Category Archives: Freedom of Speech

The 2022 Regular Session of the Connecticut General Assembly concluded on May 4, 2022. While not as groundbreaking as the two last full legislative sessions, and while many far-reaching bills that emerged from committee were not passed by the legislature, important bills regarding employee free speech (i.e., the much vaunted captive audiences legislation) and employment protections with respect to domestic violence were enacted. (We consider it particularly noteworthy that efforts to significantly restrict the use of covenants not to compete by most Connecticut employers were unsuccessful.) The following are brief descriptions of some of these employment-related bills, all of which have been signed by the Governor.

EMPLOYEE FREE SPEECH AND CAPTIVE AUDIENCES

Public Act 22-24 (An Act Protecting Employee Freedom Of Speech And Conscience), which takes effect on July 1, 2022, prohibits employers from requiring employees to attend meetings (or listen to speech or view communications) sponsored by the employer, the primary purpose of which is to communicate the employer's opinion concerning religious or political matters. This Act does NOT prohibit: 1) Employers from communicating to their employees any information that the employer is required by law to communicate or is necessary for employees to perform their job duties; 2) institutions of higher education from meeting or communicating with employees as part of coursework, symposia, or an academic program at the institution; 3) casual conversations between employees (or a single employee) and an agent/representative of an employer, provided that participation in the conversations is not required; or 4) a requirement limited to an employer's managerial and supervisory employees. The Act also does not apply to a religious corporation, entity, association, educational institution, or society that is exempt from the requirements of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Connecticut Fair Employment Practices Act with respect to speech on religious matters to employees who perform work connected with such entities activities.

In addition to these so-called captive audience provisions, the Act amends the state statute protecting employees from discipline or discharge due to their exercise of free speech (Connecticut General Statutes 31-51q) by limiting the damages available under it to lost wages/compensation, and thus eliminates any right to punitive damages, although attorneys fees/costs remain available. However, the Act also broadens Conn. Gen. Stat. 31-51q so as to prohibit employers from even threatening to subject an employee to discipline or discharge due to their exercise of free speech rights.

NON-DISCRIMINATION/EMPLOYMENT & DOMESTIC VIOLENCE PROTECTIONS

Public Act 22-82 (An Act Concerning Online Dating Operators, The Creation Of A Grant Program To Reduce Occurrences Of Online Abuse And The Provision of Domestic Violence Training and Protections For Victims Of Domestic Violence), which takes effect on October 1. 2022, lowers the threshold of an employer covered under the Connecticut Fair Employment Practices Act (CFEPA) from three employees to one employee or more. The Act expands the definition of employee" under CFEPA to include any elected or appointed official of a municipality, board, commission, counsel or other governmental body.

The Act adds status as a domestic violence victim as a protected class under CFEPA (and prohibits discrimination against such persons). The Act amends CFEPA to prohibit employers from refusing to provide a reasonable accommodation (including a reasonable leave of absence) to an employee for the purpose of seeking attention to injuries caused by (or services relating to) domestic violence, unless the absence would cause an undue hardship to the employer. Employers can request certain specified supporting documentation from employees with respect to a request for such a leave of absence; however, employers must maintain the confidentiality of information (to the extent permitted by law) regarding ones status as a domestic violence victim.

The Act authorizes the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO) to require employers with three or more employees to post in a prominent location information concerning domestic violence and the resources available to victims of domestic violence. The Act requires eachstate agency (but not private employers)to provide a minimum of one hour of training and education related to domestic violence and the resources available to victims of domestic violence 1) to all employees by July 1, 2023, and 2) to all employees hired on or after January 1, 2023, not later than six months after they start work. The Act sets forth the contents of such training, and these training requirements may be met by using the online training and education video (or other interactive method of training and education) to be developed by CHRO in conjunction with the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence (and made available at no cost to each state agency).

PREVAILING WAGE ENFORCEMENT

Public Act 22-17 (An Act Concerning Wage Theft) authorizes (as of July 1, 2023) the Connecticut Commissioner of Labor to issue increased fines and citations (i.e., $5,000 per violation) to contractors and subcontractors who violate the state's prevailing wage laws. The Act requires the Commissioner to maintain a list of contractors/subcontractors that during the three preceding years violated the prevailing wage laws or entered into a settlement with the Commissioner to resolve such claims. For each contractor/subcontractor on this list, the Commissioner shall record: 1) The nature of the violation; 2) the total amount of wages and fringe benefits making up the violation or agreed upon in any settlement; and 3) the total amount of civil penalties and fines. The Commissioner shall review the list each year for the preceding rolling three-year period and may refer for debarment any contractor/subcontractor that committed a violation during this period. The Commissioner shall refer for debarment any contractor/subcontractor that entered into one or more settlement agreements where the total of all settlements within the period exceeds $50,000 in back wages or fringe benefits or civil penalties or fines. Any such contractor/subcontractor may request a hearing before the Commissioner to contest such a finding.

CANCER RELIEF BENEFITS

Public Act 22-139 (An Act Concerning Adoption Of The Recommendations Of The Task Force To Study Cancer Relief Benefits For Firefighters) requires (commencing on July 1, 2023) that each town make the following contributions to the firefighters cancer relief program account: 1) $10 per career/paid firefighter within the town, and 2) $5 per volunteer firefighter within the towns volunteer district(s). The Act requires CONN-OSHA to adopt 1) Lavender Ribbon Report Best Practices for Preventing Firefighter Cancer, and 2) a practice requiring that all firefighters be provided with at least two sets of turnout gear (to ensure clean gear is worn while contaminated gear is properly cleaned), except towns with populations of fewer than 50,000 are exempt if they are equipped with advanced cleaning washers/extractors. The Act requires the Workers Compensation Commission to 1) maintain a record of all firefighters workers compensation claims made due to a cancer diagnosis, and 2) report annually to the General Assembly regarding this record. The Act requires the Comptroller to conduct a feasibility study on providing pension benefits to firefighters in circumstances when the required pension service years are not met due to early retirement resulting from a qualifying cancer diagnosis. NOTE: A prior version of this bill, that would have created a rebuttable presumption for workers compensation benefits for certain cancer diagnoses, did not pass.

OCCUPATIONAL LICENCES AND PRIOR CRIMINAL RECORDS

Public Act 22-88 (An Act Concerning Collateral Consequences Of Criminal Convictions On Occupational Licensing), which takes effect on October 1, 2022, limits the ability of state licensing agencies to revoke, suspend, or deny certain occupational licenses on account of the commission of a felony to only those felonies that are reasonably related to the holder's ability to safely or competently perform their work. Among the practitioners affected by this revision would be licensed clinical and Masters degreed social workers, art therapists, dietician-nutritionists, architects, public accountants, certain tradespersons, estheticians, eyelash and nail technicians. The Act also extends the prohibition on the Department of Public Healths summarily taking action with respect to practitioners for conviction of a felony to cover licenses for embalmers and funeral directors.

UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION

Special Act 22-13 (An Act Concerning Unemployment Compensation Experience Rates) requires the Connecticut Department of Labor to study businesses that had their experience rates increase despite last years passage of Public Act 21-5 (An Act Concerning The Removal Of COVID19 Related Layoffs From The Unemployment Compensation Experience Account), and to then submit a report with its findings and recommendations to the General Assemblys Labor and Public Employees Committee by January 1, 2023. The report will include identification of 1) employers that had increased experience rates, 2) how many people were impacted, and 3) the cost to both the state and the employer.

TECHNICAL AND MINOR CHANGES

The titles of Public Act 22-67 (An Act Concerning Technicaland Other Changes To The Labor Department Statutes) and Public Act 22-89 (An Act Concerning Minor And Technical Changes To The Workers' Compensation Act) largely speak for themselves.

LAST, BUT NOT LEAST, THE BUDGET IMPLEMENTER

On May 7, 2022, Governor Lamont signed, Public Act 22-118 (An Act Adjusting The State Budget For The Biennium Ending June 30, 2023, Concerning Provisions Related To Revenue, School Construction And Other Items To Implement The State Budget And Authorizing And Adjusting Bonds Of The State), which, as it title suggests, contains provisions ostensibly intended to implement the state budget. Not surprisingly, this 739-page legislation contains numerous provisions that are not necessarily budget-related. Here are some of the Acts employment-related provisions.

Connecticut Retirement Security Program

-The Act eliminates the Connecticut Retirement Security Authority (CRSA) and makes the Office of the State Comptroller its successor for administering the retirement program. The Act converts CRSAs board of directors to an advisory board and renames the program the Connecticut Retirement Security Program (as opposed to the former Connecticut Retirement Security Exchange title).

State and Non-Unionized Employee Wage/Benefits

-The Act increases judicial salaries by about 5%.

-The Act requires each state agency to apply to its nonunion state employees the following terms from the agreement between the state and the State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC): 1) for 2021-22, a $2,500 lump sum payment and 2.5% base annual salary increase; 2) for 2022-23, a 2.5% increase plus step increases, annual increments, or their equivalents, and a $1,000 lump sum payment); and 3) for 2023-24, a 2.5% increase plus step increases, annual increments, or their equivalents.

-The Act requires health insurance coverage for children, stepchildren, or other dependent children of state or nonstate public employees via the State Partnership Plan to continue until at least the end of the calendar year after the earlier of when they 1) obtained coverage through their own employment, or 2) turn age 26.

Teacher Retirement System

-The Act excludes school business administrators who hold a certificate with an administration endorsement from the Teacher Retirement System (TRS).

-The Act limits TRS eligibility for professional employees of the State Education Resource Center (SERC) to only those hired before July 1, 2022.

-The Act explicitly includes Connecticut Technical and Career System professional employees within the TRS.

-The Act increases from $220 to $440 per person the monthly health insurance subsidy under the TRS for eligible retired teachers (and their spouses or surviving spouses or disabled dependents) who receive health insurance coverage from the retirees last employing board of education.

Connecticut Paid Family and Medical Leave

-Similar to non-paid FMLA leave statutes, this Act makes it a violation of Connecticuts paid family and medical leave law (PFML) for an employer to: 1) interfere with, restrain, or deny the exercise of, or the attempt to exercise, any right provided by the PFML, or 2) discharge or cause to be discharged, or otherwise discriminate against someone for opposing any practice made unlawful by the PFML or exercising the rights afforded under the PFML.

Unemployment Compensation

-For 2022-2023, the Act reduces the unemployment tax rate that new employers must pay by 0.2% (from 1.4% to 1.2%).

Premium/Pandemic Pay

-The Act establishes a Premium Pay Program that will be administered by the Comptroller to pay out of state funds to private sector employees deemed eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccination in phases 1a or 1b of the vaccination program and who were employed during the period of the COVID-19 state of emergency, lump sums of $200 to $1,000 using available appropriations, on a first come, first-served basis. In order to be eligible for these benefits, employees must apply by October 1, 2022. The Act further sets forth the process & criteria for applying for such pay.

-The Act also provides that no employer shall: 1) Discharge or in any manner discipline or discriminate against any employee because the employee has filed an application for pandemic pay, or 2) deliberately misinform or dissuade an employee from filing an application for payment from the Connecticut program. The Act provides a private cause of action for those alleging a violation of this provision.

Homemaker-Companion Agency and No-Hire Clauses

-The Act prohibits (as against public policy) contracts between a homemaker-companion agency or home health agency and a client from including a no-hire clause that, should the client directly hire an agency employee: 1) imposes a financial penalty; 2) assesses any charges or fees, including legal fees; or (3) contains any language that can create grounds for a breach of contract assertion or a claim for damages or injunctive relief. (NOTE that current law already largely bars covenants not to compete in employment contracts for homemaker, companion, or home health services.)

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The Aftermath: Developments from the 2022 Session of the Connecticut General Assembly Affecting Employers - JD Supra

My longtime Princeton University colleague Joshua Katz, a distinguished classicist and linguistics scholar, was recently dismissed from his tenured position by Princeton in a case that has received international attention. I was Professor Katzs official Adviser in Princetons disciplinary system through the course of the entire four-year long ordeal that resulted in his dismissal. In that capacity, I came to possess information that is privileged or confidential, and therefore cannot be shared. I will herein discuss only information that is already publicly known.

As a matter of full disclosure, I should note that when Professor Katz asked me to serve as his Adviser, which is something I had done for others over the course of my time at Princeton, he and I were mere acquaintances (though I knew him by reputation as an outstanding scholar, and an exceptionally gifted and dedicated teacher). We have since become close friends.

Princeton conducted two investigations into conduct by Professor Katz in connection with a consensual but (under the universitys rules) impermissible relationship he had with a student under his supervision in the mid-2000s. The first investigation was conducted a bit over a decade after the affair had taken place, when a third party informed university officials about what had happened. When those officials confronted Professor Katz, he immediately admitted to the offense. Essentially, he pled guilty to having had the affair.

The former student with whom Professor Katz had the relationship was asked by the universitys investigators to assist in the investigation and disciplinary process, including by making any claims she had against Professor Katz arising out of the affair and providing evidence. She declined to make allegations of any kind, refused to participate in the proceedings, and expressed disapproval of the proceedings going forward.

Unbeknownst to me, she and Professor Katz had remained in communication (though with no personal meetings, or romantic or sexual elements in the relationship), and she expressed to him the desire to have her privacy respected and not to be dragged into the matter. He told her that he would answer all questions put to him by the investigators fully and truthfully, but would not on his own initiative discuss or seek to involve her in any way. The proceedings went forward, eventually resulting in a punishment consisting of a one-year suspension without pay. Professor Katz was also required to meet regularly for four years with a counselor. Properly, none of this was publicly disclosed at the time.

After serving his sentence, Professor Katz returned to teaching, but soon became the subject of controversy when he publicly criticized a July 4, 2020 Faculty Letter from colleagues making demands for new Princeton policies (or alterations of existing policies) in order to combat alleged systemic racism. Some of the demands were aimed at creating university policies that would jeopardize academic freedom. Others would have subjected the university to possible legal liability for violations of laws prohibiting differential treatment based on racial classifications (including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964).

