The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case this term that pits the two religious liberty clauses of the First Amendment against each other on a flagpole.

At issue is a request by a Christian civic group, Camp Constitution, for the City of Boston to allow a Christian flag to fly on one of two City Hall flagpoles commonly used by civic groups and movements. The city offers groups the opportunity to fly their flags briefly on the two poles to encourage civic engagement.

To date, the city has allowed at least 284 private organizations to raise their flags and never had turned down a request until Camp Constitution asked to fly what is commonly known as the Christian flag a white background with a blue square at the upper-left corner containing a red cross. The group wanted to fly the flag for about an hour on Constitution Day 2017, to commemorate Constitution Day and the civic and cultural contributions of the Christian community to the city of Boston, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, religious tolerance, the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution.

Flags previously flown on the poles include the flags of various countries, a Juneteenth flag,the LGBTQ rainbow pride flag and the transgender rights flag.

Camp Constitutions request was denied because the group wanted to fly the flag of a single religion, which city leaders feared would place them in violation of the First Amendments Establishment Clause, which says government may not give preferential treatment to one religion over other religions.

On the other hand, Camp Constitution claims the city denied its First Amendment rights to free exercise of religion the other half of the First Amendments religious liberty statement.

There is no evidence the city had been asked previously to fly the flag of any other single religion, although Camp Constitutions attorneys point out that they had flown the Turkish flag, which depicts the Islamic star and crescent, and the Portuguese flag, which uses religious imagery.

In January, the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the city, which argued that the flagpole is not a public forum, the citys raising of a third-party flag is government speech, and the city can choose the views it wants to express. The appeals court supported the original ruling of a federal judge who first heard the case.

Camp Constitution appealed that January ruling to the Supreme Court, which chose the case from among hundreds of other cases denied hearing.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State was among the first religious liberty watchdog groups to urge the Supreme Court to reject Camp Constitutions claim, noting the case, Shurtleff v. Boston, could significantly endanger religious freedom and church-state separation.

Americans United President Rachel Laser said: The separation of church and state is the constitutional principle that guarantees everyones right to religious freedom and to be treated equally under the law. To protect this core American principle and to respect the religious diversity that defines our country, the Supreme Court should not force the City of Boston to fly a Christian flag at city hall.

Forcing the city government to fly a Christian flag on its property would not only undermine the foundational principle of church-state separation, it would play right into the hands of Christian nationalists who want the government to force everyone to live by their beliefs threatening everyones religious freedom and widening inequality in our communities and country, she added.

Camp Constitution is being represented by Liberty Counsel, an evangelical Christian ministry active in pursing religious liberty cases, especially those focused on free exercise claims.

We look forward to the U.S. Supreme Court hearing Bostons unconstitutional discrimination against Camp Constitutions Christian viewpoint, said Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver. The city cannot deny the Christian flag because it is Christian and allow every other flag to fly on its flagpoles. There is a crucial difference between government endorsement of religion and private speech, which government is bound to respect. Censoring religious viewpoints in a public forum where secular viewpoints are permitted is unconstitutional and this case will set national precedent.

Related articles:

On religious liberty views and other issues, theres still a wide gap between evangelicals and the rest of America

Religious liberty is being hijacked: expressing our faith responsibly within the civic realm | Opinion by Molly Marshall

BJC offers timely answers to questions about religious liberty

See the original post here:

Supreme Court will hear Boston flag case that pits First Amendment religious liberty clauses against each other - Baptist News Global

from the criticizing-the-government-still-at-the-top-of-the-1st-Amendment-list dept

When government entities use private companies to interact with the public, it can cause some confusion. Fortunately, this isn't a new problem with no court precedent and/or legal guidelines. For years, government agencies have been utilizing Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. to get their message out to the public and (a bit less frequently) listen to their comments and complaints.

