Daily Archives: February 1, 2022

The hosts of "CBS Mornings" piled on podcast star Joe Rogan, who is the target of liberals in media and entertainment to be deplatformed by Spotify.

Spotify has been facing growing pressure to remove Rogan from its service over allegations that his popular show has been peddling COVID "misinformation," causing musicians like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell to pull their music from the streaming giant.

GLENN GREENWALD: IF LIBERALS FORCE SPOTIFY TO DUMP JOE ROGAN, NOBODY IS SAFE FROM PETTY-TYRANT TACTICS

While covering "Spotify's misinformation fight," CBS host Tony Dokoupil acknowledged "these musicians are not going to win this battle," but appeared to express solidarity with them.

Joe Rogan, the popular podcast host on Spotify, has emerged as Public Enemy No.1 among liberals. (Photo by Michael S. Schwartz/Getty Images)

"You have a First Amendment right to say what you want. You don't have a First Amendment right to appear on a platform as large as Spotify. That's the issue," Dokoupil said. "Joe Rogan is correct that the medical world gets stuff wrong, but there's a process by which the medical world corrects itself, and that process is not interviewing guys on the fringe of the medical world on your massive platform. That's called irresponsible. Its not censorship."

"Editors are not censors, they're ensuring quality," Dokoupil added.

Co-host Gayle King then chimed in, suggesting the solution to combat Rogan isn't simply to just "turn it off."

"The thing is, a lot of people do listen to it, and they're getting false, incorrect information and that's why it seems so dangerous," King said.

JOE ROGAN BREAKS SILENCE AFTER NEIL YOUNG'S SPOTIFY CONTROVERSY

"He has a huge reach. He has a huge reach," co-host Nate Burleson emphasized.

"And it matters," Dokoupil said, later adding, "it's a life or death issue. Thats why its in a special category."

JOE ROGAN QUESTIONS EVERYTHING -- "Podcast" -- Pictured: (l-r) Joe Rogan, Duncan Trussell -- (Photo by: Vivian Zink/Syfy/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)

Spotify announced that it will begin to put a disclaimer at the beginning of Rogans show when he discusses COVID.

Rogan himself addressed the uproar thanking Spotify for its support and expressing approval of the added disclaimer to his podcast.

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He also vowed to invite guests to balance out the controversial COVID views that are said by others on the podcast.

Spotify previously struck a whopping $100 million deal for the exclusive rights to "The Joe Rogan Experience."

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CBS hosts say Joe Rogan doesn't have 'First Amendment right' to be on Spotify: 'It seems so dangerous' - Fox News

An Oregon church is suing the city of Brookings, Oregon, over limits the local government has imposed on how often it can serve free meals to the poor. A federal lawsuit filed Friday by St. Timothy's Episcopal Church argues that Brookings' regulations on "benevolent meal service" unconstitutionally restrict its religious mission to feed the hungry.

"What we're doing is what churches do. Churches feed people," Rev. Bernie Lindley of St. Timothy's toldReason last year, shortly after the Brookings ordinance passed. "To tell a church that they have to be limited in how they live into the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a violation of our First Amendment right to freely practice our religion."

St. Timothy's has run a soup kitchen several days a week since the 1980s, as have other churches in Brookings. When those churches shut down their meal service during the pandemic, St. Timothy's extended its effort to six days a week.

Seeing more people at the church more days a week didn't sit well with some of the neighbors. They complained in an April 2021 petition to the city government that St. Timothy's soup kitchenand its participation in the city's safe parking program, whereby it lets people live in their cars on the church parking lotwas bringing crime and vagrancy to the area.

In response, the city council passed an ordinance in October that said churches and nonprofits in residentially zoned areas could offer free meal service only two days a week. And to do that, they needed special conditional use permits.

On paper, this was actually a liberalization of Brookings' zoning rules. Because state health authorities regulate soup kitchens like restaurants, and restaurants are a commercial use, soup kitchens were technically prohibited in the city's residential zones. And all of Brookings' churches are located in residentially zoned areas.

City Manager Janelle Howard says the ordinance was intended as a compromise: It legalized technically prohibited soup kitchens while mollifying residents' complaints about the nuisances they caused.

In practice, though, the churches' charitable work had been unregulated before. The ordinance's actual effect was to pave the way for a crackdown.