As Professor Katz noted, the Faculty Letter contained

In his article, published by Quillette, Professor Katz also referred to a by-then-defunct student organization (whose members had graduated) as a small local terrorist organization that made life miserable for the students (including the many black students) who did not agree with its members demands. This language outraged some on the campus left, and Professor Katzs article, titled A Declaration of Independence by a Princeton Professor, was condemned by Princetons President, Christopher Eisgruber.

A university spokesmannot the Presidentwent further by suggesting that Professor Katz might be subjected to some sort of investigation for his words. A little over a week later, President Eisgruber made clear that this would not happen, and reaffirmed Princetons strong respect for freedom of speech. I praised President Eisgruber for standing firm on the principle of not punishing protected speech, even when he himself regarded the content of the speech as profoundly wrong. (As it happens, I had intimate personal knowledge of the mistreatment of black students by the group that Professor Katz had criticized. Based on that knowledge, I did not think what he said about the group was out of line. It certainly was not racistquite the opposite.)

That is where the matter should have ended. Regrettably, it did not.

Woke elements on campus, including at the student newspaper, were angry with President Eisgruber as well as Professor Katz. They began trying to dig up dirt, to find another way to get the professor disciplinedeven fired. They had heard rumors of an affair with a student and noticed that Professor Katz seemed to have had an unexplained off-cycle leave of absence. They demanded information about the matter from the university.

Initially, the university was prepared to stick to its standard practice of responding to such demands by saying that it does not discuss personnel matters. Soon, however, university officials informed Professor Katz that either he would have to tell campus media about the disciplinary action that the university had taken against him, or they would do so. We pleaded with university officials to stick to its standard practice. But they refused.

So, basically having no choice, Professor Katz told the story. Most unfortunately, at this point, the alumna with whom hed had the affair (by now, nearly a decade and a half earlier) turned on him and filed complaints with the university. She made various claims, but only one survived and became the focus of a new investigation. This was the claim, now publicly known, that during their affair, Professor Katz discouraged the woman from receiving needed mental health care in order to prevent their relationship from being revealed.

In certain subsequent (non-contemporaneous) email communications with the woman, he seemed to have confessed to doing this. This confession, however, was in the context of trying to calm her down when she was obviously extremely upset; and, as the full email record shows, he was confessing to every allegation she made against him, including ones that were demonstrably untrue.

In my official role as Adviser, I argued that a second investigation should not take place because it resembled what, in the criminal justice system, would be double jeopardyi.e., subjecting an accused person to a second prosecution for the same offense. The woman had been given every opportunity, and had indeed been encouraged, to make allegations and provide evidence of wrongdoing in the first investigation. She declined to do so. Indeed, she opposed the investigation and refused to participate. It would therefore be wrong to investigate and discipline Professor Katz a second time for allegations arising out of the nexus of facts that gave rise to the first investigation and to the punishment imposed in light of Professor Katzs confession of guilt.

Although I continue to believe that my argument regarding double jeopardy was sound and should have been accepted, ending this whole business, it was rejected at every level of the disciplinary proceedings, including when the university President recommended to the Board of Trustees that Professor Katz be fired.

My difference of opinion with top university officials does not concern free speech. It concerns due process. These officials, as I understand their position, believe that because the specific allegation made by the woman was new, investigating it, prosecuting it, and punishing Professor Katz on this basis did not amount to trying someone twice for the same offense. For the reasons indicated, I disagree (even if what we are talking about here is a university disciplinary proceeding, to which the constitutional prohibition on double jeopardy in criminal cases does not apply).

Having said that, however, it must be added that the second investigation would not have been initiated if it hadnt been for student journalists and others with a vendetta against Professor Katz, and who were seeking to dig up dirt on him because they disliked his expressed views. This element really makes the whole business a terrible injustice as well as a personal tragedyas well as drawing in the issue of free speech, albeit in an indirect and complicated way.

I should add that I personally do not believe that Professor Katz actually tried to prevent the woman with whom he was having an illicit affair from getting the mental health care she needed: As noted above, his emailed assent to this accusation came in a context in which he might have confessed to any number of fictional crimes. But again, this difference of opinion between me and university officials is not about free speech, but rather about interpreting the available evidence. (There were other claims against Professor Katz that arose during the second disciplinary procedure, and which were mentioned by the university. On these, too, I disagree with the findings that President Eisgruber ultimately accepted, though I wont go into the details here, as they are secondary to my broader argument that the entire second investigation was a form of double jeopardy.)

There was also a separate scandal that arose from the manner by which (as yet still unidentified) university bureaucrats smeared Professor Katz as a racist through a freshman training program called To Be Known and Heard: Systemic Racism and Princeton Universityeven going so far as to bowdlerize a quotation from him as a means to support this defamation. Specifically, the words including the many black students were removed from the aforementioned quotation, a small local terrorist organization that made life miserable for the students (including the many black students) who did not agree with its members demands. The document also contained statements from detractors, such as [Katz] seems not to regard people like me [a Black professor] as essential features, or persons, of Princeton, with no opportunity for Katz or anyone supporting him to reply.

I can think of no possible explanation for this outrageous conduct other than it being a form of harassment and retaliation against Professor Katz for his speech. When the office responsible for the freshman-orientation materials was called out for the doctoring of the quotation (Professor Katzs lawyer, Samantha Harris, had complained to the university counsels office directly about this issue) someone restored the full quotation on the To Be Known and Heard web site. But the university refused to apologize to Professor Katz orand this is criticalinform the students to whom he had been smeared that the quotation had been bowdlerized and had to be corrected. So the correction was essentially meaningless and did not undo the injustice to Professor Katz.

A group of professors led by mathematician Sergiu Klainerman filed a grievance in their own names, not on behalf of Professor Katz himself, demanding an investigation into who had retaliated against him by weaponizing the universitys freshman-orientation materials in this manner. Two Princeton officers, the Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity and the head of the Human Resources department, were evidently assigned to look into the matter and respond to Professor Klainerman and his co-complainants. In a ruling that I found ridiculous, these officials rejected the complaint on various grounds.

Professors Klainerman et al. eventually appealed to a standing faculty committee that has the power to review faculty complaints against administrators actions and make recommendations (the Princeton Committee on Conference and Faculty Appeal being its full name). I understand from reports that I regard as completely reliable that the committee ruled in favor of the Klainerman group, and against the two officers who had dismissed their complaint, unanimously on every count.

And so even though Professor Katz has already been terminated, important issues surrounding his mistreatment persist, as the Committee on Conference and Faculty Appeals apparent recommendation of a full investigation of the defamation of Professor Katz by university officials now sits with President Eisgruber. A public statement by the President made in response to a public letter authored on behalf of the Academic Freedom Alliance by Keith Whittingtona Princeton professor and an eminent scholar of constitutional law whos literally written the book on campus free speechsuggests that the president views the statements about Professor Katz contained in the freshman orientation materials as themselves protected speech under Princetons free-speech policies. I strongly disagree with this characterization, as Princetons free-speech rules expressly exclude expression that falsely defames a specific individual. And I hope that, on reflection, and in light of the findings by the aforementioned faculty committee, President Eisgruber will order an independent investigation of the smearing of Professor Katz, with attendant disciplinary proceedings concerning those responsible.

