Ed Palattella|Erie Times-News

An expletive-ladenanti-Trump sign is all but certain to remain on displayin Oil City through the election on Nov. 3.

Lawyers for the owner of the sign and Oil City have reached an agreement in federal court in Erie that prohibits the city from taking action against thesign or "other political signage that is otherwise lawful" untilNov. 4.

U.S. District Judge Susan Paradise Baxter still must approve the joint motion for relief, filed Monday. Her approval is expected given that both sides reached the deal on their own.

The agreement, if approved, eliminates the need for Baxter to hold a hearing in the case on Oct. 13. The agreement also givesOil City until Nov. 30 to answer the sign owner's lawsuit against the city in court.

A week ago, Baxter signed an agreement that allowed the sign to stay up for at least 14 days, until Oct. 13. The deal, which both sides fashioned, temporarilyhalted the First Amendment dispute over the sign.

The sign owner andcritic of President Donald Trump, William E. Healy, sued Oil City on Sept. 17. According to the suit, Oil City violated Healy's First Amendment rights by raising objections to the political sign, which includesthe phrase(Expletive) Trump."

The suit says thatHealy put up thesign on Sept. 13 on a lot he owns onCooper Avenue that he refers to as "Freedom Corner." The Oil City police chief called on Sept. 14 and told Healy's lawyerthat the chief had received complaints about the18-by-24-inch sign and considered it to be an act of disorderly conduct because of the explitive, according to the suit.

Healy agreed to remove the sign temporarily while he and his lawyer, MichaelHadley, pursued the matter in federal court, according to court records.

Contact Ed Palattella at epalattella@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ETNpalattella.

Continued here:

Owner of anti-Trump sign in Oil City gets another reprieve in federal court - GoErie.com

In the first quarter of 2020, the total amount spent on lobbying,about $938 million, reached the highest on record, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. At least 3,200 companies, trade associations and other groups reportedtrying to influence the government's response to the pandemic, CRP said.

Many of the biggest spenders, according to CRP data, also received substantial relief from the CARES Act. The health sector, which spent $168 million on lobbying efforts, received$150 billion in coronavirus relief aid, according to Advisory Board. The airline industry, which spent $29 million on lobbying, received $32 billion in relief aid, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, and agribusiness, which spent $38 million, received $19 billion in aid, CRP said.

"If you don't have a strategy to deal with Washington today, I don't care if you're a small business, a medium-sized business or large business, if you don't have a government affairs strategy, you are going to be left behind," said Paul Miller, a veteran lobbyist and partner at Miller Wenhold Capitol Strategies.

"The pandemic is a perfect example of that. If you didn't have somebody here with the relationship to speak for you, well, then you likely didn't get what you wanted or needed to help yourself," Miller said.

The lobbying industry is arguably the U.S. government's oldest profession and is protected by the First Amendment. Yet critics say it undermines the country's democracy by tilting the power to influence policy in favor of those with unlimited financial resources.

Nearly 12,000 active lobbyists in Washington, D.C., helped thousands of clients spend over $3.5 billion in 2019.

Jimmy Williams worked as a lobbyist from 2002 to 2010. Before that, he worked as a legislative staffer for nearly a decade. He said lobbyists were instrumental to his work on Capitol Hill. Even as a lobbyist, he felt that his expertise helped lawmakers, as they were often inundated and overworked.

But he said things changed when he moved from trade associations to K Street.

"It was financially rewarding, as I got paid a lot more. But at the same time, I was then beginning to figure out that people didn't give a damn about my knowledge of banking or of the real estate industry. It was all about checks. No one gave a damn about anything other than who I knew and how much it would cost for us to write checks to get into those offices, i.e., campaign donations," said Williams, who now lives on a South Carolina farm.

The symbiotic relationship between campaign finance and lobbying is often contested. According to Sheila Krumholz, CPR's executive director, "sending an army of lobbyists up to work Capitol Hill to follow that donation is kind of the one-two punch. You first give a donation, and you next have your lobbyist pay a call."

One study by The Sunlight Foundation examined 14 million records from 2007 to 2012,including on campaign contributions and lobbying expenditure, and found that for every dollar spent, the corporation received $760 from the government.

But many in the field say a lobbyist is not what people may think and instead works as a part educator and part lawyer.

The misconception about lobbyists is that "we walk around with bags of money and say, 'Vote our way' or 'Oppose this.' But it's not even close to the truth," said Marcie McSwane, owner of The McSwane Group.