Lindley and St. Timothy's participated in early talks with the city about its soup kitchen ordinance, but they dropped out after it became clear that Brookings intended to limit the number of days the church could offer meals.

The ordinance became enforceable last week, potentially opening St. Timothy's up to fines and other sanctions. To prevent that, the church and the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon.

The complaint argues that Brookings' soup kitchen regulations violate the U.S. and Oregon constitutions' protections of free expression and the free exercise of religion. It also claims that the regulations' vague description of "benevolent meal service" and unclear potential sanctions violate the U.S. Constitution's due process protections.

Lastly, it argues that Brookings is violating a federal law limiting state and local governments from adopting land use regulations that impose a "substantial burden" on "religious exercise."

"We've been serving our community here for decades and picking up the slack where the need exists and no one else is stepping in," Lindley declared in a statement. "We have no intention of stopping now and we're prepared to hold fast to our beliefs. We won't abandon the people of Brookings who need our help, even when we're being threatened."

Original post:
Lawsuit: Crackdown on Church Soup Kitchens Violates the First Amendment - Reason

This interview will be on St. Louis on the Air at noon Tuesday. This story will be updated after the show. You can listen live.

On a recent Saturday, local high school teacher Tony Nipert deboarded a MetroLink train at the Central West End station while enjoying one of his favorite hobbies: exploring St. Louis. As he exited the train, he decided to snap a quick photo of the train departing toward downtown, and pulled out his phone.

After taking a quick shot of the moving train, he decided to take one more photo because the newly refurbished station was looking so good.

I love how the buildings kind of rise up out of the station. So I got back at a distance, and at this point nobodys on the platform, recalled Nipert, who at the time was working on a piece for Next STL about how MetroLink is safer than many people think. Its kind of empty except for the two security guards. And I take a big landscape photo of it.

About two seconds after he nailed his shot, Nipert told St. Louis on the Air, a security guard yelled at him.

She said, Who are you taking a photo of? And I said, Oh, Im taking it of the platform, and I gestured that I was trying to do that. And she said, You cant do that. And so, you know, I didnt know the rules, Nipert explained. I thought maybe I was in the wrong, so I apologized and walked off.

While Nipert shrugged off the interaction as no big deal, he added that he was surprised to learn Metro Transit wouldnt want people taking photos of the transit system which he thinks of as part of the public commons.

Evie Hemphill

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St. Louis Public Radio

So that was one of the weird things, he said. And I thought to myself [that] maybe theyve got some rules about customer privacy or something and theres a worry about something like that.

In fact, Metro does list rules on its website for photography and video along the transit system. While the agency notes that such images are fun ways to commemorate your trip on Metro, it asks riders to keep from interfering with Metro service and indicates that lights, tripods and other types of equipment are not permitted and that such activities may be limited for security, safety or customer convenience.

The transit agency outlines separate rules for journalists and commercial photographers, saying that such people must first contact the Metro Communications Department for approval.

Those distinctions raise some questions and concerns for Lisa Hoppenjans, assistant professor of practice and director of the First Amendment Clinic at Washington University School of Law.

After all, photography is a form of expression, and as such connects to First Amendment rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Even so, Hoppenjans acknowledges that such rights are not absolute.

On Tuesdays show, Hoppenjans will join host Sarah Fenske for a closer look at what the law says about photography in public places.

Have you ever tried to take a photo in a public place, only to be told it's not allowed? What questions or hypotheticals do you have for First Amendment lawyer Lisa Hoppenjans?

Leave us a voicemail at 314-516-6397, email talk@stlpr.org or share your thoughts via our St. Louis on the Air Facebook group, and help inform our coverage.

St. Louis on the Air brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is hosted by Sarah Fenske and produced by Alex Heuer, Emily Woodbury, Evie Hemphill, and Kayla Drake. Jane Mather-Glass is our production assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr.

Continued here:
Photos, public space and the 1st Amendment - St. Louis Public Radio

This is an opinion column

Brookside the tiny hamlet outside of Birmingham now infamous for its interstate patrols, aggressive policing and possibly phantom traffic citations might have more to worry about than just Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworths call for an official audit or national news outlets focusing their attention on the town of fewer than 1,300 people.

And thats because the town, by way of its police force and now former Police Chief Mike Jones, may have violated the First Amendment rights of those who complained about arrests, tickets and other traffic stops.

