free speech

A First Amendment right to dispute a parking ticket?

A limo driver’s angry tiff with a San Francisco parking control officer is headed for a showdown in federal court. The two engaged in a roiling disagreement that allegedly culminated in the meter-minder’s use of pepper spray and a fist. Now a federal appeals court has declined to dismiss the driver’s suit, in which he argues that the meter-minder violated his First Amendment freedom to protest a parking ticket. Read the full story.

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A&A: Each year police place greater limitations on my annual protest

Q: In October of 2012 I conducted a month long protest at the Capitol in Sacramento. I was arrested immediately because I did not have a permit, held for five hours and then never charged. They gave me a permit when I got out of jail and, though I had to follow several special conditions, I was allowed to stay on the grounds (only from 10am to 6pm)and there was never a single problem during

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When one person’s free speech is another’s threat

A San Francisco Chronicle columnist asserts that the city is more amenable to free speech when the speech is more agreeable to the city. Debra J. Saunders cites a proposal by city Supervisor David Campos to expand the 8-foot protective zone around abortion-related centers to 25 feet. She maintains that San Francisco would not likely entertain such restrictions on speech if the issue was war or Critical Mass bicycle events. Campos counters that his proposal

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A judge’s ‘blow against government secrecy’

The “national security letters” issued by the FBI seeking private information about individuals’ bank accounts, communications and other activities are unconstitutional because they ban recipients from even acknowledging they exist. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston of San Francisco ruled that the FBI must cease issuing the gag orders, but put the decision on hold in anticipation of a government appeal, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, which characterized the order as a “blow against government

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Free speech brief for first newspaper in America published 322 years ago today

On this day in 1690, Benjamin Harris published Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick in Boston, Massachusetts. However, as Steve King writes, the publication was hardly imposing, “only three of the four book-sized pages had copy,” yet those three pages far too much free speech for the British colonial government and they did not tolerate a second issue: The opening editorial outlined the newspaper’s aims: to help people “better understand the Circumstances of Public Affairs”;

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