"Everyone always says, 'Drain the swamp,' and [that] all these lobbyists who've been up there for so long are the worst," McSwane said. "We're not working against anyone. We're hoping to work for and improve the lives of people here in the States. We love our country."

Watch the video above to learn more about why lobbying exists.

View post:

Lobbying in Q1 topped a record $938 million, but lobbyists say their profession is misunderstood - CNBC

Mailyn Fidler has joined the Reporters Committee as a legal fellow for the Technology and Press Freedom Project. Her work focuses on litigation, policy and research on technology issues affecting the news medias First Amendment rights.

Ive always been interested in the tools and systems that people use to govern themselves, Mailyn said. Law is one of those systems, as is technology.

The Technology and Press Freedom Project team, led by Gabe Rottman, publishes a weekly newsletter analyzing legal and policy issues at the intersection of technology and press freedom, including government surveillance and leak investigations.

Mailyns past work also concentrated on technology and press freedom issues. As an undergraduate, she studied science, technology and society at Stanford University before attending Oxford University on a Marshall Scholarship to study international relations. While attending Yale Law School, she interned at the Knight First Amendment Institute and worked with a law firm litigating First Amendment issues on behalf of major internet platforms.

In law school, Mailyn also worked with the San Francisco City Attorneys Office to develop impact litigation related to cybersecurity and First Amendment rights, an experience that she says helped prepare her for this fellowship.

I think theres a lot of room for growth at this intersection of technology and press freedom, Mailyn said. She added that her past work is relevant to how RCFP thinks, particularly as were thinking of new ways and new angles to attack these issues.

As she begins her position with the Reporters Committee, Mailyn looks forward to working to support journalists.

I have found that in almost everything Ive done in law, somehow I end up talking to journalists, she said. I think they are very important to the rule of law.

Mailyn Fidler is not admitted to practice law.

The Reporters Committee regularly files friend-of-the-court briefs and its attorneys represent journalists and news organizations pro bono in court cases that involve First Amendment freedoms, the newsgathering rights of journalists and access to public information. Stay up-to-date on our work by signing up for our monthly newsletter and following us on Twitter or Instagram.

Go here to read the rest:

RCFP's Technology and Press Freedom Project welcomes legal fellow - Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

from the push-my-buttons dept

You may recall that, last year, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard decided to file a ridiculously silly lawsuit against Google, claiming that the company had "violated her First Amendment rights" because it temporarily shut down her advertising account, and also because it filtered some of her campaign emails to spam. In a lawsuit that read remarkably similar to the various people arguing that "anti-conservative bias" was the basis for a lawsuit, it made a whole bunch of silly claims that any good lawyer would recognize as frivolous (hold that thought).

The lawsuit was easily tossed out on 1st Amendment grounds. And when I say "1st Amendment grounds," I mean the court had to explain to Gabbard -- a sitting Congressional Representative -- that the 1st Amendment only applies to the government and Google is not the government. This is really embarrassing:

Google is not now, nor (to the Courts knowledge) has it ever been, an arm of the United Statesgovernment....

[....]

To support its contention that a private actor can regulate elections, Plaintiff directs the Court toTerry v. Adams, 345 U.S. 461, 463 (1953). However, Terry is utterly inapposite to Plaintiffs contention.In 1954, the Supreme Court held that the Fifteenth Amendment was implicated when a political partyeffectively prevented black citizens from voting. Terry, 345 U.S. at 463. The Court held: The evil hereis that the State, through the action and abdication of those whom it has clothed with authority, haspermitted white voters to go through a procedure which predetermines the legally devised primary. Id.at 477. But Terry bears no relation to the current dispute, where Google, an undisputedly privatecompany, temporarily suspended Plaintiffs Google advertising account for a matter of hours, allegedlybased on viewpoint bias.

What Plaintiff fails to establish is how Googles regulation of its own platform is in any wayequivalent to a governmental regulation of an election. Google does not hold primaries, it does not selectcandidates, and it does not prevent anyone from running for office or voting in elections. To the extentGoogle regulates anything, it regulates its own private speech and platform. Plaintiffs nationalsecurity argument similarly fails. Google protects itself from foreign interference; it does not act as anagent of the United States. Nearly every media or technology company has some form of cybersecurityprocedure. Under Plaintiffs theory, every media organization that took steps to prevent foreigncybercrimes could potentially implicate the First Amendment. Googles self-regulation, even of topicsthat may be of public concern, does not implicate the First Amendment.