Platforms can moderate content posted to accounts and pages run by public entities without troubling the First Amendment. Government account holders can do the same thing, but the rules aren't exactly the same. There are limits to what content moderation they can engage in on their own. A case involving former president Donald Trump's blocking of critics resulted in an Appeals Court decision that said this was censorship -- a form of viewpoint discrimination that violated these citizens' First Amendment rights.

A decision [PDF] from a federal court in Arkansas arrives at the same conclusion, finding that a page run by local law enforcement engaged in unlawful viewpoint discrimination when it blocked a Facebook user and created its own blocklist of words to moderate comments on its page. (h/t Volokh Conspiracy)

This case actually went in front of a jury, which made a couple of key determinations on First and Fourth Amendment issues. The federal court takes it from there to make it clear what government agencies can and can't do when running official social media accounts.

Plaintiff James Tanner commented on the Arkansas State Police's Facebook page with a generic "this guy sucks" in response to news about the promotion of a state trooper. That post was removed -- then reinstated -- by the State Police.

While that may have been a (temporary) First Amendment violation, the court says this act alone would not create a chilling effect, especially in light of the comment's reinstatement shortly after its deletion.

However, the State Police took more action after Tanner contacted the page via direct message with messages that were far more direct. In response to the State Police's threat to ban him if he used any more profanity in his comments, Tanner stated: "Go Fuck Yourself Facist Pig." For that private message -- seen by no one but Tanner and Captain Kennedy, who handled moderation of the State Police page -- Tanner was blocked. Kennedy compared the block of Tanner as the equivalent of "hanging up" on a rude caller.

The court disagrees. It's not quite the same thing. "Hanging up" on someone terminates a single conversation. What happened here was more analogous to subjecting Tanner to a restraining order that forbade him from speaking to state troopers or about them.

Tanner profanely criticized the State Police for the deletion of his comments. That was protected speech, as "the First Amendment protects a significant amount of verbal criticism and challenge directed at police officers." City of Houston, Texas v. Hill, 482 U.S. 451, 461 (1987). That protection extends to saying "fuck you" to a police officer in person, Thuraraijah v. City of Fort Smith, Arkansas, 925 F.3d 979,985 (8th Cir. 2019), and the Court doesn't see a meaningful difference in the circumstances presented here. Plus, though profane, Tanner's private messages also criticized the actions the State Police took in response to his Facebook comments. The Court finds that the agency's decision to block Tanner was an adverse action that would chill a person of ordinary firmness from continuing in the activity.

[...]

The page administrators can, as Kennedy put it, hang up on Tanner's private messages. They can ignore them. They can delete them. The State Police may not, however, block Tanner from participating in its designated public forum based on his profane private messages. If the State Police had designated an area outside its headquarters as a place for citizens to stand and speak, the agency could not bar Tanner from doing so simply because he had cursed at a Trooper on the telephone.

Adding to the First Amendment violations was the Police's handcrafted blocklist, which added words and phrases not deemed offensive by Facebook's moderation rules. This was apparently unexpectedly revealed during discovery and the blocklist shows the agency engaged in automated viewpoint discrimination.

In addition to selecting a profanity filter setting, Facebook page administrators can also add specific words to a filter list. Corporal Head added the following words: "jackass", "pig", "pigs", "n*gga", "n*gger", "ass", "copper", and "jerk". Doc. 70-14 at ,r 15.

These terms blocked a couple of Tanner's last comments on the State Police page prior to the agency blocking his account completely. The court doesn't care for this at all.

First, it says the agency doesn't even know what content it's blocking because it has yet to obtain a list of terms/phrases blocked by Facebook's moderation efforts. Without this information, it can't definitively testify how much otherwise permissible speech is being blocked by proxy.

Far more troubling is the State Police's artisanal blocklist, which obviously aims to mute as much criticism of law enforcement as possible.

[T]here is no plausible explanation for the words "pig", "pigs"," copper", and "jerk" being on the State Police's list of additional bad words other than impermissible viewpoint discrimination.

