Category Archives: Free Speech

When COVID-19 forced universities to shut down their campus, Zoom became the platform that connected instructors and students. However, this also meant that its become easier for speech to be recorded and shared on social media. As a result, students and faculty, out of fear of reprisal, have become less likely to share their views freely.

That's the findings from a new report by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA).

To Dr. Jonathan Pidluzny, vice president of ACTA, the phenomenon of self-censoring on campuses started way before the pandemic.

We know that free expression is under assault on the ordinary college campus. And we know this from all kinds of anecdotes that we see in the news all the time, said Pidluzny.

A 2019 ACTA survey revealed that over 60 percent of students refrained from expressing opinions on sensitive political topics in class in fear that their professors might disagree with them. About 85 percent of students would stop themselves to avoid offending fellow students.

The self-censoring has worsen when colleges switched to virtual learning according to Pidluzny who co-authored the new report Building a Culture of Free Expression in the Online Classroom.

You don't have the trust that you can build by being in a classroom together where you have all kinds of interpersonal, non-verbal cues that help others understand that you might be playing devil's advocate or coming from a place of goodwill," he said. "It's harder to build the kind of trust that allows you to have those wide range of conversations."

Pidluzny said that he was surprised by how broad the stifling of free speech has become a crisis on college campuses.

Its not easy to promote free discussion in an American college classroom. Students are afraidand justly so, unfortunatelyof saying the wrong thing, which might subject them to rejection and ridicule from their peers," said Dr.Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of history education at the University of Pennsylvania who is referenced in the report. "And some faculty reinforce this repressive atmosphere by propagandizing instead of teaching, pretending that complicated questions have only one right answer: their own,

But many higher education experts remain optimistic about the future of free speech on college campuses.

Dr. Samuel J. Abrams, a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence said that students today want to ask questions and wrestle with competing ideas.

Students today are not ideological extremists but are moderates who reject the idea of shutting down controversial speakers and limiting the dissemination of ideas that they find unpleasant, said Abrams.

Pidluzny added that there is much that faculty members can do to create a more civilized environment within the classroom. For example, professors could refrain from taking personal political positions when they can, to avoid signaling to students that there is a favorite viewpoint. He added that they should also encourage students to tolerate others who have different opinions. Another important step faculty and administrators could take is to discourage recording of class discussions or even making a policy that prohibits recording sessions.

Some of the nastiest and most unfortunate examples we have are when students take clips and rip them out of context and put them on social media, said Pidluzny. This isnt a partisan thing.

Dr. John Katzman, the co-founder of the Princeton Review echoed Pidluznys idea.

Airing something outside the walls of the university should be a serious offense and should be dealt with as such, noted Katzman in the report. To promote experimentation and debate, we should have the conversation here and only here.

When clips do get posted, Pidluzny said that university administrators need to train their communications department not to panic or intimidate anyone into silence.

It's important for faculty and administrators to begin by saying We are dedicated to academic freedom. We understand that viewpoints that are expressed can be offensive, but the campus is a place to talk about those things, he said, adding that hate speech is also protected under the First Amendment and public institutions are required to protect those rights.

When the speech is political, hateful or hurtful, the proper response to that speech is more speech," he said, with "people explaining why those positions are wrongheaded, or mean-spirited or rooted in prejudice that has no basis."

Link:
Report Addresses the Lack of Free Expression in Online Classrooms - Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

Controversial campus preachers return for first visit of the academic year

Brother Jed Smock and Sister Cindy Smock, both members of the Campus Ministry USA, sat in the campus designated free speech zone Monday at the center of some caution tape on the Library Quad.

With Sister Cindys recent TikTok fame more and more students gather to antagonize the famous evangelical, but many of the students at Eastern were there for the opposite reason.

Sharifa Etoe, junior TV and video production major and Vice President of Easterns Young Democratic Socialists of America, said that their organization wants to turn the attention from the Smocks and use their publicity for something proactive in the community.

Part of Sister Cindys rhetoric is good old-fashioned slut-shaming. Etoe and YDSA want to pledge that whenever Brother Jed and Sister Cindy are on campus that YDSA will either fundraise for their organization or give out free STD testing to students on campus. Etoe hopes to de-gender STD testing and make it free for the students.

