'Crazy' scene / Holy moly / Look it up

‘Crazy’ scene. Federal appeals court judges will decide if the arrest of Laredo’s “big crazy lady,” the freelance journalist who reported on local issues using Facebook Live, was a violation of her First Amendment rights.

■ The Washington state science teacher who wore a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat to school functions was utilizing protected speech under the First Amendment, the 9^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled. 

■ On the two-year anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Meta announced that it was considering allowing Donald Trump to return to Facebook.
■ Journalist Gil Duran was banned from Elon Musk’s Twitter, and now he thinks you should get banned too.
■ A former Tennessee police officer had no First Amendment right to make social media posts critical of the local sheriff, a federal appeals court ruled.

 
Holy moly. In its annual religious-freedom index, assessing what Americans know and believe about the First Amendment, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty reported that less than half were aware freedom of religion was protected.
■ Tennessee’s governor used a controversial exemption to deny more than 60 open-record requests from journalists.
■ Another reporter handcuffed while doing his job, this time in Phoenix, illustrates potential hostility from law enforcement toward journalists, according to press freedom advocates.
■ Families of newspaper employees killed in the deadly 2018 shooting in Maryland have dropped a negligence lawsuit and settled their case.
 
Slight as a feather. A judge ruled that an Arizona high school’s decision to deny a student’s request to wear an eagle feather in her graduation cap violated her religious-liberty and free-speech rights.
■ A California school district’s disciplinary actions against two high school students over racist imagery and offensive comments in an off-campus Instagram account were upheld by an appeals court panel.

■ A new Florida law prohibiting lobbyists from holding public office has prompted a First Amendment challenge from five elected officials.

■ Law schools in 2022 served as the backdrop for the dramatic debates over cancel culture and the limits of free speech on many U.S. campuses.

 
Under fire. Free Speech was under fire in 2022, asserted FIRE vice president, and censorship is the kindling.
■ U.S. Supreme Court justices will debate the constitutionality of Florida and Texas social media laws and whether they do harm to free speech.
■ Is encouraging unauthorized immigration free speech or a potential felony? Justices are set to decide.
■ An opinion: When setting out to regulate social media companies, think of pipelines, not utilities.
 
Look it up. As misconceptions about free speech continue to run wild, another senator worked to justify censorship by making erroneous statements about First Amendment protections.
■ In a Time magazine editorial, a retired U.S. admiral writes that America is lost in a dark forest but shows there is a path out using the freedoms found in the Constitution.
■ Author and professor Lynn Greenky contends that there is no First Amendment right to violence.