This is an additional First Amendment violation, above and beyond what was affirmed by the jury's verdict.

The slang terms "pig", "pigs", and "copper" can have an anti-police bent, but people are free to say those words. The First Amendment protects disrespectful language. And "jerk" has no place on any prohibited-words list, given the context of this page, the agency's justification for having a filter, and the harmlessness of that word. Though some amount of filtering is fine in these circumstances, the State Police's current list of specific words violates the First Amendment.

Tanner wins. The State Police lose and will hopefully learn something from this remedial First Amendment class. Whatever judgment is rendered (Tanner was only asking for nominal damages in one count, but there are multiple allegations here), the State Police will have to pay. Qualified immunity has already been denied and the additional determinations made by the court make it extremely clear this was clearly established violation of Tanner's First Amendment rights.

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Filed Under: 1st amendment, muting, police, social media

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Court Tells Arkansas Troopers That Muting Anti-Cop Terms On Its Facebook Page Violates The 1st Amendment - Techdirt

Vice President Kamala Harris delivers virtual remarks to the National Bar Association from the White House in Washington, D.C., July 27, 2021.(Elizabeth Frantz/Pool via Reuters)

What happened to the free exercise of religion?

Editors Note: This article is adapted from Sean Spicers new book Radical Nation: Joe Biden and Kamala Harriss Dangerous Plan for America, published this month.

On January 16, 1993, President George H. W. Bush proclaimed the first Religious Freedom Day, commemorating the anniversary of the 1786 passage of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. That statute was authored by Thomas Jefferson, and it served as a model for the opening lines of the First Amendment. President Bush noted in his Religious Freedom Day proclamation that freedom of religion is the first of all freedoms enumerated in our Bill of Rights.

Every president since Bush has issued a Religious Freedom Day Proclamation on January 16. In 1999, President Bill Clinton called religious freedom a fundamental human right . . . without which a democracy cannot survive. In 2009, President George W. Bush proclaimed religious freedom one of this lands greatest blessings.

In 2013, President Barack Obama opened his proclamation with the statement Foremost among the rights Americans hold sacred is the freedom to worship as we choose. Since then, many Democrats and progressives have adopted the phrase freedom of worship while avoiding the phrase free exercise of religion. The free exercise wording comes from the opening line of the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

It may seem trivial, but theres a big difference between freedom of worship and the free exercise of religion. Those on the left understand the difference, and thats why they speak of freedom of worship and avoid the words of the First Amendment.

Words matter. When politicians speak of freedom of worship, they are saying that you are free to worship any way you choose in your home or in your house of worship. But they dont want your religion to affect the way you live your life in public or the way you conduct your business. Democrats and progressives say that you are perfectly free to pray and worship in any way you choose as long as you do so behind closed doors.

But if you are a Christian businessperson, you must set aside your convictions and pay for your employees abortions. If you are a Christian baker, you must set aside your conscience and create a cake that celebrates a same-sex wedding. You may practice your faith in your house of worship one day a week. The rest of the week, your conscience belongs to the State, not your Creator.

But the First Amendment guarantees much more than freedom of worship. It guarantees the free exercise of religion. This means that you are free to practice your religion wherever you are, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in every aspect of your life.

The Biden-Harris administration wants to deprive you of the right to live out your conscience and obey your God.

In 2012, Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., a chain of arts-and-crafts stores owned by the David Green family, filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government over a mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) requiring companies to provide abortifacients. Hobby Lobby argued that the mandate was a violation of the Christian owners First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.

Kamala Harris, in her role as attorney general of California, joined an amicus brief from the attorney general of Massachusetts arguing that Hobby Lobby should be required to provide abortifacient coverage for its employees. Harris reasoned that for-profit corporations are not permitted to hold personal religious beliefs, even when those corporations are wholly owned by a Christian individual or family. She wrote:

Certain rights by their nature are purely personal guarantees that cannot be held by a business corporation (or, in some cases, by any corporation or collective entity). . . . Rights to the free exercise of religious beliefs, whether created by statute or by the Constitution, likewise protect the development and expression of an inner sanctum of personal religious faith. Free-exercise rights have thus also been understood as personal, relating only to individual believers and to a limited class of associations comprising or representing them. . . . Unsurprisingly, there is no tradition of recognizing or accommodating the exercise of such inherently personal rights by ordinary, for-profit business corporations.