There is no question in my mind as to whether Katz was defamedtreatment exacerbated by the fact that the freshman-orientation materials are promulgated to a captive student audience. Nor am I in any doubt as to whether the underlying motives were malicious. The bowdlerization of Professor Katzs words was done with the evident intention of depicting him as racistwhich he is not. The only real questions are who is responsible, and what is the proper disciplinary action under the universitys rules.

If Princeton bureaucrats, whoever they are, can get away with retaliating against a professor for his protected speech by smearing him in this way, then the universitys formal free-speech protections are mere parchment guarantees. President Eisgruber, himself an eminent First Amendment scholar, should understand what is at stake here. He has always been a powerful defender of free speech and other basic civil liberties. (I should add, again as a matter of full disclosure, that he and I are old friends.)

I have publicly praised him for those qualities and, as noted herein, acknowledged that his decision regarding the second investigation of Professor Katz does not directly compromise free-speech principles. Thus, I have reason to hope that a proper understanding of what is and isnt protected speech under university policies will guide him toward an appreciation of the injustice done to Joshua Katz.

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Free Speech and Due Process at Princeton: The Case of Joshua Katz - Quillette

It was just a sticker. It said, "China Kinda Sus."

That was the entirety of the message that led William P. Gilligan, president of Boston's Emerson College, to write a letter to the whole college community accusing the conservative student group that distributed the sticker of "anti-Asian bigotry and hate."

It didn't matter that the message was a criticism of the Chinese government, not Asian people. Nor did it matter that one of the students handing out the stickers, KJ Lynum, is herself Asian (in fact, one-third of the group's members were Asian). The college suspended the group and found it guilty of violating the school's "Bias Related Behavior" policy.

Later, disheartened by the experience, KJ dropped out of school.

On campus and increasingly beyond, labeling speech "hateful" makes those in authority feel empowered to shut it down. It should be no surprise, then, that the label is sometimes used frivolously to emotionally manipulate people into accepting unjustified exercises of power, including the punishment of the expression of ideas.

Off campus, activists used the label to try to pressure Netflix to take down recent comedy specials featuring Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais, while some Republican legislatures use it to justify banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory. When Elon Musk announced his plan to buy Twitter to promote free speech, some of America's more eager censors lamented an "uncontrolled" internet where some people may be free to express opinions others dislike or find distasteful.

If you ask Americans, most will say they strongly support free speech protections. However, label the speech "hateful" and that support plummets, particularly among Democrats.

We've all heard the saying, "Hate speech is not free speech." There's just one problem with that mantra: It isn't legally true, at least in America. The First Amendment's protections for free speech do not include a "hate speech" exception. That's due, in large part, to the problem of subjectivity: Who decides what's hateful and by what standard? Donald Trump? Joe Biden? Should we ask Emerson President Gilligan? Eighty-two percent of Americans say we can't agree on a definition of hateful speech, even as 40 percent say the government should ban it.

In the United Kingdom and Europe, where hate speech laws are common, they are used to punish everything from YouTube jokes to critiques of religious figures.

After failing for 40 years in America, the hate speech-inspired "words that wound" conception of free speech popularized by Critical Race Theory co-founder Richard Delgado in the 1980s might now be overtaking the "sticks and stones" approachat least on campus and on social media. In Delgado's conception, words can function as a form of violence: "They can assault; they can injure," says the description of his 1993 book on the subject that he co-wrote with other CRT founders.

For most Americans in the '80s and '90s, especially free speech advocates, the conflation of words with violence was seen as a direct challenge to our liberal democratic order. Sigmund Freud once said, "the man who first flung a word of abuse at his enemy instead of a spear was the founder of civilization." Equate words with violence and soon people will feel justified in using violence instead of words to settle their disagreements. Democracy, in which disputes are resolved not through violence, but through debate, discussion, and voting, cannot survive the collapse of that critical distinction.

The "words that wound" notion of speech inspired a movement for restrictive speech codes on college campuses. It was routinely defeated in court, but a growing number of students and college administrators still cling to this vision of enlightened censorship. "Hateful rhetoric is violent, and this is impermissible," wrote the editorial board of the University of Virginia's student newspaper earlier this year in demanding the school not allow former Vice President Mike Pence to speak on campus.

Ironically, the growing support for censorship may be due, in part, to free speech advocates winning in the court of law. As First Amendment protections have become stronger during the past half-century, the remaining legal cases often involve less-sympathetic speech at the margins, like that of the Westboro Baptist Church and white nationalists in Charlottesville. Younger generations of Americans who see the First Amendment protect wildly unpopular speech may easily forgetor may never have been taughthow the First Amendment empowered everything from the civil rights movement to the gay rights movement.

But how long will the legal bulwark against additional exceptions to free speech hold? As Judge Learned Hand put it during a 1944 speech, "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it."

In short, if we don't defend and promote a culture of free expression, we risk losing the culture and our legal protections.

What America needs now more than ever are vocal, nonpartisan free speech advocates to remind Americans why we defend free speech in the first place. We need advocates who won't simply fall back on the circular "because the First Amendment protects it" argument. We need advocates who are willing to unapologetically stand up for the right to speak even the thoughts we hate.

We say "unapologetically" because, too often, even free speech advocates sound like they are apologizing for the offense speech might cause, genuflecting before other values and never issuing a full-throated defense of our speech rights. While such apologies may have their place, they risk distracting from free speech advocates' essential point: That free speech is a fundamental human right for which we need not apologize.

That's why our organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, steadfastly refuses to take a position on the content of the speech we defend, aside from saying that it's protected. Why say more? As Mark R. Hamilton, the courageous former president of the University of Alaska, wrote in a memo to his colleagues, "Attempts to assuage anger or to demonstrate concern by qualifying our support for free speech serve to cloud what must be a clear message."

Freedom of speech allows us to authentically express our individuality, to learn about our world, and to live peacefully within a democratic society. Free speech is an essential ingredient for scientific progress, social justice, and artistic expression. Most simply, freedom of speech enables us to know what our fellow citizens really think and why.

Free speech makes free people. We must not give up the fight to preserve it.

Greg Lukianoff is President & CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) co-author of the bestselling book "The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure." Nico Perrino is Vice President of Communications at FIRE and the host of So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast.

The views in this article are the writers' own.

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Free Speech Makes People Free. We Must Defend All Speech Without Apology | Opinion - Newsweek

Lets talk about the First and Second Amendments.

Not those two the original ones.

The original First Amendment created a formula to determine the size of the House of Representatives based on the population of the United States in 1789.

It didnt pass.

The original Second Amendment set out to define when Congress can change its pay.

That didnt pass either.

What we know today as the First Amendment prohibits the government from depriving us of certain freedoms religion, speech, the press, peaceful assembly, and it allows a path to redress grievances with the government.

It begins Congress shall make no law

Pretty clear.

In his distinguished 34-year career on the Supreme Court, Associate Justice Hugo Black said as much.

He was the driving force behind the 1964 Times v. Sullivan decision that declared freedom of speech protections in the First Amendment restrict public officials from suing for defamation.