If you want to be a whore, be a whore, but be safe, said Etoe.

YDSA is a sex-positive organization and is seeking social change that extends democracy into all aspects of life.

Maddin Herberger, a senior sociology major, said he came out to the quad for entertainment and that he had nothing else to do.

I dont believe anything that theyre saying. Im just here for the homophobia and transphobia, said Herberger, who was wearing a transgender pride flag as a cape.

Many students wanted to come and make fun of the Smocks and what they were doing on campus. Sister Cindy, who was wearing one of the Ho No Mo shirts that she sells as merchandise, had a line of students waiting to get a picture with her. One student even stopped her on the way back from the bathroom to get a selfie.

Shes ridiculous and its funny to make fun of it, said Maya Walter, freshman art history major. I dont take her seriously.

Reporters from Vice, a digital media and broadcasting company, were also there working on a series about internet personalities but declined to comment.

University President David Glassman, who observed the gathering for a while, said he was pleased that students were ignoring and walking past the Smocks group.

Everybody is behaving very civilly and respectfully and thats what I like to see in a free speech zone, said Glassman.

Dr. Anne Flaherty, Vice President for Student Affairs said the free speech zone signs were put together by Dr. Heather Webb, Director of Student Accountability and Support. The signs were placed in the Library Quad Monday before the Smocks gathered.

We ensure that everybody knows even if you dont agree with what a guest has to say, I mean it is a free speech zone and they have a right to speak as long as they stay within our guidelines of our free speech zone, Flaherty said.

People are allowed to speak on our campus, we are allowed to listen, participate or walk away, said Glassman.

Morgan Bledsoe can be reached at 581-2812 or at [emailprotected].

Read more:
Smocks return to campus The Daily Eastern News - The Daily Eastern News

By James A. Haught

Values that later grew into liberalism began stirring in the epoch now known as The Enlightenment, starting more than three centuries ago, chiefly in England and France. It was an era when kings still ruled brutally by divine right, and the church still sought to execute heretics holding irregular beliefs, or jail skeptics for blasphemy. Most people were agricultural serfs, working on lands inherited by wealthy barons and counts. The bottom-rung majority had virtually no rights.

But The Enlightenment roused a new way of thinking: a sense that all people should have some control over their lives, a voice in their own destiny. Absolute power of authorities either the throne or the cathedral was challenged. Reformers asserted that human reason and the scientific method can improve society and benefit nearly everyone.

The 1600s were a time of ugly intolerance, much of it stemming from alliances between church and throne. In Englands notorious Star Chamber, controlled by the Anglican archbishop, Puritan and Presbyterian dissenters were forced to testify against themselves, then sentenced to have their ears cut off or their faces branded with markings such as S.L. (for seditious libeler). One victim, John Lilburne, became a public hero because he wrote pamphlets claiming that all people deserved freeborn rights not subject to king or church.

Europe was emerging from horrors of religious wars and massacres between Catholics and Protestants. Catholic France persecuted Huguenot Protestants. Jews were attacked cruelly and banned from certain nations, including England. Sporadic executions of heretics and witches still occurred. Englands last accused witch was put to death in 1684. A few others were executed around Europe and the New World for another century.

This was the background that helped spawn Enlightenment reform.

England was shattered by civil war in the 1640s between Parliament and Puritans on one side versus King Charles I and Anglicans on the other. Charles was beheaded and the power of kings was reduced expanding an erosion that began four centuries earlier when barons forced King John to sign the Magna Carta, yielding certain rights.

By the late 1600s, some thinkers began pondering society and government.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) wrote Leviathan asserting that people need a social contract to secure safe lives. In a dog-eat-dog natural state, he said, everyone suffers from continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Therefore, he said, people must yield power to a sovereign government to enforce order and protect them. Hobbes supported a king as the sovereign but the tide away from absolute kings already was flowing. Hobbes raised awareness that the social order is made by humans, not by God.

In his many writings, Hobbes repeatedly affronted the clergy. A bishop accused him of atheism, possibly punishable by death. The allegation subsided, then flared again. Nearing 80, Hobbes hastily burned some of his papers and eluded prosecution.

John Locke (1632-1704) hatched notions of democracy, arguing that all people, male and female, deserve a degree of equality. He dismissed the divine right of kings, and advocated separation of church and state to avert religious conflict.

