November 28, 2023 9:40 am
Prosecutors Use Lyrics, Diary Entries as Evidence in Georgia RICO Cases
In separate criminal racketeering cases, prosecutors are using rap lyrics and the personal diary of a protester shot and killed by police as evidence.
Tags: First Amendment, free speech, REASON
November 28, 2023 8:38 am
“Protecting People from Their Own Religious Communities: Jane Doe in Church and State,”
a new article of mine, is now available at the Journal of Law & Religion.
Tags: free speech, REASON
November 28, 2023 6:55 am
USC Censors Jewish Professor for Saying Hamas ‘Should Be Killed’
The university is violating John Strauss’s free speech rights.
Tags: First Amendment, free speech, Israel, REASON
November 28, 2023 5:01 am
Court Denies Plaintiff Pseudonymity in #TheyLied Libel Suit Stemming from Alleged Stealthing by 17-Year-Old
From a decision last week by Judge Robert Pitman in DL v. JS (W.D. Tex.): Plaintiff dated ES from September 2021 to January 2022 when they were both in high school. On December 18, 2021, Plaintiff and ES were having intercourse when Plaintiff removed his condom without ES’s knowledge. ES, Defendant, and ES’s mother filed…
Tags: free speech, REASON
November 28, 2023 4:05 am
Vague Title IX Rules At UC Davis Turn Free Speech Into Sexual ‘Harassment’
UC Davis’ Title IX office claims to uphold free speech while simultaneously insisting if students don’t use transgender pronouns, they can be disciplined for harassment.
Tags: FEDERALIST, free speech, LGBT, Sexual Harassment
November 27, 2023 8:55 am
USC Professor Put on Remote Teaching After Saying Hamas Should Be Killed
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) (Jessie Appleby) wrote about this last week (as did the Academic Freedom Alliance): The University of Southern California has barred economics professor John Strauss from teaching on campus for the rest of the semester in response to anti-Hamas remarks he made to pro-Palestinian protesters last week. Strauss…
Tags: free speech, REASON
November 27, 2023 8:45 am
Journal of Free Speech Law: “‘Dangerous to the Liberties of a Free People’: Secret Societies and the Right to Assemble,” by Nathan Ristuccia
This just-published article is here; the Abstract: Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries often feared that secret assembly threatened republican government. Oath-bound secret societies were allegedly elitist cabals that would establish an imperium in imperio oppressive to ordinary citizens. Yet despite this hostility, many early Americans also insisted that freedom of assembly included the right…
Tags: free speech, REASON
November 27, 2023 7:23 am
Race-Based Refusal to Consider Questions at Employer Town Hall / Removal of Posts on Internal Forum May Be Illegal Discrimination
From Tyree B. v. Raimondo, decided by the EEOC on Oct. 18 but just posted to Westlaw last week: The Agency framed Complainant’s claims [of, among other things, race discrimination based on his being white] as follows: Agency officials have ignored, dismissed, disregarded, suppressed, mischaracterized, and mislabeled Complainant’s communications and concerns raised about Diversity, Equity…
Tags: free speech, REASON
November 27, 2023 6:08 am
Arkansas AG’s Opinion on Government Entities’ Moderation of their Social Media Comments
From Arkansas AG opinion 2023-034, issued two weeks ago: [T]he content-moderation policies for the Arkansas Department of Transportation’s “official social media account(s) (such as Twitter, IDRIVE, Arkansas Instagram, Facebook, etc.)” …, which describe the Department’s social-media accounts as “limited public forums,” authorize the Department to “remove or reject” “user generated posts … when the content:…
Tags: free speech, REASON
November 27, 2023 5:01 am
Want Freedom to Criticize China, Palestine, Mexico, etc.? Protect Criticism of Israel
After the Oct. 7 murders, the first attempts to punish speakers focused on those who defended Hamas’s murders. But, unsurprisingly, things have turned to trying to suppress criticism of Israel more broadly, including criticism of Israel’s attacks on Gaza. (The slippery slope is a real phenomenon, in a culture where people reason by precedent and…
Tags: free speech, Israel, REASON
November 27, 2023 3:58 am
Constitution Scholar: Lawfare Punishing Me For Advising Trump Will Cost Me $3 Million
John Eastman has been harassed unceasingly since assisting Trump in 2020 constitutional litigation.
Tags: constitution, Elections, FBI, FEDERALIST, free speech, law
November 24, 2023 9:32 am
Don’t Ask a Judge to Rule for You and Then Send Him a Death Threat
“Cut your backwards ass bullshit or you will start losing family members and the President of the United States will wind up dead!”
Tags: free speech, REASON
November 22, 2023 11:14 am
Challenge to NYU Law Review’s Race and Sex Preferences May Proceed Pseudonymously, at Least for Now
[UPDATE: Added a brief discussion of pseudonymity and class actions.]
Tags: free speech, REASON
November 22, 2023 10:05 am
He Wants To Label Food ‘Low FODMAP.’ The Government Won’t Let Him.
Lots of Americans have an intolerance to FODMAPs—the sugars prevalent in garlic, onion, and many other foods.
Tags: Agriculture, censorship, FDA, food, Free Markets, free speech, Government, money, REASON