Black also sat solidly behind the press in the 1971 Pentagon Papers case in which The New York Times published damaging evidence about the government's involvement in Vietnam.

Black wrote: Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.

In an opinion piece, managing editor Pat Fox writes that we should choose our champions for truth-telling carefully.

Ive made my living, raised a family, paid my mortgage thanks to the First Amendment. I get edgy whenever someone tries to mess with it. I dont like it.

And yet

People have messed with it a lot.

There are libel laws sometimes used to intimidate reporters from pursuing stories. Libel laws ostensibly restrict the press from unjustly defaming individuals and organizations.

Also, newspapers cannot copy information verbatim or run a photo from a published work without facing a suit over copywrite infringement.

What gives?

The Constitution says Congress shall make no laws

Well, Im willing to discuss it. Pretty much everyone in the newspaper business loves discussing it.

The press is the only profession, by the way, specifically cited for protection in the Constitution.

One of the best expressions of that distinction came from Justice Potter Stewart in his dissent opinion in a 1971 case involving police searches of newsrooms.

Perhaps as a matter of abstract policy a newspaper office should receive no more protection from unannounced police searches than, say, the office of a doctor or the office of a bank. But we are here to uphold a Constitution. And our Constitution does not explicitly protect the practice of medicine or the business of banking from all abridgement by government. It does explicitly protect the freedom of the press.

I love that.

On the other hand, should I be able to pick out of the air some local businessman and publish an article saying he is a shady no-goodnik who parks in handicapped stalls?

Im willing to discuss that or any other matter relating to the First Amendment and the press. Lets hold a town hall.

Now, concerning the Second Amendment

I dont like anyone messing around with the Constitution not the First, Second, Third or any other amendments.

I grew up in the rural Midwest and spent a lot of my youth hunting, so Im familiar with guns. Many of my friends own one. We want to keep them, too, for a variety of reasons.

We all came by our firearms legally, and we all took safety courses on their proper use.

By golly, wed probably be willing to talk to other people about our guns, maybe discuss safety and care, whether wed ever loan one to a high school senior or whether wed give one to a certified manic depressive.

There are some people who wont talk about these sorts of things, though. Sixty of them are in the U.S. Senate. There are a lot more in the Georgia Legislature.

They wont discuss it.

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Opinion: Free speech and guns a winning combination - Appen Media

Speak Truth to Power

by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners. George Carlin

Cancel culture political correctness amped up on steroids, the self-righteousness of a narcissistic age, and a mass-marketed pseudo-morality that is little more than fascism disguised as tolerance has shifted us into an Age of Intolerance, policed by techno-censors, social media bullies, and government watchdogs.

Everything is now fair game for censorship if it can be construed as hateful, hurtful, bigoted or offensive provided that it runs counter to the established viewpoint.

In this way, the most controversial issues of our day race, religion, sex, sexuality, politics, science, health, government corruption, police brutality, etc. have become battlegrounds for those who claim to believe in freedom of speech but only when it favors the views and positions they support.

Free speech for me but not for thee is how my good friend and free speech purist Nat Hentoff used to sum up this double standard.

This tendency to censor, silence, delete, label as hateful, and demonize viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite is being embraced with a near-fanatical zealotry by a cult-like establishment that values conformity and group-think over individuality.

For instance, are you skeptical about the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines? Do you have concerns about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election? Do you subscribe to religious beliefs that shape your views on sexuality, marriage and gender? Do you, deliberately or inadvertently, engage in misgendering identifying a persons gender incorrectly or deadnaming using the wrong pronouns or birth name for a transgender person?

Say yes to any of those questions and then dare to voice those views in anything louder than a whisper and you might find yourself suspended on Twitter, shut out of Facebook, and banned across various social media platforms.

This authoritarian intolerance masquerading as tolerance, civility, and love what comedian George Carlin referred to as fascism pretending to be manners is the end result of a politically correct culture that has become radicalized, institutionalized, and tyrannical.

In the past few years, for example, prominent social media voices have been censored, silenced and made to disappear from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram for voicing ideas that were deemed politically incorrect, hateful, dangerous or conspiratorial.

Most recently, Twitter suspended conservative podcaster Matt Walsh for violating its hate speech policy by sharing his views about transgendered individuals.

The greatest female Jeopardy champion of all time is a man. The top female college swimmer is a man. The first female four star admiral in the Public Health Service is a man. Men have dominated female high school track and the female MMA circuit. The patriarchy wins in the end, Walsh tweeted on December 30, 2021.

J.K. Rowling, author of the popular Harry Potter series, has found herself denounced as transphobic and widely shunned for daring to criticize efforts by transgender activists to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender.

Ironically enough, Rowlings shunning included literal book burning.

Yet as Ray Bradbury once warned, There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

Indeed, the First Amendment is going up in flames before our eyes, but those first sparks were lit long ago and have been fed by intolerance all along the political spectrum.

Consider some of the kinds of speech being targeted for censorship or outright elimination.

Offensive, politically incorrect and unsafe speech: Political correctness has resulted in the chilling of free speech and a growing hostility to those who exercise their rights to speak freely. Where this has become painfully evident is on college campuses, which have become hotbeds of student-led censorship, trigger warnings, microaggressions, and red light speech policies targeting anything that might cause someone to feel uncomfortable, unsafe or offended.

Hateful speech: Hate speech speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as gender, ethnic origin, religion, race, disability, or sexual orientation is the primary candidate for online censorship. Corporate internet giants Google, Twitter, and Facebook continue to re-define what kinds of speech will be permitted online and what will be deleted.

Dangerous, anti-government speech: As part of its ongoing war on extremism, the government has partnered with the tech industry to counter online propaganda by terrorists hoping to recruit support or plan attacks. In this way, anyone who criticizes the government online can be considered an extremist and will have their content reported to government agencies for further investigation or deleted.

In fact, the Justice Department is planning to form a new domestic terrorism unit to ferret out individuals who seek to commit violent criminal acts in furtherance of domestic social or political goals. What this will mean is more surveillance, more pre-crime programs, and more targeting of individuals whose speech may qualify as dangerous.

The upshot of all of this editing, parsing, banning, and silencing is the emergence of a new language, what George Orwell referred to as Newspeak, which places the power to control language in the hands of the totalitarian state.

Under such a system, language becomes a weapon to change the way people think by changing the words they use.

The end result is mind control and a sleepwalking populace.

This mind control can take many forms, but the end result is an enslaved, compliant populace incapable of challenging tyranny.

We have allowed our fears fear for our safety, fear of each other, fear of being labeled racist or hateful or prejudiced, etc. to trump our freedom of speech and muzzle us far more effectively than any government edict could.

This is the tyranny of the majority against the minority marching in lockstep with technofascism.

Yet be warned: whatever we tolerate now whatever we turn a blind eye to whatever we rationalize when it is inflicted on others will eventually come back to imprison us, one and all.

At some point or another, depending on how the government and its corporate allies define what constitutes hate or extremism, we the people might all be considered guilty of some thought crime or other.

In other words, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, whatever powers you allow the government and its corporate operatives to claim now, for the sake of the greater good or because you like or trust those in charge, will eventually be abused and used against you by tyrants of your own making.