John Milton (1608-1674) was more than an epic poet who wrote in four languages. He also supported popular government and attacked state-mandated religion. When Parliament imposed censorship on writings, he defied a licensing requirement and published an Areopagitica pamphlet claiming that all thinking people are entitled to free expression of their beliefs. Books are not absolutely dead things, he said. He who destroys a good book kills reason itself. The principle of free speech and free press was furthered.

In France, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) championed democracy and envisioned an elected government with power divided between executive, legislative and judicial branches.

Francois Marie Arouet (1694-1788) that consuming fire called Voltaire, as Will Durant called was a brilliant French writer who became a heroic champion of human rights. Endlessly, he denounced cruelties of bishops and aristocrats.

Heres an example:

In the devout town of Abbeville, a teen-age youth, Francois de la Barre, was accused of marring a crucifix, singing impious songs and wearing his hat while a church procession passed. He was sentenced to have his tongue torn out, his head chopped off, and his remains burned. Voltaire wrote bitter protests against this savagery. He helped appeal the youths case to Parliament, which showed mercy by affording the blasphemer a quick death by with a copy of Voltaires Philosophical Dictionary nailed to his body.

Voltaires protest writings roused ferment across Europe and won reversal of a few cases. He freed Jean Espinas, who had spent 23 years aboard a penal galley ship because he sheltered a fugitive Protestant minister for one night. Likewise, he freed Claude Chaumont from a galley bench, where he had been sentenced for attending a Protestant worship service.

In The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine wrote that Voltaires forte lay in exposing and ridiculing the superstitions which priestcraft, united with statecraft, had interwoven with governments.

At first, Enlightenment ideas were somewhat suppressed in Europe, where kings and archbishops still prevailed, but they found fertile ground in Americas colonies. Brilliant radicals such as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison read them ardently and adopted them as a pattern for the first modern democracy, the United States of America. In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson summed up the essence:

All men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among these life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Less-known founding father George Mason incorporated the principles into the Bill of Rights, keeping church and state apart, guaranteeing free speech, and protecting each person from abuses by the majority. Similarly, the personal liberties were reiterated in the Rights of Man and the Citizen adopted by the French Revolution, and eventually in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that Eleanor Roosevelt helped craft for the United Nations.

Thus democracy became self-contradictory. A basic premise is majority rule yet a bill of rights prevents majority rule. For example, a Christian majority cannot vote to banish minority Jews or skeptics. Personal beliefs are exempt from majority rule.

The Enlightenment was the seedbed that sprouted most of the liberal freedoms now enjoyed in democracies everywhere. It projected a model for humane, safe, fair modern life.

James Haught, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is editor emeritus of West Virginias largest newspaper, The Charleston Gazette-Mail, and author of 12 books.

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ESSAY: Ideas from 'The Enlightenment' Arrive in America - Pagosa Daily Post

When Twitter decided briefly last fall to block users from posting links to an article about Joseph R. Biden Jr.s son Hunter, it prompted a conservative outcry that Big Tech was improperly aiding Mr. Bidens presidential campaign.

So terrible, President Donald J. Trump said of the move to limit the visibility of a New York Post article. Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, said Twitter and Facebook were censoring core political speech. The Republican National Committee filed a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing Twitter of using its corporate resources to benefit the Biden campaign.

Now the commission, which oversees election laws, has dismissed those allegations, according to a document obtained by The New York Times, ruling in Twitters favor in a decision that is likely to set a precedent for future cases involving social media sites and federal campaigns.

The election commission determined that Twitters actions regarding the Hunter Biden article had been undertaken for a valid commercial reason, not a political purpose, and were thus allowable.

And in a second case involving a social media platform, the commission used the same reasoning to side with Snapchat and reject a complaint from the Trump campaign. The campaign had argued that the company provided an improper gift to Mr. Biden by rejecting Mr. Trump from its Discover platform in the summer of 2020, according to another commission document.

The election commissions twin rulings, which were made last month behind closed doors and are set to become public soon, protect the flexibility of social media and tech giants like Twitter, Facebook, Google and Snapchat to control what is shared on their platforms regarding federal elections.

