‘Censorship’ or ‘free speech’? A federal judge has blocked a Texas state law forbidding “censorship” on social media platforms, ruling that those companies “have a First Amendment right to moderate content.”
■ It’s a setback for Texas lawmakers who complained that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube censor right-wing views …
■ … and a victory for the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which contends the law “would make the internet a more dangerous place by tying the hands of companies protecting users from abuse, scams or extremist propaganda.”
■ The trade group NetChoice warns that the law would unleash “a tidal wave of offensive content and hate speech crashing onto users, creators and advertisers.”
■ Reason editor Jacob Sullom: “The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the government violates the First Amendment when it compels private organizations to publish, endorse, or promote speakers or messages they find objectionable. That is exactly what Texas is trying to do.”
■ Read the judge’s decision here.
■ Above the Law: “Republicans Think Companies Can Say What They Like, As Long As They Like It.”
Are death threats protected? As threatening messages to public officials surge, First Amendment advocates are conflicted.
■ An organization designated “a hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center wants the Supreme Court to let it sue the center.
■ A civil rights attorney contends laws to hold demonstrators criminally and civilly responsible for property damage during protests are in fact aimed at depriving Black people of their First Amendment right.
■ The executive director of Tennessee Coalition for Open Government: “Parents would do well to balance their shouting with listening, and school boards to separate the disagreeable comments and criticism from the type of behavior that truly threatens others.”
On campus …
What’s ‘private,’ what’s not? A federal court will consider whether a California high school violated students’ First Amendment rights by suspending them for liking and commenting on a fellow student’s racist Instagram account.
■ Pennsylvania’s high court has found that a school district violated the First Amendment in expelling a student for cell phone messages that it described as a “kind of sophomoric and misguided form of humor.”
■ A couple of special-education aides have lost their lawsuit against media outlets that published secret recordings of child abuse in their classrooms.
■ University of Florida professors are asking a federal judge to block a policy that was aimed at keeping them from testifying as expert witnesses in a challenge to a new state elections law.
■ A Boise State University professor who told the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando that “Young men must … inspire young women to be secure with feminine goals of homemaking and having children” and that “every effort must be made not to recruit women into engineering, but rather to recruit and demand more of men who become engineers” is under fire.
■ The National Coalition Against Censorship is asking a Florida school board to reverse a decision to remove the book Gender Queer from library shelves.
■ A Massachusetts teacher is suing over her dismissal for posting TikTok videos critical of critical race theory.
■ A former ACLU president and the policy director for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education are calling on the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights to protect student rights to free speech and due process when addressing accusations of sexual misconduct.
Not-so-free speech. A divided Ohio Supreme Court has suspended a lawyer for criticizing it.
■ TechDirt commentary: “Protecting Judges Is Important, But They Don’t Get To Throw Out The First Amendment For Themselves.”
The Second first, the First second? A Case Western Reserve University law professor flags a pending Supreme Court case that could give conservative justices a chance to elevate “the status of the Second Amendment above First Amendment protections for the first time ever."
■ Fifty years after the landmark Pentagon Papers case, The Daily Beast publishes an excerpt from a new book, The First Amendment Lives On, with a behind-the-scenes account of how The New York Times bet it all.
If your company doesn’t have a social-media policy … An employment lawyer says now’s the time to plan for occasions when an employee’s post on a hot topic goes viral.
■ A federal appeals court says a Missouri sheriff can fire deputies who backed his political opponent.
■ Another federal appeals court has reinstated two Seattle cops’ defamation claims against a councilwoman who criticized them without naming them.
