Category Archives: First Amendment

The 1st amendment says you can take to the streets or express controversial views, but the amendment doesn't protect you against the resulting consequences.

"You sort of check your first amendment rights at the door when you work for a private employer," said Lisa Edison-Smith.

Anyone who doesn't work for the state or federal government isn't protected by the 1st amendment and to most that's a little known fact.

"I didn't know that, that's actually quite a surprise to me," said Devon Solwold, Moorhead.

An employer can fire you if your views are fundamentally different than those of the company and one google employee learned that the hard way after getting fired for sending this memo internally, saying there are fewer women in tech because they are quote 'biologically different.'

On Tuesday employment lawyers say these cases are showing up more now than ever thanks to social media.

"There's this disconnect that people will often post and do things at a computer or an Ipad that they wouldn't say face to face to people. If it's not willing to say something face to face, don't do it in an electronic comment," said Edison-Smith.

While everyone we spoke to says it's an important right, it's one that should be used with caution and wisdom.

Employment lawyers say you can express your views outside of work without consequence unless they damage the reputation or business as a whole.

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The First Amendment: Freedom of speech in the workplace - WDAY

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (NEWSPLEX) -- The American Civil Liberties Union and the Rutherford Institute say a decision to move the Unite the Right rally to McIntire Park raises First Amendment concerns.

According to a letter sent to Charlottesville city officials, the "belated demand" to move the Aug. 12 demonstration from Emancipation Park "undermines [the] ability of demonstrators to effectively communicate their message."

The letter also calls the timing and justification for the demand a "callous disrespect for the rights of free speech and assembly."

Jason Kessler submitted a request for a permit to protest the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue from Emancipation Park about two months ago.

According to an annotation on the letter, city code says requests for demonstration permits are deemed granted unless they are denied within ten business days following the application.

Kessler has said the protest will still take place in front of the Lee statue despite the city's actions regarding the permit on Monday.

"We are going to exercise our First Amendment rights no matter what," he said on Monday. "At this point, this is a civil rights issue. They have done everything in their power to deny me and my friends our civil rights and we're going to fight that."

"The city must provide factual evidence to support its attendance estimate and justify revoking the permit to demonstrate in Emancipation Park," said the letter. "While the city relies upon a forecast that 'many thousands' will attend the event, it has not disclosed the sources of the information it is relying on for that estimate and whether such sources have any factual basis. When First Amendment rights are at stake, the city should be transparent about the evidence and information underlying its action so that citizens can be sure that fears of overcrowding are not simply a pretext for censorship and meet the requirement for proof that a compelling government interest underlies its decision."

The organizations call the city's justification for revoking the permit specious in light of approval for permits for counter demonstrations on the same day in Justice and McGuffey parks that are reportedly expecting more than 1,000 people to attend.

They also say the city's decision amounts to a "hecklers' veto," saying the revocation violates the principle that the rights of speech and assembly cannot be restricted because one group may be met with opposition.

"The city must act in accordance with the law, even if doing so is distasteful to members of the community who disagree with the views espoused by the Unite the Right organizers," added the letter. "At the very least, the city must explain in more than just generalities its reasons for concluding that the demonstration cannot safely be held in Emancipation Park."

The ACLU and the Rutherford Institute are asking for a response from the city by Aug. 9.

To read the full letter and its annotations, click on the document in the Related Documents box.

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ACLU, Rutherford Institute say permit revocation violates First Amendment - The Charlottesville Newsplex

EDITORIAL August 08. 2017 11:36PM Jeff Sessions is going to be a plumber.

The U.S. attorney general has been tasked by President Trump with stopping the leaks, which have plagued Trumps dysfunctional White House.

Sessions says that he is reviewing the Justice Departments policies on media subpoenas. This has renewed calls for a shield law to protect reporters from having to reveal the source of classified information.

In 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the government may not prevent the publication of classified information, under the doctrine of prior restraint. But that does not mean reporters are above the law.

Most of the Trump leaks are embarrassing, not illegal. But some, such as the leaked transcript of a private conversation between Trump and his Mexican counterpart, can damage national security. World leaders will be less likely to have frank conversations with future U.S. Presidents.

If reporters are given special protection under the First Amendment not available to everyone else, who gets to decide who qualifies as a real reporter? Would you trust the Trump administration to make such a decision? How about Eric Holders Justice Department?

Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein says the Justice Department is after the leakers, not the journalists.

Sessions should proceed with caution. He must not harass reporters for covering the President. But he has a responsibility to track down those who compromise our national security to score political points.