As John Archibald reported Thursday, the Brookside Police Department apparently has a consistent practice of patrolling not just the highways of Alabama but also the byways of social media and retaliating against the departments critics. Two things really stuck out to me as a First Amendment scholar in that most recent piece: one woman, Michelle Jones, who cited a mysterious phone call from a Brookside detective claiming she issued threats, incited a riot and slandered the Brookside Police Department on Facebook and a Brookside man who said, after a similar post, an officer told him the chief was pretty upset and any more backlash like that towards his police department and itll be far worse than a ticket.

Those words should give us all pause and cause for concern at the prospect of the police powers of the state being wielded to silence speech. For while the text of the First Amendment reads, Congress shall make no lawabridging the freedom of speech, we have thankfully interpreted that to mean all agents of government acting under the color of law from the president, to the governor, to public school employees and, yes, even police officers must respect free speech rights.

However, lest anyone start shouting about fires and crowded theaters, there are certainly limits to what the First Amendment protects, and those limits include threats and incitement. It is doubtful, though, that Jones Facebook posts rose to the level of what is constitutionally actionable. Inciting a riot via Facebook sounds like a nigh impossibility, and thats not even considering the limitations under Brandenburg v. Ohio that the state can only punish speech designed to produce imminent lawless action. An online threat is more likely actionable generically, but Jones unless she posted something that a reasonable person would view as a serious expression of an intention to commit violence against the Brookside Police Department was again likely engaging in protected speech.

And if the departments staff truly feels slandered (quick point of order: they would have be libeled on Facebook, the difference there being spoken versus something published), the answer there is for a specific individual to sue Jones for defamation not to harass her via telephone.

But its that second anonymous complaint that gets at the real heart of this banal evil. There is no right in this country for a police chief to not be upset about comments made publicly or to somehow escape a dreaded and terrible backlash. If the First Amendment is to mean anything if were going to have the freedom of speech in this country and in this state it has to mean that police departments cannot threaten critics of their official conduct.

That last point was made clear some 60 years ago in a landmark case from right here in Alabama. In New York Times v. Sullivan, Montgomery Public Safety Commissioner L.B. Sullivan attempted to recover damages from paper after it printed a defamatory ad written by a Martin Luther King Jr. fundraising committee. While Sullivan won in Alabama courts, his judgment was overturned by the Supreme Court as it established the actual malice rule, a standard that works to protect the right to criticize public officials and public figures so long as speakers dont act with a reckless disregard for the truth.

Did Jones actually threaten, incite or defame? Did the Brookwood man bring down some nefarious shroud of untruth upon his hometown police department? Most likely not. What we appear to have is a pattern and a practice of the government silencing speech that it does not like.

And whether thats the federal government, the state government or the people running Americas most notorious (for now) speed trap, thats something we simply cannot have in our country.

Will Nevin, J.D., Ph.D., is an assistant professor and program coordinator for Communications Media at Alabama A&M University.

See the article here:
Brookside PD ran afoul of good policing practices and possibly the First Amendment - AL.com

Editor's Note: This post also appears on Just Security.

The U.S. governments prepublication review process for written works by certain current and former government officials is a mammoth system of prior restraint that impacts the speech of millions. We and others have highlighted the problems with this system, including its scale, lack of adequate process, arbitrariness, violation of the First Amendment, massive chilling effect, and adverse consequences for national security.

The challenge has been figuring out a way to fix the system. Almost six years ago, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) expressed its concerns with the pre-publication review process and directed the intelligence community (IC) to issue a policy within 180 days that was more consistent with due process and the First Amendment. Though the IC normally takes steps to comply with such non-legislative HPSCI directives as a matter of comity, six years later the IC has not implemented a change in prepublication policy. Another route to change litigation to challenge the constitutionality of the prepublication review system has been rare. The main reason is the widely held belief that the Supreme Court blessed the modern massive prior restraint system in the 1980 case Snepp v. U.S.

This belief is false: the Supreme Court did no such thing in Snepp. In explaining why this is so, this post and a subsequent one draw on an amicus brief that we filed in support of the pending cert. petition in Edgar v. Haines. The petition asks the Court to overrule Snepp or to clarify that lower courts should not read the decision to preclude meaningful scrutiny of the federal governments current prepublication review regime under the First Amendment. The thrust of our amicus brief is that Snepp is an illegitimate foundation for todays prior restraint system. (David Zimmer and Benjamin Hayes of Goodwin Procter, to whom we are very grateful, drafted and filed the brief, which we rely on here in part.) The first reason for this conclusion, discussed in this post, is that the Supreme Court in Snepp decided the foundational First Amendment issue in a brief footnote in the procedural history section of a shadow docket summary reversal without merits briefing or oral argument, and with other procedural irregularities. The second reason, discussed in subsequent posts, is that the illegitimate decision in Snepp became the foundation for a massively broader, different-in-kind, and worse system of prepublication review than was in place at the time of Snepp.