Republicans have increasingly been at odds with the nations biggest technology and social media companies, accusing them of giving Democrats an undue advantage on their platforms. Mr. Trump, who was ousted from Twitter and Facebook early this year, has been among the loudest critics of the two companies and even announced a lawsuit against them and Google.

The suppression of the article about Hunter Biden at the height of the presidential race last year was a particular flashpoint for Republicans and Big Tech. But there were other episodes, including Snapchats decision to stop featuring Mr. Trump on one of its platforms.

The Federal Election Commission said in both cases that the companies had acted in their own commercial interests, according to the factual and legal analysis provided to the parties involved. The commission also said that Twitter had followed existing policies related to hacked materials.

The rulings appear to provide social media companies additional protections for making decisions on moderating content related to elections as long as such choices are in service of a companys commercial interests. Federal election law is decades old and is broadly outdated, so decisions by the election commission serve as influential guideposts.

Campaign finance law does not account for the post-broadcast world and puts few restrictions on the behavior of social media firms, said Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a law professor at Stetson University. There is a real mismatch between our federal campaign finance laws and how campaigns are run.

Still, the Republican National Committees complaint stretched the boundaries of campaign finance law, she added. The choice to delete or suppress certain content on the platform is ultimately going to be viewed through the lens of the First Amendment, Ms. Torres-Spelliscy said. I dont think that type of content moderation by the big platforms is going to raise a campaign finance issue.

Some Republicans are seeking to take a broader cudgel to the big internet companies, aiming to repeal a provision of communications law that shields them from liability for what users post.

In the case of the Hunter Biden article, Twitter reversed course within a day of its decision to block distribution of the piece, and its chief executive, Jack Dorsey, has called the initial move a mistake.

The Federal Election Commissions official vote on the case the commission is split equally between three Democratic-aligned commissioners and three Republicans is not yet public, nor are any additional statements written by commissioners. Such statements often accompany the closure of cases and can provide further insight into the commissions reasoning.

In addition to rejecting the R.N.C. complaint, the commission dismissed other allegations that Twitter had violated election laws by shadow banning Republican users (or appearing to limit the visibility of their posts without providing an explanation); suppressing other anti-Biden content; and labeling Mr. Trumps tweets with warnings about their accuracy. The commission rejected those accusations, writing that they were vague, speculative and unsupported by the available information.

Twitter and Snapchat declined to comment.

Emma Vaughn, an R.N.C. spokeswoman, said the committee was weighing its options for appealing this disappointing decision from the F.E.C. Liz Harrington, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, said on Tuesday that Big Tech is corrupt and accused it of interfering in the 2020 election to protect Mr. Biden.

Twitter would go on to permanently bar Mr. Trump from its platform entirely in January, citing the risk of further incitement of violence after the attack on the Capitol by his supporters as Congress voted to certify the 2020 election.

Out of office, Mr. Trump has sued Facebook, Twitter and Google, arguing that a provision of the Communications Decency Act known as Section 230, which limits internet companies liability for what is posted on their networks, is unconstitutional.

Legal experts have given little credence to Mr. Trumps suit, the news of which the former president immediately used as a fund-raising tactic.

Section 230 has been a regular target of lawmakers who want to crack down on Silicon Valley companies. While in office, Mr. Trump signed an executive order intended to chip away at the protections offered by Section 230, and Democratic and Republican lawmakers have proposed repealing or modifying the provision.

But technology companies and free speech advocates have vocally defended it, arguing that Section 230 has been crucial for the growth of the internet. If the measure were repealed, it would stifle free speech and bury social media companies in legal bills, the companies have said.

Twitter initially said that it had prevented linking to the Hunter Biden article because of its existing policies against distributing hacked materials and private information. The article, which focused on the Bidens Ukrainian ties, involved correspondence that The Post suggested had been found on Hunter Bidens laptop.

But Mr. Dorsey, Twitters chief executive, acknowledged in October that blocking links with zero context as to why had been unacceptable.

Soon after, Twitter said that it was changing its policy on hacked materials and would allow similar content to be posted, including a label to provide context about the source of the information.

Republicans said the damage was done and set a poor precedent.

This censorship manifestly will influence the presidential election, Senator Hawley wrote in a letter to the F.E.C. last year after Twitter blocked the article and Facebook said it was reducing its distribution of the piece.