Pretty embarrassing for a court to need to explain how the 1st Amendment works to someone in Congress, but hey, it's 2020.

The court jumped straight to the 1st Amendment issue, though it could have easily tossed out the case on Section 230 grounds as well, and it appears that Tulsi has now joined the "destroy Section 230" crowd, teaming up with Rep. Paul Gosar to introduce yet another anti-Section 230 bill in the House. If Gosar's name rings a bell, he's the representative from Arizona whose politics are so Trumpian and ridiculous that six of his own siblings took out an ad that told people not to vote for their brother.

So these two have now teamed up to introduce the Don't Push My Buttons Act. If that sounds familiar, it's because Senator John Kennedy introduced the same thing in the Senate last week. When that was introduced, we explained just how awful the bill was and that analysis stands. It would take Section 230 immunity away from sites that do some fairly basic data tracking, or if they use an algorithmically generated feed. It makes no sense and seems to serve only one purpose: to frustrate social media companies with annoying nuisance regulation.

The bill seems unlikely to go anywhere, and Gabbard is not running for re-election, so this again seems more for show than anything else, but what a terrible bill to go out on. Gabbard failed in her wacky legal attack on social media, and so as a parting gift she tries to remove their Section 230 protections. Disgusting.

Oh, as a side note: in Gabbard's original lawsuit she was represented by the lawyers at Pierce Bainbridge. While the specific lawyers working on her case appear to have jumped ship from that firm during the collapse of that firm, the founder of the firm John Pierce, was a "high profile" addition to the defense team of Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager facing murder charges in Wisconsin. This seemed weird, given that Pierce's experience is in civil litigation, not criminal, and had to resign from the board of the foundation that he and Lin Wood (another lawyer with quite the recent reputation) had set up to seek funds for Rittenhouse's defense, after questions were raised about how Pierce presided over the mess that was his disgraced law firm. The full article is worth reading, but just a snippet:

The firms financial woes have involved Pierce himself. In March 2020, John Pierce and Pierce Bainbridge were sued by a payday-lender-style financial business called Karish Kapital, which offers emergency cash for businesses. Karish Kapital alleged that Pierce had personally taken out a loan worth nearly $4 million from them and signed over the firms assets as collateral.

In a statement to The American Lawyer, a Pierce Bainbridge spokesperson said Pierce was on an indefinite leave of absence and had accepted money from Karish Kapital LLC for his personal use. In May, Pierce told Law360 that he had gone to rehab for unspecified issues.

Pierces loan from Karish Kapital marked the start of a cascade of bad news for the firm. On April 9, three named partners left the firm. James Bainbridge, the last remaining named partner aside from Pierce, set up his own separate firm in July, although he remains a partner at Pierce Bainbridge. As of May, Law360 reported, more than 60 lawyers had left the firm in the last six months.

So beyond an embarrassing legal loss, the fact that this was the firm Gabbard chose to file her ridiculous lawsuit against Google seems to raise significant questions about her own judgment in understanding not just the law she's now seeking to change, but also the people she chose as her lawyers. Perhaps she really should sit out questions regarding internet law.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyones attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise and every little bit helps. Thank you.

The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: don't push my buttons act, john kennedy, john pierce, paul gosar, section 230, tulsi gabbard

See more here:

Reps. Gabbard And Gosar Introduce Ridiculous House Companion To Ridiculous Anti-230 Senate Bill From Senator Kennedy - Techdirt

Mike Antonuccis Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

You wont often find the four largest public-sector unions the National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Service Employees International Union and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation all on the same side of a major labor issue.

I take that back. Youll never find it.

But 2020 is a year where anything and everything can happen, so its in keeping with the times that these eternal adversaries should find common ground in the case of Sweeney v. Raoul.

The case is a response to the U.S. Supreme Courts 2018 ruling in Janus v. AFSCME, which banned public-sector unions from charging representation fees to nonmembers. Unions universally decried the 5-4 decision and immediately went to work to mitigate its effects. Though most of these measures were legislative or administrative in nature resignation windows, membership pitches during required orientation sessions for new employees, etc. several unions chose litigation.

Unions in Idaho and Wisconsin filed suit, claiming the loss of nonmember agency fees violated the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. They were unsuccessful.