The Background to Snepp

The prepublication review system in place when Snepp was decided in 1980 is nothing like the one that today restricts the speech of many millions of current and former government employees. Prepublication review began in the 1950s as a small and casual system in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. With the increase in writing by current and former officials amidst the 1970s upheavals sparked by Watergate and the Church Commission, the CIA in the late 1970s established a Publication Review Board to review the writings of current and former agency officials. In 1980, the year Snepp was decided, only 148 publications were submitted for review.

The Snepp decision grew out of former CIA analyst Frank Snepps publication of a book about CIA activities that Snepp declined to submit to the Publication Review Board. Snepp thus defied his employment contract pledge to not . . . publish . . . any information or material relating to the [CIA], its activities or intelligence activities generally, either during or after the term of [his] employment . . . without specific prior approval by the [CIA]. The Government sued Snepp to enforce the agreement and obtain a constructive trust for the Governments benefit on Snepps profits. The district court enjoined Snepp from future breaches of his secrecy agreements, imposed the requested constructive trust, and dismissed in a few sentences a claim that Snepp had raised under the First Amendment. The Fourth Circuit also rejected Snepps First Amendment argument. But it declined to impose a constructive trust and reversed the district court on that issue.

Snepp filed a petition for a writ of certiorari that raised the issue of whether a system of prior restraint sanctioned by the court of appeals impermissibly burdens the First Amendment rights of thousands of government employees and the public. The government opposed the petition but filed (separately) a cross-petition conditioned on the grant of Snepps petition. The governments cross-petition stated that the contract remedy provided by the court of appeals appear[ed] to be sufficient . . . to protect the [CIAs] interest. The only reason for filing the cross-petition, the government explained, was so the Supreme Court may review the entire judgment of the court of appeals if it granted Snepps petition. The government made clear that, [i]f [Snepps] petition . . . is denied, this petition should also be denied. The constructive trust issue, the government made clear, was not independently certworthy.

Snepps Illegitimacy

What this Court did next was highly irregular, as our brief says. Three months after cert-stage briefing closed, the Court issued a per curiam opinion without oral argument and without any merits briefing. The Supreme Court summarily reversed the Fourth Circuit on the constructive trust issue that the government said did not warrant independent review, and, in a footnote in the procedural history section of the opinion, it addressed the issue on which Snepp had sought certiorari. The totality of the Courts First Amendment analysis, in footnote 3, is as follows (citations omitted):

[This] Courts cases make clear thateven in the absence of an express agreementthe CIA could have acted to protect substantial government interests by imposing reasonable restrictions on employee activities that in other contexts might be protected by the First Amendment. . . . The Government has a compelling interest in protecting both the secrecy of information important to our national security and the appearance of confidentiality so essential to the effective operation of our foreign intelligence service. The agreement that Snepp signed is a reasonable means for protecting this vital interest.

These three sentences became the sole foundation of all subsequent First Amendment scrutiny of prepublication review.

What made Snepps First Amendment discussion irregular was not (just) that it occurred as a brief aside in a per curiam summary reversal on another issue (the constructive trust). As Justice Stevens explained in his three-Justice dissent, the decision contained other unprecedented elements.

Justice Stevens noted that the majority obviously does not believe that Snepps claims merit this Courts consideration, for they are summarily dismissed in a footnote. The Courts cursory treatment of the First Amendment issue, Stevens added, makes clear that Snepps petition would not have been granted on its own merits. Against this background, Stevens argued that it was highly inappropriate for the Supreme Court to grant the Governments conditional cross-petition while in essence denying Snepps petition. In other words, it was inappropriate to grant Snepps petition, which was independently uncertworthy, only to reach an issue that the government said in its cross-petition need not be reviewed, since its interests were adequately protected on other grounds. The Court had reach[ed] out to decide a question not necessarily presented to it.