The commission documents reveal one reason that Twitter had been especially suspicious of the Hunter Biden article. The companys head of site integrity, according to the commission, said Twitter had received official warnings throughout 2020 from federal law enforcement that malign state actors might hack and release materials associated with political campaigns and that Hunter Biden might be a target of one such operation.

The election commission said it found no information that Twitter coordinated its decisions with the Biden campaign. In a sworn declaration, Twitters head of U.S. public policy said she was unaware of any contacts with the Biden team before the company made its decisions, according to the commission document.

Adav Noti, a senior director at the Campaign Legal Center, said that he supported the rulings but that he had concerns about the election commissions use of what he called the commercial rationale, because it was overbroad.

It encompasses almost everything for-profit corporations do, Mr. Noti said.

More:
Under G.O.P. Pressure, Tech Giants Are Empowered by Election Agency - The New York Times

The unanimous opinion in Schenck v. United States ranks high on many lists of worst Supreme Court decisions for its constraints on free speech. The defendant was Charles T. Schenck, general secretary of the U.S. Socialist Party. He and his colleagues distributed flyers opposing the draft during World War I. The court ruled that their free speech rights could be restricted, since obstruction of the draft violated the Espionage Act of 1917.

In his opinion, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote:

Words which, ordinarily and in many places, would be within the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment, may become subject to prohibition when of such a nature and used in such circumstances as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils which Congress has a right to prevent.

Holmes argument also included the idea that The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.

Mr. Schenck spent 10 years in federal prison for sedition and obstruction. Holmes went on to defend free speech rights in other cases. He argued that Mr. Schencks actions constituted a crime in wartime only.

Ideas about what constitutes free and false speech, and "clear and present danger" changed in subsequent years. The Schenck decision was partially overturned in 1969, but we still face many of the same questions: What are the limits to free speech? Does misinformation sometimes present a clear and present danger? When is false speech punishable, and who is best qualified to make such determinations?

Legal scholar Cass Sunstein has been grappling with these questions. His new book is Liars: Falsehoods and Free Speech in an Age of Deception. In this talk, youll hear how his initial inkling of how to confront lying and misinformation led to unexpected conclusions.

Cass Sunstein is a professor at Harvard University, and the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School. He served as administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration. He serves the Biden administration as a senior counselor to the Department of Homeland Security.

Town Hall Seattle presented this event on April 1, 2021, as part of their Civics series. Town Halls Candace Wilkinson-Davis moderated the program.

Please note: Professor Sunsteins dog, clearly and presently excited by the early stages of the talk, does quiet down in due time to listen in with the rest of us.

If you have any feedback on this episode, email jobrien@kuow.org

Or you can just click the feedback button on the edge of this page. Reach out. We're listening.

Original post:
Lies, the First Amendment, and the limits of free speech - KUOW News and Information

I recently listened to a new podcast, The Experiment, that explores various subjects in a creative and often illuminating way. In one episode, the show took up the question of hate crimes statutes and presented competing points of view on laws that enhance a criminal defendants penalty when the prosecutor can prove that hatei.e., bias or prejudicemotivated their criminal act. One opponent of hate crimes legislation said that it makes people feel like they have done something helpful but it does not make minority communities safer. That critique is well-taken if the purpose of such laws is to enhance safety. Another opponent, however, said that she opposed hate crimes laws because they punish a person (or enhance the baseline punishment a person receives) for what he said. The assailant who yells a racial slur commits a hate crime, while a different assailant who yells nothing avoids a hate crime penalty enhancement. This opponent acknowledged that the Supreme Court rejected a First Amendment free speech challenge to hate crime laws in Wisconsin v. Mitchell, but she added that she disagrees with Mitchell and continues to believe that hate crime laws penalize free speech. In this column, I aim to explain why the view that hate crime legislation violates the freedom of speech is incorrect and has radical and undesirable logical implications.

I would not bother writing about this topic if it were just a random, confused person that believed hate crime laws were invalid. But I have heard this argument on a number of occasions over the years, and I hope I can dispose of it here so that at least Verdict readers will know why Wisconsin v. Mitchell could not have reasonably come out any other way. I will explain in what I regard as its best light the view that I intend to attack.

