■ Reason: “The Supreme Court Declines To Determine if You Have a First Amendment Right To Film the Police.”
■ New York University’s First Amendment Watch offers a guide to teaching the rights and limitations of recording audio and video of police.
‘Priscilla Villarreal was put in jail for asking a police officer a question.’ A federal appeals court has revived a lawsuit filed by a journalist who operates entirely on Facebook—a woman challenging her 2017 arrest under a law a judge later found unconstitutional.
■ She’s working with Starz on a TV series.
■ A panel of Chicago-area journalists and educators convenes next Wednesday, Nov. 17, for a free online forum exploring “the threat to local journalism—and democracy.”
‘I’m going to kill you.’ That was just one of the threatening messages sent from a man in jail to his sister—a man whose First Amendment challenge to his cyberstalking conviction has been rejected by a Washington appeals court.
■ A Wisconsin appeals court has reversed the conviction of a man whose social media posts—of his movie ticket, but also of bullets and a loaded magazine—prompted his arrest at the theater on disorderly conduct charges.
‘Sen. Warren … betrayed our fundamental right to free speech.’ A lawsuit filed against Elizabeth Warren by the authors and publisher of a book critical of the U.S. response to the pandemic accuses her of violating the First Amendment when she encouraged Amazon to stop peddling their work.
■ The FDA sent one of the authors a warning letter in February, directing him to “cease the sale of … unapproved and unauthorized products for the mitigation, prevention, treatment, diagnosis, or cure of COVID-19.”
■ An employment lawyer weighs the question of whether vaccination opposition merits First Amendment protection.
On campus …
‘Educational gag orders.’ A report from the human rights group PEN America says bans on the teaching of critical race theory threaten First Amendment rights.
■ An Oregon teachers union is going to court against school board limits on images and signs employees can display on campus—a policy that began as a ban on displays of support for Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ Pride.
■ Reversing a decision condemned by free-speech experts, the University of Florida now says it’ll let three professors testify in a suit challenging a new law that critics say limits voting rights.
■ The New Republic says a Texas political spat has dragged the Supreme Court into a First Amendment dilemma: “When can school boards … discipline their own members?”
■ The conservative group Moms for Liberty is suing a Florida school board over a public-participation policy that it says limits the presentation of opposing viewpoints.