The context of these untoward procedural shenanigans made them much worse, since the Court in its throwaway footnote fashioned a drastic new remedy . . . to enforce a species of prior restraint on a citizens right to criticize his government. Justice Stevens accurately predicted how the government would deploy the new reasonableness standard for prior restraints: the reviewing agency will misuse its authority to delay the publication of a critical work or to persuade an author to modify the contents of his work beyond the demands of secrecy. Justice Stevens acknowledged the national interest in maintaining an effective intelligence service and the possible need for some system of prior restraint. But he bemoaned the fact that this critical First Amendment issue was decided in the absence of full briefing and argument.

So too did Archibald Cox in the Harvard Law Review. One would have supposed that the extent of the governments authority to silence its officials and employees and thereby deprive the public of access to information about government activity was not too obvious to deserve deliberate judicial consideration, he said. Diane Orentlicher noted at the time that the majoritys summary treatment of the first amendment issues raised by Snepp and its decision to forego oral argument and briefs are particularly noteworthy in view of the fact that Snepp was the first occasion on which the Supreme Court considered the enforceability of the CIA secrecy agreement. Unfortunately, it was also the last occasion on which the Court addressed the issue. For over four decades, Snepps footnote has governed.

* * *

We have not said a word in this post, and we do not say a word in our brief, about how out of step Snepps reasonableness test is with the Courts First Amendment, and especially its prior restraint, jurisprudence. That issue is fully covered in the petition. The emphasis in our amicus brief is on the procedural context of Snepp and the decisions original legitimacy. One would think that the colossal system of prior restraint that inheres in the governments prepublication review system would have been subject to careful scrutiny from this Court, the Introduction to our brief notes. This is especially so since, as the Supreme Court has emphasized, [a]ny system of prior restraint . . . bear[s] a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity. To the contrary, as our brief explains, the federal governments publication-review edifice rests on the shakiest of judicial foundations: a footnote in the procedural history section of a case this Court decided without merits briefing or oral argument. This is one important reason why Snepps drive-by constitutional ruling should not be the last word on this vitally important issue.

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Prepublication Review and the Quicksand Foundation of Snepp - Lawfare

I am concerned about the new direction the three newest trustees are taking the ImagineIF Libraries.

Doug Adams, David Ingram and Heidi Roedel (the three newest trustees) demonstrated this new direction at the last three board meetings. At the Dec. 2 meeting Adams rightly pointed out that our library, along with most public libraries in the country, use documents from the American Library Association (ALA) to help guide policy decisions. Adams rejects ALA guidance: I find them [the ALA tenets] to be hindering and I dont find them to be genuine. The fact of the matter is, change is hard, but political winds blow, and they blow in different directions. Adams further said, It would be my goal to disassociate from them [the ALA] completely and rewrite policy accordingly.

Adams comments show that he objects to a library that stands for the free access of materials from all points of view. Instead, he intends to bring partisan politics into ImagineIFs policies. The current library policies benefit everyone, regardless of their political leanings.

Ordinarily it would not matter what personal opinion Trustee Adams has, because personal opinion is not what drives library acquisitions. But Adams intends to rewrite library policy based on his political views. Ingram and Roedel share his views.

After the Jan. 13 meeting Adams said he has already started rewriting library policies. In light of what Adams has said at board meetings, these rewritten policies will discard the intellectual freedom our library has protected and remove free access to materials of differing views.

Many of us love the library precisely because it champions freedom of speech and intellectual freedom. Please write our commissioners and trustees to make it clear that this community wants a library that is strong in protection of intellectual freedom and First Amendment rights.

Alice EbiKalispell

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Protect Intellectual Freedom and First Amendment Rights - Flathead Beacon

Federal government agents should not have free rein to violate the rights of the public with impunity. That's the uncontroversial premise behind a spate of petitions before the U.S. Supreme Court that pertain to law enforcement officers who breached clearly established law, and whose victims want to seek recourse.

Recourse can prove elusive, if not impossible.

The Court has yet to announce if it will hear two of those cases. The first pertains to a federal officer who devised a fake sex trafficking ring and jailed a teenage girl on bogus charges for two years. The second involves a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agent who, outside of a bar, tried to shoot a man he had a personal issue with. Federal courts in both cases found that the two government agents violated clearly established law but are protected by absolute immunity and thus cannot be sued solely because of their status with the federal government.