In order to determine that X has committed a hate crime rather than a non-hate version of the same crime, we might need to look at what X said either during, prior to, or after the offense at issue. If he used a racial slur during or around the time of the crime, then we are in a position to charge him with a hate crime. The hate crime enhancement could mean that an assault ordinarily carrying a sentence of one year incarceration might instead send the convict to prison for five or six years.

If, instead of assaulting someone, the criminal defendant had simply used the racial slur in a conversation with his friends, he could not have been incarcerated for doing so because the First Amendment protects his right to free speech. The fact that he committed an assault should not change the status of his free speech uttered before, during, or after the offense. He should go to prison for however long an assailant goes to prison, without any extra time tacked on for exercising his freedom of speech, however offensive. In other words, misconduct such as assault is of course a predicate for punishment, but the fact of an assault should not alter the status of the words that a person utters or subject words that would otherwise be protected speech into a basis for adding prison time to a sentence that should be entirely about conduct and not speech.

What is wrong with the view I describe above? Let me say first that I tried hard to articulate in its strongest form the viewpoint with which I will disagree. It would have been easy to make a straw-person argument whose weakness is so evident that rebuttal is hardly even necessary. But I want to practice what I preach, and I tell students to put the best face possible on a contrary argument, if only to make sure that a person who disagrees can see that you really do understand what theyre saying. A surprising amount of frustration in life could be avoided if more people felt understood.

Whats wrong with the above argument begins with the claim that the defendant found guilty of a hate crime suffers a penalty for speech. That claim is simply unsupported. No one is punishing him for using a racial slur, whether it is during, prior to, or after an attack. The extra punishment aims at the motive that drove the defendant to commit his crime. Rather than assaulting someone because the victim cut him off in traffic, for example, the defendant assaulted the victim because she was African American.

Does speech play a role in determining what motivated the assault? Yes, of course. In any criminal proceeding, the speech of the defendant and others helps us figure out exactly what happened. If a defendant yelled racial slurs while assaulting the victim, then it seems logical to infer, absent contrary evidence, that the defendant decided to assault the victim because of the latters race.

The distinction here is crucial. It is the difference between using speech as a basis for punishment and using speech as a basis for drawing inferences about the crime. If, for instance, an assailant, while attacking a victim, yelled I dont believe in God!, an atheism enhancement would violate the First Amendment (both the Free Speech and the Establishment Clause components) because it would represent a punishment for his statement regarding atheism.

In the absence of other information, we do not learn anything about the assault itselfspecifically anything that might make it worse than it would otherwise beby hearing him voice his lack of a belief in God. If, on the other hand, he used a slur against Catholics while committing his assault against a Catholic, the words would be probative of his motive for the assault. To the extent that we regard bias-motivated crimes as worse than non-bias-motivated crimes, we could punish him for a hate crime and utilize his anti-Catholic slur as evidence that he committed a hate crime. To say it differently, we rely on his speech as a clue to understanding his assault, not as a distinct basis for punishment.

It is easy to become confused at the distinction I am drawing here, yet the distinction is not only real but unavoidable. At trial, whether civil or criminal, peoples words are frequently going to serve as evidence. I would even acknowledge that that fact might occasionally chill speech. For instance, I might be reluctant to say I am jealous of Y because Y has so much money because if Y is robbed, my statement could make it look like I was the robber. Words tell us who might have had a motive to commit a particular crime (thereby solving a whodunit), and likewise, they sometimes tell us why a particular person would have committed a crime (solving a what was done).

We would have a very different legal system if a criminal defendants wordsincluding racial or gender slurswere inadmissible as evidence on free speech grounds. Whatever chilling effect the evidentiary use of words might have on speech (e.g., Z could conceivably avoid using the c word or the b word in describing women for fear of being connected to an unsolved hate crime against women), our system treats words and statements as legitimate evidence unless there is some independent basis for excluding them from the jurys purview. If Z assaults a woman, then, and yells you are a [c word] during the assault, those words will properly come into evidence, not to prove a speech crime or a thought crime but to prove that what motivated Z to assault his victim was the fact that she was a woman.

If you are thinking you might disagree with what I have said so far, consider the following. The entirety of anti-discrimination law rests on the premise that an action that is perfectly legal under most circumstances can become illegal when motivated by an impermissible bias. In other words, unlike hate crimeswhich typically take an already-existing crime and elevate its seriousness because of motiveanti-discrimination law takes lawful conduct and makes it unlawful because of what motivated it. This move is arguably more like a thought crime than what happens in the hate crimes context.