According to Kamala Harris, if you run a for-profit business, whether its a little Colorado bakeshop or a multibillion-dollar chain of hobby stores, the First Amendment doesnt apply to you. You are free to practice your religious faith in any way you choose, as long as you keep it within your private inner sanctum. You are not allowed to apply the precepts of your faith to the way you conduct your business. In the public square, you must obey the almighty State, not almighty God.

With the center-left Justice Anthony Kennedy as the swing vote, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled five to four in favor of Hobby Lobby.

But Kamala Harris wasnt finished. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 2017, she introduced the Do No Harm Act. It would amend the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, stripping religious business owners of their First Amendment rights and forcing them to obey government health-care edicts that violate their religious convictions and moral conscience.

In a press conference promoting the Do No Harm Act, Harris said, The freedom to worship is one of our nations most fundamental rights. She didnt dare quote the actual wording of the First Amendment, which guarantees not merely freedom to worship but thefree exercise of religionin every aspect of our lives.

If you valued reading this article, please consider joining our fight by donating to our Fall Webathon. Your contribution makes it possible for us to continueour mission of speaking truth and defending conservative principles.

Continue reading here:

Democrats Assault on Religious Liberty Began with an Innocuous-Sounding Phrase - National Review

Meanwhile, its terms of service are a riot, so to speak. They include a ban on any content that would disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site and excessive use of capital letters.

It appears as if tech disparager Trump is a closet Silicon Valley tech bro. His company is hiding behind the same skirt that they all do; its using Section 230, the law that gives tech platforms broad immunity, as a shield. Of course, Trump used to be a critic of the rule, and issued an ill-conceived executive order when he was president to try to overturn it. And yet Truth Social notes that it is not responsible for any Third-Party Content posted on, available through, or installed from the Site, including [its] content, accuracy, offensiveness, opinions [or] reliability.

This all might be rather fun to watch, given Trumps long record of start-up failures, bankruptcies and problematic business dealings, especially with such a colossal stated ambition. The 22-page pitch deck for the media company that will house Truth Social grandly noted that there is a market opportunity to disrupt big tech.

According to the outline of its vision, In the year 2021, the media pendulum has swung dangerously far to the left. TMTG intends to even the playing field. It also says, To counter this liberal bias and dangerous exercise of tech monopoly censorship, Donald J. Trump and TMTG intend to create a media and technology company rooted in social media, digital streaming, information technology infrastructure, and more.

While I applaud all efforts to be innovative, the company is claiming it can disrupt in three huge spaces: social (disrupting Facebook and Twitter), media (disrupting Disney, Netflix, CNN and iHeartRadio) and, completely implausibly, cloud and payments (disrupting Stripe, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure).

Shockeroo, the companys pitch is heavy with grievance and light on specifics and tech chops. It also comes at a time when there are many other efforts in the same right-leaning space already. All of them, of course, would have loved to get Trump on board, as Jason Miller, his former senior adviser and the C.E.O. of Gettr, noted to me in a Sway podcast earlier this year. In a statement posted on Twitter (natch!), noting the pair could not come to a deal, Miller offered Trump congratulations for re-entering the social media fray, even though Trump shivved him in the back with Truth Social.

President Trump has always been a great deal-maker, but we just couldnt come to terms on a deal, Miller wrote. Quite cordial, given how reduced his prospects are without Trump on board.

Original post:

Opinion | Spurned by Twitter, Trump will attempt to build his own version. - The New York Times

HUDSON, Ohio A group of Hudson residents is moving forward with a petition to recall Hudsons mayor Craig Shubert.