But one similar case has worked its way up to the justices, who are scheduled to hear it on March 2though it appears they may be poised to make it even more difficult for victims of federal government abuse to achieve any meaningful remedy when their rights are violated.

In 2014, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Erik Egbert followed a man to a bed and breakfast where he was staying in Washington state. That man was from Turkey, and Egbert assumed the guest may have come to the U.S. illegally based on the inn's proximity to the Canadian border.

He was incorrect. But Egbert pursued the man and declined to leave the private property after its owner, Robert Boule, requested that he do so. In response, Egbert pushed Boule into a car and then to the ground, ultimately resulting in injuries to Boule's back that required medical treatment. Boule subsequently filed a complaint with Egbert's supervisor, which the Border Patrol agent countered with threats to sic the IRS on him with a business audita promise he made good on.

It's been almost eight years, and Boule has not yet had his day in court, having spent the better part of the last decade asking the government for the privilege to appear before a jury and ask for damages. Thus far, he's been successful: Both the district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit sided with Boule and said he should have the opportunity to bring a civil suit against Egbert for infringing on his First and Fourth Amendment rights.

That shouldn't be surprising. Under a 1971 Supreme Court precedentBivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcoticsfederal agents may be sued when they violate someone's rights. But in recent years, the high court has proceeded to dilute its own decision in significant ways, now requiring that federal agents may not be sued if a federal judge pinpoints "special factors counseling hesitation." You can see where such a subjective standard might go awry.

It was that standard that shielded Officer Heather Weyker, who conjured the sex trafficking ring, and DHS Agent Ray Lamb, whose gun jammed when he attempted to shootthe man he had a feud with. Neither one received qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that protects certain government officials from civil liability if the way in which they misbehaved has not been "clearly established" in a prior court ruling. Weyker and Lamb did violate the law, as the courts acknowledged. Yet although they were denied qualified immunity, they received absolute immunity and can't be sued simply because of their status as a federal employeesomething that should signify a responsibility to protect the public, not a green light to violate their rights without fear of accountability.

Perhaps in a testament to the egregiousness of Egbert's misconduct, he did not clear the low bar passed over by Weyker and Lamb. So he is requesting that the Supreme Court lower the bar even further. A decision in Boule's favor would "undercut the ability of Border Patrol agents to fulfill their basic mission of securing the border, enforcing the immigration laws, and protecting national security," the government wrote in its petition for review, as if immigration officers must reserve the right to assault people and weaponize their power in illegal ways in order to do their jobs effectively.

"The stakes are very high," says Anya Bidwell, an attorney at the Institute for Justice, a public-interest law firm that filed an amicus brief on Boule's behalf this week. If Egbert succeeds, "this would mean no Bivens remedy in the vast majority of cases. This would mean absolute immunity for federal police and other federal officials."

Based on the Supreme Court's recent jurisprudence on the issue, it appears that scenario may be the likely outcomegiving federal agents carte blanche to break the same rules they are meant to uphold.

Here is the original post:
A Border Patrol Agent Assaulted Him and Violated His First Amendment Rights. He May Never Get To Sue. - Reason

New concerns over a bill that was crafted to safeguard Mainers right to privacy have emerged, leaving its status in the Legislature uncertain.

The bill would add privacy as a natural right in Maine and protect electronic data and communication from unreasonable seizure by the government. The opponents, who filed objections recently, include advocates for the First Amendment as well as the Christian Civic League of Maine.

Members of the Legislatures Judiciary Committee met virtually with the bills chief sponsor, Rep. Maggie ONeil, D-Saco, on Thursday, nine months after the legislation was first introduced. A public hearing on L.D. 1529, an amendment to Maines Constitution to create a right to privacy, was held in May 2021, but no action was taken.

ONeil came before the Judiciary Committee in an effort to advance the legislation. But committee members voted to table action on the bill, giving the committees chairwoman, Sen. Anne Carney, D-Cumberland, more time to determine whether there should be a second public hearing. Committee members did not set a date for a workshop or a second public hearing on the bill.

It has been a year and I wanted to take this opportunity to refresh everyones memory a bit, Carney said before ONeil made her presentation.

ONeils right-to-privacy proposal has been amended since it was first drafted last year, but until now had not faced any opposition. A similar constitutional amendment was proposed last year by a Republican lawmaker, former Rep. Justin Fecteau of Augusta. ONeil said she worked with Fecteau to combine the bills, producing the amended version.

