Arizonas former governor is claiming First Amendment  protections, and she may have a point
    My law school     mentor used to joke that the First Amendment has protected    a bunch of unsavory characters: separatists, chauvinists, white    supremacists, communists, jingoists, bigotsand on its darkest    days, he would say, the First Amendment has even protected    journalists.  
    Now, we might be able to add one more to the list: Jan Brewer, the    former Arizona governor, who has some     unsavory     marks on her record  and is kind of a journalist,        she claims. Double the First Amendment fun!  
    Opponents of Arizonas tough immigration    law, known as SB 1070, recently asked    a federal judge to order Brewer to comply with a subpoena for    the notes and materials she used to write her 2011 book        Scorpions for Breakfast.  
    The opponents, mostly civil liberties organizations, subpoenaed    Brewer as part of a lawsuit against the sheriff of Apache    County. The groups are challenging SB 1070 on various grounds,    and they    argue that Brewer, who is not a party to the suit,    possesses notes and materials relevant to the case.  
    Those materials would be the source documents Brewer presumably    relied on to write her book, much of which discusses SB 1070,    and which she says she wrote in her personal, not official,    capacity. And those documentsemails, letters, memoranda,    notes of meetings, recordings of interviews, etc.would shed    light on certain facts at issue in the case, the laws    opponents claim. The groups requested the materials from Brewer    twice before, in August and November 2014, but both times she    refused to disclose anything, citing several reasons.  
    One of them: the First Amendment.  
    Journalists privilege: Not just for    journalists  
    In part, Brewer is arguing that the First Amendment-based    journalists privilege allows her to shield her notes and    source materials.  
    She may be right. In the     Ninth Circuit, which covers Arizona, and in the majority of    other circuits, the    journalists privilege is a recognition that  the free    flow of information to the public  is an interest of    sufficient social importance to justify some incidental    sacrifice of sources of facts needed in the administration of    justice.  
Read more from the original source: 
Why Jan Brewer is sounding like James Risen