Politics Editorial

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No shield needed: The First Amendment works just fine - The Union Leader

Liberal Students Unite Against First Amendment Rights of Conservatives on 'The Fosters' NewsBusters (press release) (blog) The August 8th episode of Freeform's The Fosters, titled Telling, perfectly illustrated how liberal students no longer accept the First Amendment rights of conservative students on campus. While on a college campus where she monitors an art class ...

Excerpt from:
Liberal Students Unite Against First Amendment Rights of Conservatives on 'The Fosters' - NewsBusters (press release) (blog)

Former Education Secretary Bill Bennett came down hard on journalists who leak sensitive information to the public.

"The First Amendment is not a license to ruin your country," Bennett remarked to "Fox & Friends" on Monday.

The Trump administration has been plagued by illegal leaks through the press of sensitive and even classified information.

The latest leak debacle occurred last week when transcripts of President Trump's phone conversations earlier this yearwith the leaders of Mexico and Australia were published in the Washington Post. The leak embarrassed the administration, suggesting a lack of control over confidential information.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions vowed to crack down on leakers last week, saying they will be found and prosecuted.

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Bennett agreed, saying all leakers should be prosecuted, and even reporters should not be exempt.

"Let's not have excluded special categories," he advised. "These are tough cases to make. I understand it."

"The law is the law and it has to be honored," he said.

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Bill Bennett on Leaker Journalists: First Amendment Not a License to ... - Fox News Insider

Collins currently has a single out titled Cold Dead Hands. It is a declaration to gun-grabbers everywhere that the Second Amendment has been preserved by generation upon generation and that preservation will not end on his watch.

The first verse of Cold Dead Hands tells the story:

Theres a rifle in my closet, Made in 1893

Carved right on the barrel it says Winchester Company

Its been passed through generations, Ive been taught to use it well

Its put food there on the table, And it aint never been for sale

Theres people on my TV, telling me whats right and wrong

Not one damn gun of mine, has ever pulled the trigger on its own

From the verse, Collins transitions to a chorus reminiscent of the great Charlton Heston:

From my Cold Dead Hands

Its about you and me, aint no redneck thing, why dont you understand

You can bitch and moan, all you want

Youll get my gun from my Cold Dead Hands

When I wrote this song I was watching the news and I just got super aggravated, Collins told Breitbart News on Sunday. I got real irritated with the whole thing I thought about everybody I grew up with here in Kentuckyout here in rural America. You know, we get guns for our birthdays and Christmas. Its something you get when youre very young. When youre eight, nine, ten years old, you get your first rifle and go deer hunting and stuff. People out there in other parts of the country dont understand customs and traditions like we have in rural America.

America was built on guns, he added. We took our freedom from the English. If it wasnt for guns wed be having tea and biscuits instead of steak and beer. Its that kind of thing to me. Without the Second Amendment there is no First Amendment. Theres nothing that stops anybody from coming and taking what you worked hard for. To me its just a very simple fact of life; its freedom, thats what owning a gun is. Its the very foundation of freedom.

The Nelson County, Kentucky native is set to play a handful of concerts across his home state through the end of September.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host ofBullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter:@AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.

P.S. DO YOU WANT MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE DELIVERED RIGHT TO YOUR INBOX?SIGN UP FOR THE DAILY BREITBART NEWSLETTER.

Originally posted here:
Country Singer Dustin Collins: 'Without the Second Amendment, There Is No First Amendment' (Exclusive) - Breitbart News

Lata Nott

When we talk about the importance of a free press, what were really talking about is how important it is for the press to serve as a watchdog on the government. The highest responsibility of journalism is to supply the people with information about what their government is doing, so that the people can hold the government accountable, and make the best possible decisions when they vote.

But if youre not a journalist (full disclosure: I am not), you may not give a lot of thought to how journalists get that information in the first place. Official government press releases and briefings arent really the place to find information about government misconduct. Obviously, leaks are a much better source when it comes to getting the real dirt. But the recent emphasis on prosecuting leakers is likely to have a major chilling effect on that source of information.

But there is a way that journalists can get their hands on FBI records, secret military policy memos, and NSA email exchanges without having to worry about their sources getting arrested or fired.

They can ask the government for them.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a law that requires the government to hand over its records if someone asks for them. The act applies to federal government agencies, but every state has laws that allow the public to access its government records. Anyone can request information, whether theyre a U.S. citizen or foreign national. And anything can be requested.

A government agency can, of course, deny your request if it decides that the information youre seeking falls into an exemption category, like information that would threaten national security, or invade someones privacy. But if you think your FOIA request was unfairly denied, you can appeal, and if that doesnt work, you can sue.