If an employer decides not to hire you because the employer finds your personality annoying or creepy, there is nothing illegal about that decision or its basis. On the other hand, if an employer decides not to hire you because you are a man, then you can sue and recover damages because of that sex-motivated decision. And add to the mix the fact that the likely means of proving the sex-motivation behind the failure to hire will be statements by the employer such as Im so sick of men. No way am I hiring him! or That ones not getting the job. Hes got MPE, male-pattern existence.

If one truly worried about using speech to prove a partys motivation (because the evidentiary use of words might chill speech), then we would have to do away with laws prohibiting discrimination. I know that some folks would like to do away with such laws, but the fan club for that reform would likely be relatively small.

I want to acknowledge here that the use of speech as evidencewhich is ubiquitousdoes carry a real cost for the freedom of speech. If you are thinking of saying something controversial or provocative, you might think again if what you say could either (a) help identify you as the perpetrator of a crime or (b) help prove that something you definitely did was the product of a group-based bias or prejudice. But beyond existing privileges for particular zones of communication (e.g., lawyer/client or psychotherapist/patient), it seems likely that we will always rely on peoples words to help prove what they did and why they did it.

Our words are not simply expressions of free speech but are also very probative evidence of our conduct and our motivations for that conduct. As such and despite the possible effect on what we say, our words willlegitimately, I thinkfind their way into courtrooms, helping juries figure out what we did, why we did it, and whether we deserve to be punished for it. Hate crime legislation may not work in protecting vulnerable groups from bias crimes, and that would be a reason not to enact such laws. But they do not violate any defensible version of First Amendment Freedom of Speech. Wisconsin v. Mitchell was so plainly correct that it could not reasonably have come out the other way.

Excerpt from:
Hate Crimes and Free Speech - Justia Verdict

What experience has prepared you to take over leadership of the worlds fifth-largest economy?The governor doesnt lead the economy the people do. Im a free speech attorney whos spent a decade helping people defend their civil and constitutional rights, especially their 1st Amendment right to free speech and petition. No one else can say the same. No one else understands the structure of the state government, where its exceeded its authority, and where it needs to be pared back.

Do you believe Joe Biden was lawfully elected president?Yes

Should an ethnic studies course be required for high-school graduation?(Left blank)

Defund police?(Left blank)

Should government make any vaccine mandatory, including for polio and smallpox?(Left blank)

Under California law, low-income women are eligible for taxpayer-funded abortions. Do you support this?(Left blank)

Should the governors emergency powers be altered, and if so, how?The governor exceeded his constitutional authority by suspending laws through executive order. He went way beyond what the Emergency Services Act allows him to do. Shuttering the courts in spring 2020 deprived defendants of their right to a speedy trial and eliminated the right of petition.

If you had $25 billion to spend on homelessness, what would you do with it?Id make every community college, trade school and university 100% tuition free, and then make it easy to apply. The best way out of poverty is education and skills, which allow you to find better jobs. Higher ed should be free and for $7 billion, it can be. $25 billion? Thats bonkers money.

As governor, would you direct the state to do more to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement?No. Ill tell you what I would do: Id make every public college and university tuition free as soon as they stop violating the 1st Amendment. UC San Diego, for example, spent $800,000 on attorneys squashing their students free speech rights in Koala vs. Khosla. Never again.

What would you do to decrease the chance of destructive wildfires?Tell public utilities to bury their power lines in the ground so they dont fall down and light stuff on fire. Seriously, why hasnt this been done? PG&E needs to stop burning down the state every couple years. Just bury your power lines already.

What emergency steps would you take during a drought to allocate water usage among Californians?Id leave that to the water experts. The governor is not the water king.

Do you support Californias climate change initiatives. If no, what would you change?Why no questions about the free speech crisis, L.A. Times? Why no questions about the UC system passing a perpetual fee hike this year? There are other issues the governor can help with. Free speech rights and the rights of students should not be ignored.