The recall effort started, in part, due to the comments Shubert made last month at a Hudson City School Board meeting. The meeting made national headlines as enraged parents and residents demanded the board address a book used at Hudson High School that, they felt, had inappropriate content for students.

RELATED: Writing prompt book sparks controversy among parents in Hudson

It has come to my attention that your educators are distributing essentially what is child pornography in the classroom. I've spoken to a judge this evening. She's already confirmed that. So I'm going to give you a simple choice. You either choose to resign from this Board of Education or you will be charged, said Shubert to board members at the meeting.

Since that meeting, the Summit County Prosecutor stated the books writing prompts did not contain child pornography, but is still investigating if any laws were broken.

Karen Farkas said the mayors comments at that September meeting put Hudson in a bad light.

That went beyond what I felt, and many others, was his First Amendment rights, and he spoke and introduced himself as the mayor of Hudson, not as just a Hudson resident, said Farkas.

Farkas has lived in Hudson for over two decades. She said during Shuberts time in office he has overstepped.

Until Mayor Shubert was elected in 2019, we would always have mayors who abided by what the mayor's role is supposed to be in the city of Hudson, which is ceremonial, she said.

Hudsons city charter states that the mayor is ceremonial and the city manager is head of operations.

Farkas attended two council meetings after Shuberts comments in that September meeting. She told Shubert and council members that she would go forward with a recall petition if he refused to apologize or did not resign.

He had two choices. He could publicly apologize to the citizens of Hudson, to city officials and to the school board, or he could resign, she said. He did not respond at all at that meeting and so since that time, we've been gathering signatures.

She and other residents have created the website recallhudsonmayor.com

She said theyre slowly gathering signatures from registered Hudson voters. They have a drive-thru petition signing event Saturday at Veterans Way Park from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and will also be at polls come election day.

The recall petition needs about 3,100 signatures in order to force an election.

Shubert issued this statement to News 5 in response to the recall petition:

Any special election would cost Hudson taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars in unnecessary expense and continue the divisiveness in the city for months to come. There are ongoing investigations by both the school district and the county prosecuting attorney. The fact that this recall has been launched before the results of those investigations are known shows this is more about a personal vendetta than the facts-Craig Shubert, Mayor of Hudson

Farkas said it is not a personal vendetta and that it wouldnt have to happen if he would just apologize or resign.

It's basically a measure to keep our community as great as it's always been, she said.

Read this article:

Group of residents gathering signatures on recall petition for Hudson mayor - News 5 Cleveland

Petitions of the week ByAndrew Hamm on Oct 22, 2021 at 5:29 pm

This week we highlight cert petitions that ask the Supreme Court to consider, among other things, whether officers who observe a driver using a cellphone have reasonable suspicion to pull the driver over for texting, whether agents around-the-clock video surveillance of a home for 18 months is a search, and whether a plaintiff may sue a police officer for questioning without giving Miranda warnings.

Iowa and other states prohibit texting while driving but allow cellphone usage for other purposes, such as navigation. In Steven Struves case, Struve v. Iowa, police officers pulled Struve over after observing Struve using a cellphone for an unidentifiable reason for 10 seconds while driving. The traffic stop led to Struves arrest for having methamphetamine in the backseat. Struve, who was never charged with violating Iowas texting-while-driving law, was convicted for possessing a controlled substance. Before trial, the district court rejected Struves argument that the officers had violated the Fourth Amendment in pulling him over without reasonable suspicion because they could not tell whether he was texting or using his cellphone legally. The Iowa Supreme Court ruled that the officers common sense inference that Struve was texting provided reasonable suspicion for the traffic stop. In his petition, Struve argues that the Iowa Supreme Court adopted a minority, and incorrect, position among states with similar laws.