L.D. 1529 is supported by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, among others. To be enacted, it would need the approval of two-thirds of the Legislature and a majority of Maine voters.

Constitutions in 13 states including Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Montana, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Washington contain specific provisions related to a right to privacy. Constitutions in Michigan and Missouri also provide protection from unreasonable searches and seizures for electronic communications or data.

The real world impact of the right to privacy amendment is unclear. But advocates like ONeil said it would lay the legal foundation to begin setting limits on the types of personal information that can be collected and who can access it, including law enforcement.

There is no explicit right to privacy in the U.S. Constitution.

SEEKING A BACKSTOP

The proposed constitutional amendment would add privacy as a natural right in Maine and states that law enforcement must secure a warrant before searching or seizing an individuals electronic data or electronic communications. All natural persons have an inherent right to privacy that is free from intrusion, including privacy of a natural persons personal life, personal communications, private affairs and personal thoughts or inner life, it reads.

We want this (amendment) to be a backstop. We want to make it more explicit, ONeil said of the constitutional amendment.

ONeil said that advancements in technology, such as mobile phone apps, virtual reality, social media and wiretaps have exposed everyones personal data to abuse.

The privacy risks we face today are more complex and more impactful than ever, she said.

Shoshana Zuboff, a Harvard business professor and author, was invited by ONeil to address the Judiciary Committee. Zuboff said a persons posts on Facebook are just one example of why an amendment protecting a persons privacy is needed.

This is a very fraught arena, Zuboff said, adding that social media sites like Facebook are connected to a much broader and organized personal data collection system.

Zuboffs book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, offers a picture of how Silicon Valley and other corporations are mining users information to predict and shape their behavior.

We need to codify a persons right to privacy, Zuboff said.

Though ONeils bill generated no opposition last year, new concerns were raised recently by First Amendment advocates and a group concerned that the legislation would expand abortion protections.

FIRST AMENDMENT CONCERNS

Judith Meyer, representing the Maine Press Association, the New England First Amendment Coalition, the New England Newspaper & Press Association, the Maine Association of Broadcasters and the Society of Professional Journalists Maine, filed an objection to the bill on Thursday.

We understand the need for personal privacy, particularly from government intrusion, but we have grave concerns that the language contained here is overly broad and will implicate First-Amendment protected activities and entitlements under the Freedom of Access Act. Logistically, it will create havoc for businesses and organizations that collect and use personal information, Meyer wrote in Thursdays filing with the Judiciary Committee.

Meyer said her groups recommend the legislation be revised to address only governmental intrusion upon ones privacy, and not private intrusion. The term private intrusion can be interpreted to include the First Amendment-protected activities of news organizations, she said. Journalists rely on personal information, personal communications and a persons thoughts as a standard part of news gathering.

Mike McClellan, policy director for the Christian Civic League of Maine, also filed an objection to L.D. 1529. McClellan said that the bills text regarding a persons personal life and private affairs is almost exactly the kind of constitutional language used by the U.S. Supreme Court to enshrine abortion rights in the U.S. Constitution. The league said the bill needs to be reworked to make sure that the language is limited to a right to preserve personal communications and will not extend to abortion.

The world is changing, and technology has become an integral part of our day-to-day lives, McClellan said. While we see the need and desire of the sponsors to stay ahead of these changes, the Christian Civic League of Maine is unsure if this bill would help or will just move the balance in a different direction. There are already laws that govern our rights to privacy. Perhaps, instead of adding another law we should better enforce the ones we have.

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Concerns emerge over bill proposing privacy amendment to Maine Constitution - Press Herald

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or the of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

There are five separate rights in the First Amendment, speech, religion, press, assembly, and the right to petition the government. Before agreeing to accept the Constitution, the Founders of our democratic republic demanded that these freedoms be protected by an amendment to the original document.

Theres no citizenship requirement for First Amendment protection. If youre in the U.S., you have freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition.

The First Amendment favors no political party. It can be used to push for social and political change, or to oppose change. The First Amendment is for everyone.

Where people get balled up about the First Amendment is prayer in schools. The disconnect comes from a lack of understanding both the purpose and intent of this Amendment. It is both freedom OF religion AND freedom FROM religion.

The following quote from the Supreme Court explains the principle.

