Tag: 1st amendment

Panel rules against church leaders who gave bologna sandwiches to homeless

The city of St. Louis did not violate the First Amendment rights of a Christian pastor and his assistant by threatening to prosecute them for handing out bologna sandwiches to the homeless, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

Pastor Raymond Redlich, vice president of the New Life Christian Evangelical Center, and his assistant, Christopher Ohnimus, were distributing bologna sandwiches and bottles of water to the homeless in October 2018 when they were cited by a police officer for violating a city ordinance regulating the distribution by temporary establishments of potentially hazardous food, such as meat, poultry, eggs or fish.

Although the city opted not to prosecute Redlich and Ohnimus for violating the ordinance, they nonetheless sued the city in federal court saying the ordinance violates their rights of free expression and religious exercise under the First Amendment.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Nanette A. Baker in St. Louis granted the city’s motion to dismiss the complaint on summary judgment last year, finding Redlich and Ohnimus did not prove that their fundamental right to association was at issue.

The two men appealed that ruling to the St. Louis-based Eighth Circuit, arguing at a hearing in June that the enforcement of the ordinance against them interferes with their ability to communicate their message about God’s love and concern for those in need.

In Wednesday’s ruling, a three-judge panel ruled government regulation of “inherently expressive” conduct – such as distributing sandwiches to the homeless – does not necessarily violate the First Amendment if the regulation furthers “an important or substantial government interest” unrelated to the suppression of free expression.

Keep reading

Governor Newsom hopes new social media law will help censorship of “hate speech” and “disinformation”

A bill has been signed into law in California, designed to obligate social media companies to submit enforcement reports twice a year to the state attorney general, and publicly post policies on “hate speech,” disinformation, harassment, and extremism.

After signing the law – AB 587 – Governor Gavin Newsom announced that this is a unique social media “transparency and accountability measure” that is meant to protect Californians from hate and discrimination.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

The reports will require tech companies to explain how and if they define and remove content from a number of categories, such as hate speech or racism, extremism or radicalization, disinformation or misinformation, harassment, and foreign political interference.

The reports are also expected to go into automated moderation, what happens to flagged content, and how many times it has been viewed.

Newsom seems to believe that social media is being weaponized to spread hate, disinformation, harassment, and lies that threaten communities, and vowed that California will not “stand by” as this is happening.

Keep reading

Alex Jones and the Right to Offend

On Dec. 14, 2012, a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut resulted in the deaths of 20 children and six staffers.  Alex Jones, a controversial far-right talk show host, called the Sandy Hook massacre a U.S. government hoax, staged using crisis actors, to serve as a pretext for gun control.  Parents of one of the slain children filed a defamation suit against Jones, claiming that followers of Jones had harassed them and sent them death threats for years in the false belief that they were lying about their son’s death.

Jones’s defense was his right to free speech and that he was not responsible for the harassment.  He lost.  The jury awarded the parents $45.2 million in punitive damages on top of $4.1 million in compensatory damages — another example of outrageous damage verdicts that plague the legal system.

Freedom of speech is coming under attack from all directions.  The primary assault is based on the existence of a new “right”: the right not to be offended.  It is claimed by many on the left that the right not to be offended is more important than the right to free expression.

Our colleges and universities have fallen victim to this new “right.”  The feelings of students often constitute sufficient justification for campus censorship.  If a conservative speaker offends some of the students, that speaker can be denied a platform.  “The belief that free speech rights don’t include the right to speak offensively is now firmly entrenched on campuses and enforced by repressive speech or harassment codes,” wrote attorney Wendy Kaminer in The Atlantic.

The problem is spreading to the mainstream.  In the 2010 case of Nurre v. Whitehead, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld lower court rulings that school authorities can deny students’ rights to free speech just to keep other students from being offended.  The courts are “allowing schools the discretion to let an offended minority control a cowed majority,” constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead wrote in the Huffington Post.  “There is no way to completely avoid giving offense,” he said.  “At some time or other, someone is going to take offense at something someone else says or does.  It’s inevitable.  Such politically correct thinking has resulted in a host of inane actions, from the Easter Bunny being renamed ‘Peter Rabbit’ to Christmas Concerts being dubbed ‘Winter’ Concerts.”

In a democratic republic, there can be no right not to be offended.  If anyone can prohibit another person’s speech because it’s offensive, there is no limit to the restrictions that can be placed on free expression.  As the late author Christopher Hitchens said, “[f]reedom of speech must include the license to offend.”

Keep reading

He Heckled a District Attorney on TV. Now He Faces 10 Years Behind Bars.

On Wednesday morning, Joao DePina will walk into a Massachusetts courthouse to learn whether he could face the possibility of spending a decade behind bars.

His alleged crime? Heckling a district attorney from afar during a live press conference.

DePina repeatedly interrupted then-Suffolk County D.A. Rachael Rollins during a November press conference to criticize Rollins’ professional and personal behavior. His shouts were picked up on local news broadcasts, and Rollins paused on several occasions to ask DePina to stop interrupting her attempt to give an update on two cops who had been shot earlier that day. DePina also livestreamed his tirade, during which he criticized Rollins’ nomination to be a U.S. attorney (she was confirmed to the post in December, becoming the first black woman to be U.S. attorney for Massachusetts).