In another Fourth Amendment case, Tuggle v. United States, Travis Tuggle claims that federal agents without a warrant maintained around-the-clock video surveillance of his home for 18 months. Tuggle asks the justices to rule that this conduct constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment and that the Constitution required the agents to get a warrant. In the decision below, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ruled that the surveillance was not a search because Tuggle lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements that were observable to any ordinary passerby. In his petition, Tuggle argues that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit and the Colorado and South Dakota Supreme Courts have considered such long-term surveillance a search because it infringes expectation of privacy that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable.

Vega v. Tekoh concerns a plaintiffs ability to bring a lawsuit for a constitutional violation under 42 U.S.C. 1983 after a plaintiff is questioned without having been advised of constitutional rights under Miranda v. Arizona. Carlos Vega, a sheriffs deputy in Los Angeles County, questioned Terence Tekoh, a suspect in an investigation into sexual assault, without giving Tekoh his Miranda warnings. Tekoh confessed. At trial, the court allowed the prosecution to introduce Tekohs confession on the ground that the questioning did not violate Miranda because Tekoh was not in custody at the time. The jury, however, found Tekoh not guilty. Tekoh then sued Vega under Section 1983 for failing to give him the Miranda warnings. In his petition, Vega argues that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuits decision to let Tekohs claim proceed was incorrect and in conflict with other circuits. Vega maintains that Miranda governs when statements are admissible as evidence at trial, and that not receiving the warnings is not itself a constitutional violation. Vega also argues that he was not the proximate cause of the confessions introduction at trial because the prosecutor and the trial judge played intervening and superseding roles.

These and otherpetitions of the weekare below:

Struve v. Iowa21-374Issue: Whether police officers in the more than 20 states that have laws that prohibit sending text messages on a cellphone while driving, but that allow drivers to use their cellphones for other purposes, such as navigation or playing music, have reasonable suspicion under the Fourth Amendment to initiate an investigatory traffic stop, when they observe a driver briefly holding and manipulating a cellphone, in a manner that does not indicate whether the cellphone is being used for a lawful or prohibited purpose.

Lamoureux v. Montana21-427Issue: Whether a statute that criminalizes speech intended to annoy or offend is unconstitutionally overbroad under the First Amendment.

Johnson v. Bethany Hospice and Palliative Care LLC21-462Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to SCOTUSblog in various capacities, is among the counsel to the petitioners in this case.Issue: WhetherFederal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b)requires plaintiffs inFalse Claims Actcases who plead a fraudulent scheme with particularity to also plead specific details of false claims.

National Pork Producers Council v. Ross21-468Issues: (1) Whether allegations that a state law has dramatic economic effects largely outside of the state and requires pervasive changes to an integrated nationwide industry state a violation of the dormant commerce clause, or whether the extraterritoriality principle described in the Supreme Courts decisions is now a dead letter; and (2) whether such allegations, concerning a law that is based solely on preferences regarding out-of-state housing of farm animals, state a claim underPike v. Bruce Church, Inc.

Black v. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation21-495Issues: (1) Whether the Employee Retirement Income Security Act permits the termination of a distressed pension plan through an agreement between Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation and the plan administrator; (2) whether termination through such an agreement, which avoids a hearing, violates the participants constitutional rights to due process; and (3) whether, if ERISA and due process allow for termination by agreement, the terminations substantive legality is to be judged under the standards in29 U.S.C. 1342(c), or whether it is enough that the conditions in Section 1342(a) to institute proceedings may exist.

Vega v. Tekoh21-499Issue: Whether a plaintiff may state a claim for relief against a law enforcement officer under42 U.S.C. 1983based simply on an officers failure to provide the warnings prescribed inMiranda v. Arizona.

Bank of America Corporation v. Fund Liquidation Holdings LLC21-505Issue: Whether a district court lacking Article III jurisdiction can create such jurisdiction by adding a new plaintiff viaFederal Rule of Civil Procedure 17.

Tuggle v. United States21-541Issue: Whether long-term, continuous, and surreptitious video surveillance of a home and its curtilage constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.