The question in this case is whether the prayer practice of the town of Greece by doing too little to reflect the religious diversity of its citizens, did too much, even if unintentionally, to promote the political division along religious lines that was one of the principals against evils against the First Amendment was intended to protect. Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S.602, 622 (1971).

The town of Greece, New York failed to make reasonable efforts to include prayer givers of minority faiths, with the result that, although it is a community of several faiths, its prayer givers were almost exclusively persons of a single faith.

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First Amendment To The Constitution | Ask The Attorney | courierjournal.net - courierjournal

Free expression remains highly valued among college students, but their confidence in that First Amendment right is declining particularly among Republicans and Black and Hispanic students.

Thats according to a report on a new survey conducted by the Knight Foundation and the market-research firm Ipsos. The survey examines how partisanship, race, and ethnicity affect students views on free speech. It seeks to capture the full spectrum of not only students opinions on policies, but some of whats underneath that some of the feelings and experiences theyve had with speech in general, and on campus, said Evette Alexander, director of the learning and impact division at the Knight Foundation.

A number of high-profile controversies involving speech restrictions on college campuses most recently at the University of Florida, which made headlines for initially telling faculty members not to testify against the state as expert witnesses have given rise to fears about restrictive speech environments in higher ed. Though college students across demographics see free speech as essential to American democracy, compared with those surveyed in years past, fewer of the 1,000 students surveyed in 2021 believe their right to free speech is secure, and fewer feel like the First Amendment protects people like them.

Only 47 percent of students surveyed in 2021 felt that their freedom of speech was secure, a significant drop from the 73 percent of students surveyed in 2016, the first time the survey was done, who felt secure in that freedom. The decline was particularly pronounced among Republicans, 27 percent whom felt that their free-speech rights were secure, compared with 61 percent of Democrats.

Black and Hispanic students felt secure in their right to free speech at similar rates as the overall number of students surveyed, but when asked whether the First Amendment protects people like them, they were more likely to say no.

Weve known for some time that students of color are more in favor of more policies to limit certain types of speech on campus, and are more interested in creating a safer campus environment when it comes to speech, said Alexander. She said the survey highlights why that might be.

Our study shows that Black students, in particular, but also Hispanic students, dont feel as protected by the First Amendment, says Alexander.

According to the latest survey, 90 percent of white students and 82 percent of Hispanic students believe that the First Amendment protects people like them. This is in stark contrast to the 51 percent of Black students who feel the same way, a considerable change from the 2019 survey results, when 60 percent of Black students felt the First Amendment protected people like them.

A significantly higher proportion of Black and Hispanic students also report feeling unsafe on campus because of others speech. About 20 percent of Black and Hispanic students have reported feeling unsafe on campus because of something someone said about their identities, whereas just 14 percent of white students have felt the same, underscoring the sense of inequality students of color feel about free expression and First Amendment protections.

I think it should concern everyone that students of color dont feel as protected by the First Amendment. The First Amendment is intended to protect all people, and in order for the United States to be a society that promotes free speech and free expression, we need everyone to feel that their speech is equally protected, Alexander said.

Democrats are more likely than Republicans and politically unaffiliated students to report feeling unsafe and uncomfortable on campus.

But seventy-one percent of Republican students feel that the campus environment dampens free speech. Sixty-one percent of Democrats said the same.

A majority of college students continue to believe that its important for colleges to allow students to be exposed to all forms of speech, even if they find it offensive or biased. Where they draw the line is racist speech, according to the survey.

But still, some students particularly Black and Hispanic students prefer colleges to protect them by prohibiting speech they might perceive as offensive or biased. Thirty-six percent of Black students and 32 percent of Hispanic students favor speech protections on campus, compared with just 16 percent of white students, a trend that seems to be increasing over time. In 2019, only 28 percent of Black students and 19 percent of Hispanic students favored speech protections.

Alexander, of the Knight Foundation, notes that a lot of what we have in terms of public opinion on speech on campus is at the aggregate level. Thats actually not helpful, she says. The demographic breakdown of students opinions on the issue is more useful for those working in higher ed who want to respond to student concerns.

Ultimately, the publication of the survey aims to foster the idea that understanding where different groups stand is important for higher-ed leaders as they seek to foster free expression on college campuses and create a campus environment that is diverse, equitable and inclusive, according to the Knight-Ipsos report on the survey.

Read this article:
College Students Are Losing Confidence in Their Free-Speech Rights - The Chronicle of Higher Education