The police state could not ask for a better citizenry than one that carries out its own censorship, spying and policing.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president The Rutherford Institute. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at http://www.rutherford.org.

Read this article:
The Age of Intolerance: Cancel Culture's War on Free Speech - Overton County News

While Jehovahs Witnesses have chosen to temporarily suspend their door-to-door ministry due to the pandemic, their activity was almost permanently banned by one U.S. village in the late 1990s that is until the United States Supreme Court stepped in with a historic 8-1 decision on June 17, 2002, declaring the local ordinance unconstitutional.

As the 20th anniversary of that precedent-setting decision nears, some Highland County, Ohio residents wonder what their lives would be like if one of their neighbors had not knocked on their door and shared a life-changing message with them.

Constitutional scholars marvel at the outsized impact the decision has had on the protection of free speech for all, agreeing with Justice Antonin Scalias opinion in the case, The free-speech claim exempts everybody, thanks to Jehovahs Witnesses.

If Jehovahs Witnesses had not come to my door, said Dorothy Williams, my life would be over, figuratively and literally. It was a life-saving experience. My search is over. That lost feeling, that feeling of What is the purpose of life? Why are we here? is gone. There was this hunger, this actual searching, but I didnt know where to search.

Williams was contacted by local Jehovahs Witnesses engaging in their door-to-door ministry in 2011 and was baptized a year later.

The 2002 Supreme Court decision in Watchtower v. Village of Stratton affirmed that a local village ordinance in Stratton, Ohio, requiring a permit to knock on doors violated the rights of any person who wanted to engage in free speech with their neighbor, including Jehovahs Witnesses, who practice door-to-door evangelizing. The Court overturned two lower court rulings that upheld the ordinance, and thus paved the way for all citizens to maintain open dialogue with their neighbors on any number of issues, including environmental, civic, political or educational.

Looking back on the two decades since the decision, its clear to see the wide-ranging impact that Watchtower v. Stratton has had on free speech for all, said Josh McDaniel, director of the Religious Freedom Clinic at Harvard Law School. This is just the latest of some 50 Supreme Court victories by Jehovahs Witnesses that have helped establish and broaden First Amendment jurisprudence throughout the last century.

The village of Stratton became a center of controversy in 1998 after the mayor personally confronted four Jehovahs Witnesses as they were driving out of the village after visiting a resident. Subsequently, the village enacted the ordinance Regulating Uninvited Peddling and Solicitation Upon Private Property, which required anyone wishing to engage in door-to-door activity to obtain a permit from the mayor or face imprisonment.

Jehovahs Witnesses viewed this ordinance as an infringement of freedom of speech, free exercise of religion and freedom of press. Therefore, they brought a lawsuit in federal court after the village refused to modify their enforcement of this ordinance.

Our motive for initiating the case was clear: We wanted to remove any obstacle that would prevent us from carrying out our scriptural obligation to preach the good news of the Kingdom, said Robert Hendriks, U.S. spokesman for Jehovahs Witnesses. Making it a criminal offense to talk with a neighbor without seeking government approval is offensive to many people, but particularly to God, who commanded Christians to preach the gospel.

While Williams continues to engage in a productive ministry through letter writing, phone calling and virtual visits, she is looking forward to knocking on doors again.

Its unlikely that I would have ever reached out to Jehovahs Witnesses on my own, Williams admitted. I was 76 years old and attending three different Bible studies. I thought maybe I would find the answers. I never thought Jehovahs Witnesses were my answer. Im still learning, but I know now where to find the answers. It was very valuable.

We are thankful that we have the legal right to practice our ministry from door to door, Hendriks said. When the time is right and conditions are safe, we hope to visit our neighbors in person once again.

This victory is one of more than 250 rulings in cases brought by Jehovahs Witnesses in high courts around the world that have expanded the rights of people of all religious faiths.

It's hard to point to any organization, let alone a religious organization, that has had such a profound impact on the shaping of constitutional law over many decades in the Supreme Court," said Harvard professor McDaniel.

For more information on the Stratton case, go to http://www.jw.org and type Stratton in the search field.

Read more:
Protecting free speech: Local residents reflect on impact of 2002 historic Supreme Court ruling as 20th anniversary nears - The Highland County Press

To listen to the gun lobby, the Second Amendment provides an absolute constitutional right for an individual to own an array of armaments and ammunition free from regulation by the state. These advocates select from the amendments text only what supports their individual-freedom view, but they ignore entirely the imperative that precedes, the framing device of the whole thingto protect the security of a free State. Read in full, the text of the amendment is not a prohibition on gun regulations but, rather, a requirement of certain regulations necessary for protecting that security and freedom.

Gun-rights activists point to the 2008 Supreme Court decision in Heller v. District of Columbia as finally establishing, some 219 years after the ratification of the Second Amendment, an individual right to possess a gun in the home, which they proclaim extends to assault rifles and sundry other weapons enabling individual bearers to inflict mass destruction of human life. In their view, the ordinary citizen is bound by a constitutional covenant to suffer the risk that others might use their military-style weapons to murder childrenor churchgoers, or grocery shoppers, or concertgoers, but especially childrenbecause it is the person, not the gun, who does the killing in the Second Amendments name. We the people must endure this risk, we are told, because otherwise the rights of some to keep and bear Armseven against childrenoutweigh our collective need for safety and security. The constitutional protection of some to keep the weapons that they sometimes bear against us collectively is too important a right necessary for individual freedom to contemplate regulations that would, or even might, reduce our risk. We are told that the right to individual ownership of armaments like AR-15 platform assault weapons, with minimal or no real restraints on purchasing, is necessary for an armed populace to keep the threat of a tyrannical government at bay.

James C. Phillips and Josh Blackman: The mysterious meaning of the Second Amendment

Such a popularized version of our Constitutions meaning was in part vindicated by a conservative Supreme Court majority, whose opinion in Heller focused principally on the second half of the Second Amendment, which reads, The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Assuming that the term of art keep and bear means the same in modern English as possess and carry, and that the people refers to particular individuals rather than a political collective, as in We the People, which established the Constitution in the preamble, the right would seem to be fairly clear. (Or at least as clear as the First Amendment, which provides that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, under which the Supreme Court has nonetheless repeatedly found all manner of regulations permissiblesuch as those prohibiting incitement to violence, true threats, and advocacy for violent overthrow of the government, and those putting reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions on speech, among many others.)

But this version of the Second Amendment ignores the first half, which reads, A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State. The Supreme Court barely contemplated the texts meaning in Heller, asking no more than whether it could be given a logical link or a purpose consistent with what it dubbed the operative clausewherein the amendment, in the Courts view, protects an individual right to possess a weapon. The first half of the Second Amendment is at times also anachronistically associated with the question of whether the right to possess a weapon is tied to service in a well regulated Militiaa view the Heller majority rejected. Missing from this reading, however, is any consideration of the constitutional significance of what is necessary to maintain the security of a free State. What does this security entail? Are Americans secure in a free state when they live in fear of the next violent act that might be perpetrated by the bearer of semiautomatic weapons? Are Americans secure in a free state when they are told that more resources should be spent on arming teachers, or training students to duck and cover and keep silent, as if in a new cold war, only this time the enemy is ourselves?

