‘We are deeply troubled.’ The Washington Post is demanding the Justice Department explain why it secretly seized the phone records of three Post reporters who covered the federal investigation into ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
■ A member of Congress calls the seizure “authoritarian-style intimidation” and says someone’s head should roll.
■ The Post’s new executive editor is the first woman to hold that job.
■ A former Michigan lawmaker and his lawyer have agreed to pay The Detroit News $20,000 to settle an unsuccessful—and in the News’ publisher’s word, “frivolous”—lawsuit they brought against the paper.
■ A former Michigan lawmaker and his lawyer have agreed to pay The Detroit News $20,000 to settle an unsuccessful—and in the News’ publisher’s word, “frivolous”—lawsuit they brought against the paper.
‘The First Amendment can’t protect Trump on Facebook or Twitter.’ CNET’s Marguerite Reardon explains: “Companies can and do have their own standards and policies that users must follow. And they can remove users who violate those standards.”
■ Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe: “Social media platforms like Facebook … have thrived on an opaque business model that weaponizes a fantasy version of the First Amendment.”
■ George Washington University law prof Jonathan Turley: Democrats’ “current mantra defending Facebook’s corporate speech rights seems strikingly out of sync with years … demanding the curtailment of such rights.”
Cops and the First. Campaigns to rid law enforcement organizations of racists and extremists are running up against officers’ free-speech rights.
■ A Nevada police officer is suing his city for $1 million, complaining a four-day suspension for “vile and threatening” tweets violated his First Amendment rights.
‘It shouldn’t take a lawsuit.’ But the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas—which filed one—welcomes Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s decision to unblock nine users who’d been critical of him on Twitter …
■ … but adds: “It remains to be seen, however, whether the attorney general will unblock other Texans whose speech he’s suppressed.”
First Amendment ‘burdens and chills.’ The ACLU’s going after Florida over a new law that would limit contributions to political committees backing ballot initiatives …
■ … to $3,000 per individual.
With limits. Two years after the Trump administration refused to join an international campaign against violent online extremism, the Biden administration is in—but only insofar as doing so wouldn’t compromise “the freedoms of speech and association protected by the First Amendment.”
■ A criminal lawyer explains: “Some people mistakenly think that the First Amendment … protects whatever they say in public. However, this is not the case.”
■ Contending the First Amendment doesn’t force the state to issue license plates that subject “every child in your neighborhood to a message the government wouldn’t allow them to see in a movie theater,” Maine’s secretary of state is rethinking a decision that let anything go on vanity plates.
■ News Literacy Project founder Alan Miller says the First Amendment must be taught in schools “as the bedrock of the country’s commitment to individual rights and responsibilities and a core part of civics education.”
‘Ultimately not just about high schools.’ Harvard Law prof Jeannie Suk Gersen reviews what’s on the line for student free speech as Supreme Court justices ponder the matter of a high school student dumped from the cheer squad after Snapchatting a profane comment on the program: “The justices … know the problem needs untangling, on and off campus, and soon.”
■ Belmont University law professor David L. Hudson Jr.: “Government officials … violate the First Amendment when they attempt to punish student athletes for their peaceful, symbolic expression.”
■ A Washington Post editorial takes issue with a Rutgers Law School call for a ban on the use of hateful language—even when a faculty member or law student is quoting a published court decision that itself quotes an objectionable word.
