyberattack. (The Washington Post, March 30, 2023, by Craig Timberg,

Representatives Adam Schiff and Mark Takano asked Twitter’s Elon Musk to investigate the increase in hate speech on his social media platform. Antisemitic speech has increased by 106 percent since Musk took over Twitter. (Jurist, March 28, 2023, by Madeline Bruce) In the meantime, Fire reported on journalist Michael Shellenberger’s testimony before Congress, urging it to step up for the First Amendment in requiring transparency on government attempts to affect social media decisions on content.

In the wake of the shout down of a guest speaker from a federal appeals court, Stanford Law School Dean Jenny Martinez and University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne apologized and pledged to honor Stanford’s policies against hecklers suppressing speech. Martinez said it was ill-advised to set precedents for suppressing speech as that power could be redirected to suppress the views of “marginalized groups.” (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, March 22, 2023, by Talia Barnes and

The American Civil Liberties Union considers a ban on TikTok a violation of the First Amendment, which protects speech from government regulation. An ACLU lawyer said, “The government can’t impose this type of total ban [on TikTok] unless it’s necessary to prevent extremely serious, immediate harm to national security. There’s no public evidence of that type of harm, and a ban would not be the only option for addressing that harm if it did exist.”