In Illinois, Local 150 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, which represents some public-sector workers, took a different route. The union claimed that being forced to file grievances on behalf of nonmembers was a violation of the unions First Amendment rights. The case was dismissed in trial court but was successfully appealed to a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Oral arguments were heard last week.

The underlying principle of the suit is the unions duty of fair representation. Since the union is the exclusive bargaining agent for all employees in a unit, it must represent all equally, regardless of whether they are union members. Unions defended agency fees as a way to avoid free rider problems, but the Janus ruling changed that dynamic.

Voices on both the right and left began discussing the possibility of members-only unions. Common in Europe, these unions dont have exclusive representation rights and negotiate only on behalf of dues-paying members. This leaves individuals the freedom to set the terms of their own employment, and even allows for multiple unions in the same workplace.

No doubt Local 150 thought using the First Amendment arguments that won the case for the Janus plaintiff against it was a shrewd move. But a host of the nations largest public-sector unions saw the suit as a threat to exclusive representation.

In an amicus brief, attorneys for NEA, AFT, AFSCME, SEIU and their Illinois affiliates laid out their reasons for opposing the Local 150 lawsuit.

Though they stated that Janus was wrongly decided, NEA et al. argued in the brief that a Local 150 victory could undermine longstanding collective bargaining arrangements and even chip away at the validity of public-sector collective bargaining itself. The major unions went on to cite the majority ruling in Janus multiple times.

The unions approvingly noted the Janus reasoning that exclusive representation gives them a privileged place in negotiations over wages, benefits and working conditions and that representing nonmembers is a necessary concomitant to that exclusivity. Exclusive representation without an obligation to represent nonmembers would leave those employees without any representation or means to gain it. That, according to the Janus ruling, would lead to serious constitutional questions.

NEA et al. also appear to have wholeheartedly accepted the Janus majoritys logic that no union is ever compelled to seek exclusive status. They stated that the duties involved in representing nonmembers do not impose substantial restrictions on a unions core rights of expression and association. Whats more, they said, performing those duties furthers the unions interests in keeping control of the administration of the collective-bargaining agreement.

Local 150 responded to these criticisms by saying it is being misunderstood. The union said it doesnt want to erode exclusive bargaining, merely charge nonmembers for services. But the major unions oppose this reasoning as well.

Many unions, they stated, believe that fee-for-service arrangements promote a detached, transactional view of the relationship between a union and the employees it represents, rather than the sense of solidarity and engagement within the workplace that is ultimately the most significant source of unions power.

NEA at al. concluded: Janus confirms the central role the duty of fair representation plays in ensuring the constitutionality of exclusive representation. That duty is also consistent with broad principles of First Amendment doctrine. Any conclusion to the contrary would jeopardize not only fundamental aspects of labor relations in the public sector but a broad array of duties that are well recognized under the law.

Union allies and opponents will continue to argue about whether exclusive representation infringes on individual rights. Whats clear from this brief is that unions prize their monopoly on bargaining above all else and will embrace the existence of nonmembers as a small price to pay for retaining that privilege.

Read more here:

Analysis: To Preserve Their Exclusive Right to Representation, NEA, AFT and Other Major Unions Will Even Buy into Janus Ruling - The 74

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. started the Supreme Courts new term Monday with a brief tribute to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose death last month thrust the court into Washingtons central political drama less than a month before the presidential election.

Ahead of two hours of oral arguments, held remotely by telephone because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Roberts went through Ginsburgs career in law that culminated with 27 years on the high court. He said her contributions as advocate, jurist and citizen are immeasurable.

The Supreme Court is, at the moment, down to eight justices and not conducting business in person. But the justices moved right into oral arguments after that making it the only branch of government that was not grappling with how to do its work because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Senate postponed hearings and looked to stay away from the Capitol this week because three Republican members are in isolation with the virus and others are quarantining because of exposure. Their absence prompted questions about whether Senate Republicans can move forward with plans to swiftly confirm Trumps nominee to fill Ginsburgs seat, Amy Coney Barrett, a federal appeals court judge.

President Donald Trump returned to the White House on Monday evening after spending three days in the hospital with coronavirus, and he spent Monday morning tweeting out in all caps a string of reasons why he thinks voters should reelect him. Some related to the Supreme Court and a case the justices will hear next month on the 2010 health care law.

Read the original post:

Supreme Court functions in the midst of COVID-19 chaos - Roll Call