Nabiha Syed, assistant general counsel for BuzzFeed, is intimately familiar with this process. A large part of her job involves getting government agencies to give up information that they would rather not share information that often ends up being crucial to BuzzFeeds reporting. She sees the right of the public to access government information as an exciting First Amendment frontier. For the most part, the First Amendment says, This is hands off, the governments not going to be involved, you guys figure out speech,' Syed says. And then you have the First Amendment right of access, which says, Yes, but also, we are going to allow you to use the law as a sword to get access to judicial proceedings, to official recordsto administrative proceedings.'

Requesting or fighting for government records is an instrumental part of BuzzFeeds reporting strategy. Such records have allowed the BuzzFeed News team to report on misconduct in death penalty executions, for-profit foster care scandals, and the widespread abuse of seasonal migrant workers. Just last month, BuzzFeed News obtained a secret Department of Defense report that stated that Chelsea Mannings disclosure of Iraq-related documents would be unlikely to have any impact on U.S. operations in Iraq (directly contradicting the governments position at Mannings trial).

To be sure, the system is far from perfect, as many information-seekers can attest. As Jason Fagone wrote in his article The Secret to Getting Top-Secret Secrets, The Freedom of Information Act, passed in 1966 to increase trust in government by encouraging transparency, has always been a pain in the ass. You write to an uncaring bureaucracy, you wait for months or years only to be denied or redacted into oblivion, and even if you do get lucky and extract some useful information, the world has already moved on to other topics.

But when it does work, the payoffs can be enormous. As Nabiha Syed says, How do we at least inject the information we need into the commons, into the public square, to try and heighten the conversations were having? At least getting the underlying facts out there, in ways that are hopefully more authoritative than anecdotal, I think would be really helpful.

Lata Nott is executive director of the First Amendment Center of the Newseum Institute. Contact her via email at lnott@newseum.org, or follow her on Twitter at @LataNott.

Excerpt from:
First Amendment: When leaks dry up, we turn to FOIA - hays Post

The Israel anti-boycott law penalizes boycotts, which are a nonviolent and legal freedom of expression. That violates the First Amendment. People complain about the over-regulation of business. This bill is a prime example. It would be an expensive, time consuming, and intrusive process for a court or other government agency to determine why a business was not doing business with Israel or Israeli companies. No matter what your views are on the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement are, I hope that people can agree that we need to protect our constitutional rights, especially in todays political climate.

Dorah Rosen Shuey, Davenport

The Sentinel welcomes your letters to the editor. Letters should be short, no more than 150 words. We do not accept anonymous letters. Letter-writers should include their full name as well as a street address and telephone number. We dont publish those details in the newspaper, but need the information for verification purposes. Occasionally, we reject letters simply because weve had so many on the same subject. Submit your letters online at santacruzsentinel.com/submit-letters.

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Letter: Anti-boycott law violates the First Amendment - Santa Cruz Sentinel

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is seen during a ceremony in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 10.

Eric Thayer/Getty Images

Last year, a police officer in New Mexico arrested an acquaintance of his own supervisor and reported another officers misconduct. In 2014, a city plumber and rental housing inspector in Illinois complained about his citys failure to enforce codes and a lack of accessibility for those with disabilities. In 2009, a port authority officer for New York and New Jersey reported that a tunnel and bridge agent interfered with her police activities and harmed public safety.

Ostensibly all three of these public employees are whistleblowers, who sought to rectify misconduct, code violations, or safety issues. Still, they all suffered the same fatethey were dismissed from their jobs. These employees faced retaliation for their salutary speech and efforts to improve the public good and, if their allegations are believed, should have had valid First Amendment free speech arguments to challenge their dismissals. But, the bleak reality of modern American law is that such employees often have no valid free speech claim at all. As such, these three employees lost their respective cases before the 3rd, 7th, and 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in recent decisions, one as recently as July.

They lost their retaliation claims under the First Amendment, because of one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in years. That case is Garcetti v. Ceballos. Its been on the books for more than a decade, wreaking havoc on employees and bastardizing free speech jurisprudence. Those representing employees who have suffered because of the Supreme Court decision have labeled such lower court rulings as being Garcettized.

Garcetti has effectively applauded official oppression, trimmed truth in the public workplace, and done so without moral or workplace-efficiency justification, longtime Texas-based civil rights attorney Larry Watts told me. Garcetti is the greatest, judicial enemy of clean government I have seen in my 50 years at the Bar.