Diana Palmer and Timothy Zick: The Second Amendment has become a threat to the First

The gun lobby argues that the political, psychological, and emotional attachment to the ready availability of weapons for some is a value too precious to contemplate rethinking our collective approach to gun regulation. Any regulation that might lead to imposing far more restrictive licensing and background checks, or to limiting the availability of particular kinds of weapons, would be too costly to their selective understanding of constitutional freedoms. According to the gun lobby, individuals engaged in their own fantasy of the heroic citizen equipped to do battle against tyrannical government agents would suffer incalculable collective costs were Americans to restrict their access to weapons. If the choice were the lives of children or the political imagination of a vocal group of armament activists, whose costs should matter more? The inconvenience of some or the lives of others?

The Second Amendment provides an answer. The security of a free State matters. Our security is a constitutional value, one that outweighs absolutist gun-rights claims by NRA lobbyists, or Oath Keepers and other insurrectionist groups who hold their access to weapons dear for use in an imagined anti-tyranny quest. Meanwhile, the rest of us suffer the costs of the actual tyranny that living in a state of fear of mass gun violence creates.

Franklin D. Roosevelts 1941 Four Freedoms speech placed freedom from fear as one of four essential human freedoms. Translated to our modern gun crisis, this freedom can be realized only when individuals no longer have easy legal access to armaments that put them in a position to commit an act of [mass] physical aggression against any neighbor. Children today do not have this freedom from fear. Just to live in society and go to school, they must endure regular active-shooter drills, because the gun lobby has opposed any regulation that would keep weapons out of the hands of those whose activities remain legal up until the exact moment when they start shooting children and teachers. Proposals to make schools more like fortresses only add to the costs children bear rather than addressing the root constitutional problemthat insufficient regulation of guns impairs the liberties of all.

Protecting our freedom from fear does not mean that the government has complete authority to ban guns. To emphasize the amendments protections for security is not to abandon liberty. Rather, it is to recognize how excessive emphasis on the liberties of gun advocates undermines the many liberties of everyone else who seeks to live securely in a free state. The Second Amendment preserves a free state, not simply a security state.

When we Americans next hear that the Second Amendment protects a right against more effective regulation of weapons capable of imposing death on our neighbors, we should insist in response that the Second Amendment requires the opposite. It empowers a free people to regulate weapons as necessary to maintain their security and to protect their freedoms from fear and violence. We can be free, but only if we regulate gunsjust as the Second Amendment tells us.

Read more here:
Don't Forget the First Half of the Second Amendment - The Atlantic

Free speech and social good are not mutually exclusive, so why treat them that way? As a society, we must protect, with every fiber of our being, free speech and expression in all of its forms, while creating and fostering an environment of social good.

In the U.S., we have done it before across all media: print and digital media, broadcast, radio, and the like.

Now, we must accomplish the same with online social media platforms.

Call it the next generation social media ecosystem a more advanced version of social media for all people, businesses, and nonprofits, with a focus on free speech and expression, as well as on civil discourse; respectful and thoughtful engagement, and honest, open and inclusive interaction. This is the societal imperative of our time.

It should be an easy task, but with the country ever so divided, it is seemingly unattainable.

We are at a crossroads in our society, one which impacts the freedoms and well-being of billions of users of social media worldwide. It impacts billions of us because of the very nature, breadth, reach, and power of social media.

Is the answer to develop a social media platform based upon fundamental principles of free speech and free expression, with appropriate content moderation policies and legal limitations, including constitutional protections, that apply to other forms of communication?

Or, should speech and expression on social media platforms, in the first instance, be limited and inhibited based on the edicts of one or the few who have no particular interest in preserving freedom of speech and expression? By those who would rather allow only those voices and content that conform to their thinking by canceling, labeling, harassing, coercing, deplatforming, banning, and stifling diverse opinions and points of view. By those who would be the sole arbiters of truth, misinformation, and disinformation. And, if they dont get you in the first instance, rest assured that the online community of bots, haters and naysayers will.

This is the current state of social media.

It seems quite clear that the former approach is optimal, while the latter approach may be causing significant division in our society. Unfortunately, the latter also puts us on a negative trajectory an unsustainable slippery slope, with a chilling effect that is undermining the freedoms that we all have. No one, regardless of political or philosophical leaning, should want this. It is contrary to the first principles of the U.S. and can be easily manipulated by the one or the few who have the ability to dictate and control speech and expression against the rest of us.

Who knows who will be in those positions tomorrow?

As noted by Stanford Law Professor, Nathaniel Persily, in a recent article Platform Power, Online Speech, and the Search for New Constitutional Categories, because entities such as Twitter are private organizations, they dont have to respect the First Amendment and the community standards of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube would be unconstitutional if they were enacted by a government.

The public debate about social media platforms has become one that pits more freedom of speech and expression vs less.

Unfortunately, more restriction and limitation makes social media more unconstitutional.

Its been a few weeks since Elon Musk, the worlds richest person, announced his planned acquisition of Twitter. During that time the sharp knives have come out in many different circles.

The gist? Twitter and other social media platforms should be less free, with speech and expression monitored, surveilled, and censored.

Those apparently quite unhappy over the transaction include: Twitter employees, government officials, social media generally, and certain nonprofit organizations.

In a recent letter signed by a number of prominent nonprofit organizations, it was noted that the takeover of Twitter will further toxify our information ecosystem and be a direct threat to public safety. The letter, which was made public and disseminated across many traditional and social media outlets, went on to state that under Musks management, Twitter risks becoming a cesspool of misinformationpolluting our information ecosystem. Specifically addressing businesses and advertisers on Twitter, the letter also warned that your brand risks association with a platform amplifying hate, extremism, misinformation and conspiracy theories.

These statements made in response to the stated intention to infuse more freedom of speech and expression into Twitter are mystifying and represent the irony of ironies. The very people and organizations who are clamoring for a clamp down on free speech and expression on social media are the very people and organizations who enjoy those freedoms every day.

Most can agree that we have a social media problem that requires leadership and invention to solve, as another industry titan has recently stated. Solutions and alternatives exist.

Any effort to transform Twitter will be an uphill battle there are enemies within and without the company who want it only their way, or the highway. Is this diversity? Is this equity? Is this inclusion? I think not. They do not appreciate the gifts of liberty and freedom that they enjoy and they do not understand that those gifts apply to all.

We should all wish Elon Musk great success in his endeavor. Can it be done? With all of his ability, wealth, and success, together with his objective of reinventing Twitter as a freer public town square, we are confident that it can. But, it can be done better.

In addition to what may be planned for Twitter, as an alternative, there is a better way a healthier and more meaningful social media platform with a higher purpose, integrating free speech and social good in a positive environment for all users.

Social media should have a greater purpose, providing an objective platform for free, inclusive, honest, open, diverse, and substantive engagement and interaction among all users people, businesses, and nonprofits globally. Such a social media platform exists.

ImpactWayv has recently launched a disruptive and transformational social [impact] media and technology platform that was designed for this very moment. ImpactWayv unites people, businesses, and nonprofits for social good in an environment that prioritizes free speech and free expression.

