Reporters’ ‘toughest protections.’ California has a new law forbidding police from “intentionally assaulting, interfering with, or obstructing” journalists covering civil protests.
■ The California Police Chiefs Association warns that the new law threatens to “unduly penalize officers for carrying out their critical mission of protecting the public.”
■ A separate new California law outlaws harassment of people entering vaccination clinics …
■ … although First Amendment experts question its constitutionality.
On campus …
‘Telling elected officials they’re wrong is democracy, not intimidation.’ Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is challenging Attorney General Merrick Garland’s direction to the FBI and U.S. attorneys to take action against pandemic-era harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against public school board members, teachers and workers.
■ The National School Boards Association asked the administration to take action.
■ Among the First Amendment cases to watch in this Supreme Court term: Whether a school-choice program can block tuition assistance to parents whose kids attend religious schools.
■ An American Bar Association fellow asks (and answers) the question: Are government bans on the teaching of critical race theory unconstitutional?
■ Free Speech Handbook, a new nonfiction graphic novel, aims at helping teens and their teachers understand the First Amendment’s protections.
■ Read an excerpt here.
‘Municipal government can’t play music critic.’ Free Speech Center Director Ken Paulson says a South Carolina town’s new law requiring businesses to turn down music that includes “obscene, profane or vulgar language” is “clearly unconstitutional.”
■ The original request for the ordinance warned that such music “is inconsistent with the City’s identity as a family friendly and family oriented location.”
■ The American Civil Liberties Union’s on the case.
Is Netflix’s movie recommendation system ‘free speech’? As it defends itself in a lawsuit filed by a family blaming the high school drama 13 Reasons Why for a teenager’s death, the company’s answer is yes.
■ A federal judge has dismissed satanists’ four-year-long free-speech fight to erect a monument in a Minnesota town’s veterans memorial park.
‘Qualified immunity robbed me of my shot at justice.’ A retired Arizona state forensic scientist warns that “if you work for the government, your superiors can’t be held financially responsible for ordering you to change your testimony and retaliating against you when you refuse.”
■ Law professor David L. Hudson Jr. analyzes the federal appeals court ruling in the case.