In Garcetti, the Supreme Court created a categorical rule: When public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline. Stated more simply, when public employees engage in official, job-duty speech, they are not speaking as citizens but public employees and have no free-speech rights at all. None. Zero.

For decades, the Supreme Court had a workable standard in such free speech cases.

The case involved an assistant district attorney named Richard Ceballos, who learned of perjured law enforcement statements in a search warrant affidavit. He wrote a memo to his superiors recommending dismissal of the criminal charges. Instead, he suffered a demotion and a transfer to a less desirable work location.

The case was argued twice before the Supreme Courtonce when Justice Sandra Day OConnor was still on the court and once after she had been replaced by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. The court ruled 54 against Ceballos, splitting along conservative-liberal lines. The more conservative jurists sided with the district attorney while the four more liberal jurists voted for the employee.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who often writes passionately about the importance of freedom of speech and thought, authored the majority opinion in Garcetti. It is the black mark of his First Amendment record, a scarlet letter that he should attempt to finally shed.

For decades, the Supreme Court had a workable standard in such free speech cases. Under that framework, the court asked whether a public employee spoke on a matter of public concern or importance, something of larger interest to the community. In other words, was the employees speech on a matter of public concern or merely a private grievance?

If the speech was merely a private grievance, there was no First Amendment claim. But, if the speech touched on a matter of public concernsuch as speech about racism in the workforce, unsanitary conditions in a school, or brutality against inmatesthen courts had to balance the employees right to free speech against the employers efficiency interests in a disruption-free workforce.

This two-part framework was known as the Pickering-Connick test after two earlier Supreme Court decisions, the 1968 case Pickering v. Board of Education and the 1983 case Connick v. Myers.

But, decades later the Supreme Court imposed the categorical bar in Garcetti, denying any protection if an employee engages in job-duty speech or speaks as an employee instead of as a citizen.

To appreciate the impact of Garcetti, consider the plight of a public school teacher who might be disciplined for classroom speech. Perhaps the teacher speaks about a controversial political matter, offers a different lesson plan, or uses the N-word in an unplanned lecture to students about not using racial slurs.

Lincoln Brown, a sixth-grader teacher in Chicago, learned the power of Garcetti the hard way when the 7th Circuit ruled he had no First Amendment claim for using the N-word in a well-intentioned lecture against such slurs. Brown gave his impromptu [lecture] on racial epithets in the course of his regular grammar lesson to his sixth grade class, wrote the 7th Circuit in Brown v. Chicago Board of Education. His speech was therefore pursuant to his official duties.

Translation: Lincoln Brown, like so many other public school teachers, had zero free-speech protection for speech in the classroom because of Garcetti.

Its not just teachers who have lost their free speech rights from the overly broad, categorical rule of Garcetti. Police officers have faced its wrath arguably more than any other group while firefighters and university-level employees have also had to suffer retaliation without recourse due to the ruling.

There have been a few glimmers of hope in recent years. In the 2014 case Lane v. Franks, the Supreme Court refused to apply Garcetti against a university employee who was terminated after providing truthful testimony in a court case. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her opinion, emphasized the importance of employee speech for the public. Citizens, including public employees, are supposed to testify truthfully in court after all.

Furthermore, two federal circuit courtsthe 4th and the 9thhave ruled that Garcetti doesnt apply to professor speech, because of the additional protection of academic freedom. But, that is only two circuits. As I explained in April testimony to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice: Garcetti threatens the speech of college and university employees. Only two circuit courts of appeals have explicitly rejected Garcetti as applied to university professors.

Some lower courts will work around Garcetti, finding that it wasnt part of an employees joband thus not a part of his public roleto set policy or to criticize certain departmental practices. For example, the 2nd Circuit Court reinstated a police officers First Amendment lawsuit in the 2015 case Matthews v. City of New York, finding that the officer spoke more as a citizen when he criticized his departments arrest quota policy.

Join Dahlia Lithwick and her stable of standout guests for a discussion about the high court and the countrys most important cases.

But, these are the exceptions.

Top Comment

So let me get this straight. More...

It has been more than a decade since the Supreme Court dramatically reduced the level of free speech protection for public employees. Various statutory protections are not sufficient to guard against this type of retaliation against whistleblowers. The Constitution is the highest level of law and the first 45 words of the Bill of Rights should not be empty language when applied to public employees. The First Amendment must protect those public servants who have the courage to speak out against corruption, inefficiency, waste, and other problems.

Its time for the court to reconsider one of its biggest mistakes of recent years. In fact, its long overdue.