Link:

Texting in the car, surveillance of a home, and Section 1983 for Miranda - SCOTUSblog

A group of educators and civil rights groups is challenging Oklahoma's new law limiting public school teachings on race and gender issues in court.

The lawsuit, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Oklahoma, was filed Tuesday. The organizations argue that HB 1775, which took effect in May, interferes with students' and educators' First Amendment rights to learn and talk about gender and race issues in school.

This policy also prevents students from discussing in-depth American history that reflects the experiences and viewpoints of "all historically marginalized communities in this country," the ACLU argues.

The groups suing asked the court to declare the law unconstitutional under the First and 14th Amendments. They also requested that a judge issue a preliminary injunction that would put an immediate stop to the policy in Oklahoma.

"All young people deserve to learn an inclusive and accurate history in schools, free from censorship or discrimination," said Emerson Sykes, staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

The organization said this lawsuit is the first of its kind that challenges a state's effort at limiting instruction on critical race theory, which examines how racism as a social construct intersects with history, policy, the law and other areas. It's an advanced teaching usually reserved for law schools and undergraduate sociology courses.

This concept was pushed into the public consciousness by former President Donald Trump last year. Right-wing activists have since made it a cause clbre and several Republican-led states, including Oklahoma and Idaho, have passed laws attempting to limit its reach in public schools.

But Oklahoma's law doesn't explicitly mention critical race theory in the legislation's text.

HB 1775 states broadly: No public school student in Oklahoma can be required to participate in any form of "mandatory gender or sexual diversity training or counseling." It goes on to say, "Any orientation or requirement that presents any form of race or sex stereotyping or a bias on the basis of race or sex shall be prohibited."

Similarly, lessons showing one race or gender is superior to another or that a person, because of their "race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive" are banned.

If teachers are found to be teaching these lessons, they could lose their licenses and schools can lose their accreditation.

"HB 1775 is so poorly drafted in places it is literally indecipherable that districts and teachers have no way of knowing what concepts and ideas are prohibited," ACLU attorney Sykes said. "The bill was intended to inflame a political reaction, not further a legitimate educational interest. These infirmities in the law are all the more troubling because the bill applies to public colleges and universities, where the First Amendment is especially protective of academic freedom."

The ACLU says as a result of the law's approval, school districts in Oklahoma have told teachers not use terms like "diversity" and "white privilege" in the classroom. Books and other literary works dealing with race such as To Kill a Mockingbird and Raisin in the Sun have been removed from reading lists

Some schools have also limited or altogether eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion training for their educators, according to the group.

More here:

Teachers and civil rights groups sue over Oklahoma's ban on critical race theory - NPR

Officers do not have to file a report when they use de minimis force, which is defined by the department as, Physical interactions meant to guide and/or control a subject that do not constitute reportable force. As examples, Clevelands policy lists stopping, pushing back, separating or guiding someone in a way that shouldnt cause any pain.

In addition to a detailed narrative of the events and why the officer used force, officers are required to report the steps they took to de-escalate the situation, the exact type of force they used, whether there were any injuries to the subject or the officer, and a litany of demographic information.

The police department releases annual reports summarizing the use of force data, but not the reports themselves. Police officials have routinely pointed out that the number of use of force incidents in 2020 were below 2018 and 2019. These summaries dont any information about individual officers or incidents.

With the help of Case Western Reserve University School of Laws First Amendment Clinic, Cleveland Scene was able to obtain detailed reports from all use of force incidents that were not under continuing investigation from 2019, 2020, and early 2021.

Scene initially requested the data in September 2020. The city first provided unrelated materials, and then rejected the request, saying it was overbroad. The city turned over most of the data in May 2021, but withheld incident narratives for cases under investigation. The Ohio 8th District Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the city on those narratives, but Scene is appealing the decision.

The database included information on 351 unique use of force case numbers. Where multiple officers were involved in a single incident, the officers various reports were filed under a single number. Altogether, Scene reviewed data from 524 individual reports.