We have developed a social media platform that is crucial in todays society built on freedom, civil debate and engagement, and social impact. Yes, a freer, healthier, and more meaningful social media platform.

If you're interested in writing for International Policy Digest - please send us an email via submissions@intpolicydigest.org

See the article here:
Yes, Elon, There is a Better Way. - International Policy Digest

Theres a human cost when the government fails to protect freedom. Its a cost Im familiar with. For almost six years now, Ive been in court with officials from my home state of Colorado who are trying to take away my freedom of speech and force me to say something I dont believe.

Here between Memorial Day and Independence Day, Ive been thinking of those who chose to pay an even greater cost to preserve freedom. The men and women we honor at such times set aside, and in many cases sacrifice, their lives to preserve the freedoms of all people. My family has seen a lot of those sacrifices, across many decades, and Im especially grateful for that legacy. More than that, though, Ive learned from it.

My father's father, Stanley, served in the Army during World War II. He was honorably discharged when he contracted rheumatic fever in the service, and that compromised his health to the point he couldnt carry out his duties. That was not the end of his sacrifice, though. The effects of the fever eventually killed him. My father was 16 years old when Grandpa Stanley died. As a little boy, all that death meant to him was that he had lost his father.

Grandpa Stanley had two brothers. His wife, Helen, had five. All of those brothers served overseas during the war. Thats a lot of sacrifice for one combined family, but it wasnt unusual for that time and their community. They knew how precious freedom was and knew it was worth fighting for.

My mothers mother was married twice. Her second husband was Frank. He served as an Army corporal in the Korean War. He and I shared our birthday. He died the day after I turned 3 years old. Every Memorial Day, we visit his grave at Fort Logan National Cemetery in Denver.

And then there was Paul, or Grandpa Ziggy, my grandmothers first husband. He gave 25 years of his life to the service, first in the Army, then in the Air Force. He retired as a captain, after fighting in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Among other things, he served as a guard at the Nuremberg trials, just after World War II.

My grandfathers made their sacrifices, of time, of distance, and of health, because they believed in our country. They were honored to represent a government whose fundamental principles they shared. Those principles included the belief that every life has dignity and that every person has inalienable rights and should be able to live free from government coercion. Back then, those truths seemed as real to most of our elected officials as they did to men like Grandpa Stanley, Frank, and Ziggy.

I inherited my grandfathers great love for this country and its freedoms, but I also inherited a very different culture and very different state officials. My grandfathers had to fight the forces of other nations that threatened those freedoms. Today, Im having to stand against the very state officials who are supposed to be protecting our freedoms.

I am a graphic artist and website designer, the owner of my own design studio. I am also a Christian seeking to live with love and grace toward all, according to the teachings of my faith. I have a special interest in designing websites for weddings, but Colorado officials say that should I offer these websites, Ill have to design websites celebrating marriages other than between one man and one woman. That would mean expressing through my custom designs a message that conflicts with my religious beliefs.

Colorado and a federal court both acknowledge that I have exercised no bias in how I treat my clients. I work with people from all walks of life, including those who identify as LGBT. That court has also determined that graphic art and websites like mine are speech and are clearly protected by the First Amendment. Yet the court said that Colorado can nonetheless force me to create custom designs and speak messages about marriage that violate my beliefs.

And not just me. Under current law, these officials can compel other citizens to communicate messages they dont agree with, too.

Veterans like my grandfathers made their sacrifices so that the freedoms they cherished could be passed down to their children and grandchildren. But today, the very government they defended is failing in its duty to preserve free speech for all of us.

Thats why Ive chosen to take a stand one that is taking me to the Supreme Court. I want my childrens children to know what it means to be free. I am asking the justices to affirm our Constitutions commitment to ensuring our government never forces its citizens to speak against their deepest beliefs, even if we hold different opinions.

I wish to honor my grandfathers and the countless other men and women who have served this great country, standing nobly for freedom. And Im humbled and inspired by their example, as I stand for freedom of speech for all people.

Lorie Smith is the owner of 303 Creative in Colorado. She is being represented at the Supreme Court this fall by Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal).

Read more:
As my case heads to the Supreme Court, I am choosing to embrace a legacy of freedom - Washington Examiner

Over the last few weeks, I have received letters, calls, messages and other complaints about a wide variety of topics loosely related to freedom of speech.

In Curry County, the complaints were mostly about the the Chetco Community Library baord's decision not to remove books some find offensive. I have also heard from people who think I should not let Court Boice share his views, even though they are almost always done in a public meeting.

In my mind, these complaints all boil down to freedom of speech. A lot of people talk about the issue, the vast majority say they support it, but it seems few really understand what freedom of speech is.

First of all, freedom of speech only applies to the government. The government is not allowed to create rules that limit freedom of speech. Private companies, including this one, can limit what they allow their employees to say and can limit what others say on our platform. And we do that. We have rules that prohibit others from using our opinion pages to take shots at private companies and private individuals.

Other than that, we allow a lot of different views to be expressed. If you don't like whoever the current president is, you can share that view. If you don't like what your local government is doing, you can share that view, too. If you are strongly pro-life, or pro-choice, bring it on. We are not going to censor what our readers think because others might be offended.

This whole country was built on arguing - whether we were to have an elected king or a president, life-longers or a temporary-servants. One of the coolest parts of the U.S. government is the peaceful transition of power - to the extent that even if the elected official is a completely against everything you hold near and dear, the power transfers without call to arms. If you read history, all the presidents and elected officials have had people, with every voice they had from every rooftop, completely and unequivocally oppose them. Even John Wilks Booth thought he was a hero, in his mind, because there was such opposition to Lincoln. The debates on the floor of the Continental Congress were barely short of violent, but the case to unite was greater than the case to be right.

Secondly, when it comes to freedom of speech, the Consitutional protections are not there to protect those who want to say friendly, happy things. Freedom of speech protects the most vile, hateful, evil speech out there. If you remember, several years ago, a small group from Westboro Baptist Church was protesting at funerals of fallen service members. The signs the church members held said the most spiteful, hateful things imaginable. Yet, every attempt to quiet them was overturned because free speech equals vile speech.

That doesn't mean there aren't repercussions for speech. While the government can't limit speech, many private businesses have rightly held employees to account for things they have said, written and shared. And that is perfectly legal.

That isn't always popular, but I support speech with little restraint, even if that speech offends me and targets me. Putting limits on speech is a slippery slope, that once began can spiral out of control quickly. Do we as a country really want people being arrested because they have an opinion outside of the norm? If you say yes, who gets to decide what opinion is allowed?

Under a President Joe Biden, what is allowed might look very different than what is allowed under a President Donald Trump. What if the decided opinion completely opposes your own and you are never allowed to air different thought?

We appreciate our readers, and we value their input. We don't want to lose a single one. But we understand that embracing free speech will sometimes mean others get offended. We will not censure or remove writers who say offensive things within our limits.

My hope is if you are offended, rather than getting angry, sit down and send me a letter with your own views. Use this space to share your thoughts. Who knows, maybe you can change some minds.

Read more from the original source:
Column: Freedom of speech trumps the right to not be offended - Curry Coastal Pilot