While DePina’s behavior during the press conference was clearly uncivil and rude, prosecutors say it’s also criminal. DePina was charged in November with one count of witness intimidation in connection to his antics at Rollins’ press conference. He could face between 2.5 and 10 years in prison if convicted.

“This is the most grossly unconstitutional thing I have seen in my entire career,” Marc Randazza, a free speech attorney who is representing DePina, tells Reason. “If the First Amendment means anything, Joao walks free.”

Keep reading

State Passes Bill That Could Jail People for 30 Days for Filming the Police

Frequent readers of the Free Thought Project know that filming the cops is not a crime. Despite this being a widely known provision — held up with multiple court precedents — cops continue to violate the First Amendment protected right of citizens to film the police. Last month, the Arizona House Appropriations Committee approved a bill that would criminalize filming cops on the job, dealing a massive blow to First Amendment rights. And this month, the Senate passed it.

It now moves to Governor Doug Ducey’s desk for signature, where it will become law.

Republican Representative John Kavanaugh, who is a former police officer, is the lead sponsor of the legislation. According to the bill, it is illegal “for a person to knowingly make a video recording of law enforcement activity, including the handling of an emotionally disturbed person, if the person does not have the permission of the law enforcement officer” and is within 8 feet of the cop.

Kavanaugh originally stipulated a 15 foot radius, however it was later amended after multiple objections. But for many, this is still too far.

As Valera Voce, points out, the law also classifies unlawful video recording of law enforcement activity as a petty offense, unless a person fails to comply with a verbal warning of a violation or has been previously convicted of a violation in which case an offense is a class 3 misdemeanor. A class 3 misdemeanor comes with a minimum of 30 days in jail. Finally, the bill explicitly declares that it “does not establish a right, or authorize any person, to make a video recording of a law enforcement officer.”

“It’s crazy thinking about that for a second. The video that led to the criminal conviction of the police officer who killed George Floyd would itself be a criminal act. And that makes no sense whatsoever,” attorney Dan Barr told FOX 10.

“We believe that this bill stacks the deck against the public check on officer misconduct,” Timothy Sparling, a lawyer and legislative advocate for Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice, said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week. Sparling argued that the bill leaves too much up to the discretion of the officers. “When officers have such wide discretion to determine, say, what is lawful conduct or what is unlawful conduct on the ground and that is not properly defined … it’s ultimately up to whatever the officer wants it to be,” Sparling said.

Keep reading

Rabid Democrats Call on Justice Thomas to Recuse Himself From Jan. 6 Cases Because His Wife Exercised Her First Amendment Rights on 2020 Election

Rabid Democrats are now calling on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from any cases related to January 6 because his wife Virginia “Ginni” Thomas exercised her First Amendment rights to friends in private texts regarding the 2020 election.

Recall, the January 6 Committee on Thursday leaked Ginni Thomas’ text exchanges with Mark Meadows to the Washington Post as her husband was hospitalized with an infection.

The text messages exchanged between Ginni Thomas and Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows are uneventful.

The media however is having a feeding frenzy over Ginni Thomas’ benign text messages that are completely covered by the First Amendment.

Many Democrat lawmakers are now calling on Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from January 6 cases because his wife sent text messages to Mark Meadows encouraging him to fight for Trump and expose the election fraud.

Keep reading

Elizabeth Warren may face consequences for practicing censorship

Elizabeth Warren, a mediocre law professor who parlayed a fake Native American identity into a gig at Harvard and a seat in the United States Senate, thought that, once in government, she’d try her hand at censorship. When Joseph Mercola and Ronnie Cummins wrote a book about COVID with which Warren disagreed, she used her position as a Senator to try to get Amazon to censor the book. Although Chelsea Green Publishing filed suit in November, people are finally becoming aware of the suit.

I’m always amazed when someone who ought to know the law doesn’t—or feels entitled to ignore it. As a lawyer and a law professor, one would expect Warren to be familiar with the First Amendment. That’s the one that says that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech.” As government has grown, that principle has been extended to the federal government as a whole, whether it’s an executive agency, Congress, or a politician acting under the color of his or her role in the government. (And of course, to state governments via the Fourteenth Amendment.)

Nevertheless, on September 7, 2021, writing in her capacity as a United States Senator, on official Senate letterhead, Warren sent a very long letter to Andy Jassy, Amazon’s CEO, expressing her concern that Amazon itself was publishing misinformation by allowing Mercola’s and Cummins’s book, The Truth About COVID-19: Exposing the Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports, and the New Normal, to appear on its bestseller list and daring to give it a favorable ranking. After waffling on for pages several pages, and mendaciously claiming the book was “potentially unlawful,” Warren “asked” Amazon to modify the algorithms to destroy the book’s ranking.

Chelsea Green responded in November by suing Warren for violating the First Amendment, although news of that filing only reached the media recently. The lawsuit relies upon Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58 (1962). Bantam Books involved a newly-created Rhode Island Commission which had the task of educating the public about any written material that could harm the morality of or otherwise corrupt Rhode Island’s young people.

Keep reading