Not the First Amendment. A guy who says his First Amendment rights were violated when Spirit Airlines forced him to take off an electronic mask bearing a euphemistic slur aimed at President Biden …
■ Netflix’s First Amendment defense against a chess master who says its Queen’s Gambit series defamed her failed to pass muster with a federal judge in California.
Yes, the First Amendment. An Ohio appeals court says the Constitution protected a man who invoked his free-speech rights as he called a police officer a “dummy,” “piece of s---” and an “a--hole.”
■ People on New York State’s sex offender registry now can access the internet and social media platforms with few restrictions.
‘This is going to be a messy place.’ The president of a nonpartisan think tank devoted to First Amendment issues sees a rough time ahead for a Florida bill that would compel private sports teams to play the national anthem at every game.
■ The bill’s sponsor says he doesn’t know of any team not playing it now, but “this is just to make sure.”
Protesters’ payday. A federal judge has ordered the parties who sued over anti-Israel demonstrations outside a Michigan synagogue to give the protesters $159,000—to cover their legal defense of what the courts found to be free speech.
■ A federal judge cites the First Amendment in blocking a Texas law forbidding government entities from doing business with contractors that participated in boycott, divestment or sanctions activity against Israel.
■ A Tampa-area transit authority’s ban on religious ads runs afoul of the First Amendment, according to a federal court in Florida.
■ The former executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union—a man who famously defended Nazis’ right to protest in a largely Jewish Chicago suburb—accuses the ACLU of cherry-picking free-speech cases that don't offend or threaten other civil liberties.
■ The ACLU is going to court on behalf of a Vermont woman cited by police for disturbing the peace after she criticized a local business owner on Facebook for racism.
Whoops. A First Amendment lawsuit filed against the University of Illinois at Chicago accuses the university of subjecting a law professor to “sensitivity training” that used the same slur he was punished for including in an exam question.
■ The professor tells Chicago columnist Eric Zorn (middle of his Picayune Sentinel email): “If I had any doubts about suing the feckless administrators who have subjected me to this outrageous abuse, those doubts are completely dispelled by this readings list that lays their hypocritical abuse completely bare.”
■ Indiana universities have hesitated to back a bill nominally about guaranteeing free speech on campus—warning that it could encourage litigation and complicate First Amendment case law.
■ Georgia, too.
‘A victory for free speech.’ MTSU First Amendment scholar John R. Vile hails a federal judge’s order that the University of Florida stop forbidding professors from providing expert testimony in lawsuits against the state.
■ A Sacramento Bee columnist asks, “Was California high school right to punish students using Nazi symbols? It’s complicated.”
‘No work is safe.’ The executive director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund sounds an alarm about a Tennessee school board’s unanimous vote to remove the celebrated Holocaust-themed graphic novel Maus from its eighth-grade curriculum.
■ Pop-culture critic Gregory Paul Silber’s open letter to the board: “Nazism … started with bigotry, and scapegoating, and suppression of free speech. You’d know that if you read more books about the subject. Maus would be a great place to start.”
■ Maus sales have skyrocketed.
‘Breyer may have saved his best for last.’ Belmont University College of Law Professor David L. Hudson Jr. says departing Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer played a key role in a student-speech victory for the ages—including “a line that student-speech advocates will cite for decades: ‘America’s public schools are the nurseries of democracy.’”
■ Here’s a look at Breyer’s First Amendment record.
‘It’s about the peaceful transfer of power.’ A Washington lawmaker defends a bill that would forbid elected officials or candidates from knowingly lying about election outcomes if those claims trigger violence.
■ Gov. Jay Inslee says the bill’s been refined so as not to infringe on the First Amendment.
■ Yale University law professor Stephen Carter, warning that “everybody seems to be focused on Jan. 6, 2021—and perhaps overreacting to an isolated event,” asks whether Americans even know what free speech is.
‘Get ready for Sarah Palin v. The New York Times Company.’ Former USA Today editorial page editor Bill Sternberg says the outcome of the case “could have ironic consequences” for news organizations’ First Amendment protections.
■ First, she has to get past her COVID-19 infection.