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Meet the other recall candidates: Daniel Watts - Los Angeles Times

Still more from the free speech and social media platforms symposium in the first issue of our Journal of Free Speech Law; you can read the whole article (by Santa Clara law professor Eric Goldman and Jess Miers) here, but here's the abstract:

This article reviews a dataset of U.S. judicial opinions involving Internet services' user account terminations and content removals. The Internet services have prevailed in these lawsuits, which confirms their legal freedom to enforce their private editorial policies ("house rules"). Numerous regulators have proposed changing the legal status quo and restricting that editorial freedom. Instead of promoting free speech, that legal revision would counterproductively reduce the number of voices who get to speak online. As a result, laws imposing "must-carry" requirements on Internet services will exacerbate the problem they purport to solve.

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Eric Goldman & Jess Miers, "Online Account Terminations/Content Removals and the Benefits of Internet Services Enforcing Their House...

More from the free speech and social media platforms symposium in the first issue of ourJournal of Free Speech Law; you can read the whole article (by Michigan State law professor Adam Candeub) here, but here's the abstract:

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act gives internet platforms legal protection for content moderation. Even though the statute is 25 years old, courts have not clearly stated which provision within section 230 protects content moderation. Some say section 230(c)(1), others section 230(c)(2). But section 230(c)(1) speaks only to liability arising from third-party content, codifying common carriers' liability protection for delivering messages.

And while section 230(c)(2) addresses content moderation, its protections extend only to content moderation involving certain types of speech. All content moderation decisions for reasons not specified in section 230(c)(2), such as based on material being considered "hate speech," "disinformation," or "incitement," stand outside section 230's protections. More important, because section 230(c)(2) regulates both First Amendment protected and unprotected speech, it does raise constitutional concerns, but they may not be fatal.

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Adam Candeub, Reading Section 230 as Written Reason.com - Reason

Re Rage over vaccine, mask mandates boils over during county COVID-19 meeting (Aug. 17): After reading this article I was reminded of how important the freedom of speech is in our country.

Now that the 119 people have had their chance to speak, please step aside and allow the vast majority of the citizens of San Diego County to exercise their freedom.

We believe in science, our health experts, protecting the health of others, the rule of law and the freedoms rooted in our Constitution. But we wont broadcast those beliefs by screaming at elected officials, or by making veiled threats to them or others who dont believe the same way.

John SilcoxSerra Mesa

A vocal minority is holding the rest of us hostage. As they argue about personal choice and refuse to get vaccinated, businesses cant make long-term plans, schools are attempting to open safely without putting vulnerable children in danger, and arts events are struggling to return.

The irony is that those of us who got vaccinated are providing some protection to those who refuse to do so while they are putting us all at risk as they perpetuate this pandemic.

Susan SchockMira Mesa

I was stunned when I read the article about people being so angry about wearing masks and getting vaccinated. I just sat in disbelief. I do not understand how people can think stopping a deadly virus is taking away their freedom.

They seem to want to live life like they did two years ago.

That, for a fact, is not happening. Just recently I went to the emergency room with COVID-19-type symptoms (even though I am vaccinated) and fortunately I tested negative.

The nurse in the ER said eight people died the day before from COVID-19 and none were vaccinated. Unmasked, unvaccinated people are foolishly pulling us back into the dark ages when misinformation ruled over science.

No one is taking away your freedom. You are taking away your neighbors, familys or friends freedom by exposing them to a deadly virus. Get vaccinated and live.

Rev. Abigail AlbertPoway

Re COVID-19 isnt just bad for physical health. The pandemic hurt us emotionally, too. (Aug. 19): Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

The anti-mask/anti-vax demonstrators have not studied their history or they would know that at least as far back as the 12th century government officials recognized their responsibility to control the spread of epidemic diseases in the centuries before viruses were identified and vaccines were developed.

When the only way to stop the spread of infectious diseases was to isolate the patient and their family community doctors and law enforcement were sent to nail quarantine warning posters on a home. In some cases like tuberculosis, the patient could be taken against their will to a remote sanitarium to protect the rest of the community.

During the black plagues entire villages were isolated for up to a year.

It is time for residents to stop thinking of themselves as islands with no impact on the rest of us. We all want to go back to normal but the old normal does not and will never exist as it was.

Carol GendelSan Marcos

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Anti-vaxxers have free speech, but the majority rules - The San Diego Union-Tribune