Scene cross-referenced this data with police disciplinary notices, Civilian Police Review Board minutes and agendas, and citizen complaints made to the Office of Professional Standards. For some incidents, Scene also obtained body camera footage. As many of the subjects in use of force incidents were never charged with or convicted of a crime, Scene is not releasing this footage out of respect for their privacy. In other cases where Scene did not obtain footage, this story relies on descriptions by CPRB members and investigators.

The most recent deep-dive into use of force reports was a decade ago, when The Plain Dealer ran a series analyzing use of force reports filed between 2006 and 2011. Among the papers findings were that uses of force were rarely found inappropriate; some officers failed to file use of force reports in high-profile cases; and officers who used force abnormally frequently were allowed to continue on the force.

Since then, Cleveland has grappled with the 2014 police killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. A Justice Department investigation of Cleveland cops use of force led to a 2015 consent decree in 2014, which requires the department to change some of its policies and practices. Last year, America watched in horror as George Floyd suffocated under a Minneapolis officers knee; and Cleveland protests against police violence ended in violent confrontations. This year, residents petitioned to put an initiative on the ballot creating stronger civilian oversight of the department, which both the outgoing mayor and one mayoral candidate have derided.

Yet Scenes analysis found many of the same problems reported by the Plain Dealer ten years ago.

Read the original:

Cleveland Police Use of Force: About the Data - Cleveland Scene

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WRIC) The Charlottesville Unite the Right Trial is set to start on Monday, four years after that infamous protest that killed Heather Heyer.

Jury selection is set to begin on Oct. 25, in the federal trial against the organizers of the 2017 rally. The trial is being heard in Charlottesville and is expected to take four weeks.

It is hard to forget the images of white supremacists marching with tiki torches, rallying through town and a car plowing through a crowd, killing counter-protester Heather Heyer and injuring others.

This case was brought by nine Charlottesville community members who were injured in the violence 4 years ago, saidAmy Spitalnick, Executive Director of Integrity First for America.

The non-partisan, non-profit organization is supporting the plaintiffs in what is the first major civil suit to be tried under the so-called Ku Klux Klan Act. The organizers of the Unite the Right rally are accused of a conspiracy to commit violence.

These defendants planned violence on social media and on other communication forums and even in-person conversations, Spitalnick said. They went to Charlottesville, committed that violence and then celebrated that violence.

Some of the two dozen defendants in the case have alleged this is about their first amendment right to free speech, and others have claimed they were just joking. Spitalnick says the event in Charlottesville 4 years ago was no joke nor an accident.

But rather meticulously planned, online, in social media chats and other communications that will be coming out over the course of trial, she said. We have 5.3 terabytes of digital evidence that our team will be presenting.

All that evidence is some of why the trial is expected the take four weeks. The other part is just the number of parties involved in the case. All nine plaintiffs are expected to take the stand and there are 24 defendants in the federal case.

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Charlottesville Unite the Right trial starts Monday - 8News

Oct. 6, 2021 5:39 pm ET

Regarding Ted Ralls op-ed Free Speech Has Consequences, but Should Firing Be One? (Oct. 1): Mr. Rall acknowledges the fundamental difference between public and private employersthe former are subject to First Amendment constraints, the latter are notbut he seems to decry this state of affairs. What he overlooks is that the right of private actors to free speech includes the right to refuse to deal or do business with, or to boycott or cancel, those whose speech is viewed as objectionable.

Should an employer generally be free to fire those who engage in speech of which the employer disapproves? Absolutely. We already have limited that freedom by law in various ways: An employee cannot be fired for speaking out in favor of unionization or in opposing his or her employers discriminatory practices. But suggesting a sweeping First Amendment right for private employees does not enhance the freedom Mr. Rall claims to cherish; it would destroy it.

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The First Amendment Right to Cancel - The Wall Street Journal