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No Free Speech for You - Slate Magazine

Be careful before you invite Brian Davison to become a Facebook friend. You shouldnt expect warm and fuzzy posts from a tenacious rabble-rouser who wages personal campaigns for free speech, accountability and freedom of information.

Over the last two years, Davison has filed three separate civil rights lawsuits against the Loudoun Board of Supervisors and Chairwoman Phyllis Randall (D), Commonwealths Attorney Jim Plowman (R) and the Loudoun County School Board. They have at times blocked him from their Facebook pages, deleted critical comments he posted and attempted to ostracize him. One needs only to read Davisons online comments to understand why he gets under their skin.

Davison has sought public access to the school systems student growth percentile (SGP) scores. Hes accused Plowmans office of refusing to investigate perjury by school officials. Hes offended Randall with comments about corruption, lack of accountability and conflicts of interest that extend to the families of public officials, some of whom work for county government or the school system. And, yes, Davison pokes at the Times-Mirror for what he sees as a failure to report rigorously on alleged corruption and conflicts by elected officials.

To his supporters, many of whom are members of the anything-goes club of anonymous online commenting, Davison is a valiant campaigner for truth. To his critics, hes a self-righteous insulter. Before last week, few would have characterized him as a patriot. Now hes mentioned in the same sentence with James Madison, the Virginian who wrote the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights.

The Times-Mirror has consistently campaigned for open government and freedom of information in a county that frequently conducts business behind closed doors and uses Virginias Freedom of Information Act to block disclosure of information rather than provide access to it. Were also wary of anonymous, online comments that can distort stories with bias, prejudice, insults and inaccuracies. We acknowledge that were not always comfortable with the tone of anonymous discussion on LoudounTimes.com, but we regard it as important forum for readers to express their views on stories and discuss them with fellow citizens. When we err, we're more comfortable erring on the side of freedom of expression rather than censorship.

These are uncomfortable times. First Amendment lawsuits now raise the legal argument in which Twitter users claim their constitutional rights have been violated because President Donald Trump the commander-in-tweet blocks them from his personal Twitter handle. The argument about social media rights rages in a day and age when politicians, from the president on down, are using their private accounts to discuss public affairs or socialize their positions with constituents.

Davisons cases may provide a legal precedent. A federal judge ruled Chairwoman Randall violated Davison's First Amendment rights because she briefly banned him from her personal Facebook account.

"The suppression of critical commentary regarding elected officials is the quintessential form of viewpoint discrimination against which the First Amendment guards," U.S. District Judge James Cacheris wrote in the ruling on Davisons suit.

The judge didn't issue punishment against Randall since her Facebook ban only lasted about 10 hours. That said, the judge noted Randall committed "a cardinal sin under the First Amendment" by barring the constituent who posted about county corruption. What's more, the judge pointed out from the first sentence of the ruling that "this case raises important questions about the constitutional limitations applicable to social media accounts maintained by elected officials."

Somehow that decision was interpreted by the county as a victory for the countys elected officials. The status of social media is a novel question in the law, huffed County Attorney Leo P. Rogers as if Facebook was a passing fad.

Meantime, Randall insists shes a defender of the First Amendment and cites legal confusion. In earnest calls to the Times-Mirror she defended her takedown of Davison as an appropriate response to offensive comments pertaining to family members of public officials. Later, in reaction to the ruling in the School Board case, she acknowledged confusion:

while I blocked the plaintiff overnight for approximately eight hours because he made inappropriate comments, not about the elected official but about the members of their families, and another court finds a First Amendment infraction. It just doesnt make sense to me.

It all makes perfect sense to Davison, who argues that Loudouns elected leaders will go to any lengths -- and at any cost -- to defend arcane rules that enable them to govern behind closed doors, provide cover for conflicts of interest and shut down dissent.

Despite our distaste for bad behavior, online or off, we are inclined to agree.

There is a simple resolution to confusion over public participation in government: Open access to all meetings and information that impacts the welfare of citizens and provides accountability for public decisions.

True leaders have nothing to hide. They lead us out of the dark and into the sun even if it occasionally causes sunburn. Whether in Madisons time or Davisons or Davison's children's, open government, free speech and the First Amendment must stand as the foundations of American democracy and represent the values of our American experience.

You may not like Brian Davison or the democratizing platform of social media that he uses, but how one feels about either is wholly irrelevant. Our leaders should not worry about whether Davison is a pain. They should consider whether he is right.

Comments express only the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of this website or any associated person or entity. Any user who believes a message is objectionable can contact us at [emailprotected].

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EDITORIAL: First Amendment 2.0 - Loudoun Times-Mirror