Tag: freedom of expression

Student at Oklahoma State University Reprimanded For Wearing TPUSA Hat

According to Campus Reform, “A student says he was reprimanded by a staff member after paying tribute to Charlie Kirk at an Oklahoma State University Student Government Association meeting.”

The student making the allegations is OSU junior John Wilson.

Wilson, the president of the OSU debate society, spoke at the meeting on Sept.10th after Kirk’s murder and delivered a speech honoring Charlie.  He is also a member of the student government association.

In his memorial speech, Wilson said Charlie was a father, a husband, a devout Christian, and a shining light for so many,” and that his assassination was “horrendous and vile, just as political violence of any kind is.”

Wilson, like Charlie, called for peaceful dialogue.

The coordinator of the SGA program was not happy about this despite the peaceful words.

According to a recording obtained by the Oklahoma Council of Public, the coordinator confronted Wilson.

She stated, “As a person who doesn’t look like you and has not had the same lived experience as you, I have family who don’t look like you who are triggered — and I will be very candid with you — who are triggered by those hats and by that side.”

In addition, she told Wilson he should, “ask others who don’t look like you and have open conversations with anyone that has a different lived experience.”

Wilson rightfully responded, “Idea and conversation is what built this country, and it’s what should maintain it. And that’s what the hat was there for.”

Wilson also said that her “identity-related arguments were moot because he has Native American ancestry.”

Wilson further claimed that the SGA coordinator stated, “It cannot just be, ‘yes, but’ – cannot be every response that you give me. Otherwise, this year is going to be difficult for you.”

These allegations are extremely serious. A patriotic college student should not be forced to defend his political beliefs or clothes, nor should he be forced to defend his memorializing of Charlie Kirk.

We will see if the school disciplines the coordinator or apologizes to Wilson.

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Hood County Sheriff Arrests Man for Social Media Posts

The Hood County Sheriff’s Office arrested Kolton Krottinger, a Navy veteran and local Granbury activist, for a social media post.

According to a criminal complaint, Krottinger had posted on social media under the guise of someone else. Residents have suggested that the October 2 post—showing another local activist appearing to support then-Granbury school board candidate Monica Brown—is the one in question.

Hood County Constable John Shirley said he thought the post was a joke, and that the individual the post impersonated would never have supported Brown “because she very openly, loudly, and publicly hates her.”

Krottinger was charged on November 5 with “online impersonation” in the third degree. His lawyer, Rob Christian, said he had been arrested for “posting a meme.” In his 25 years as a district attorney and criminal defense attorney, Christian told the Dallas Express he had “never seen anyone get arrested for engaging in political speech.”

Nate Criswell, former Hood County GOP chair, believes the arrest is politically motivated. “This charge is based on a satirical post where he humorously photoshopped a political rival’s image, making it appear as though she supported Monica Brown for school board,” he wrote in a petition he started for law enforcement to drop the charges. “Importantly, no actual account was created, making the charge baseless and unfair. Additionally, other elements of the statute were not met.”

Constable Shirley, who serves criminal and civil papers in the county’s 2nd precinct, agreed that something about the arrest seems wrong. “This kind of stuff really smells of authoritarianism.”

Texas Scorecard obtained a copy of the conditions of Krottinger’s $10,000 bond. He cannot access social media, nor can he have any contact with the other activist. Criswell said social media is where Kolton makes his livelihood and called the social media ban “egregious.”

Brandon Hall, who represents Granbury and others in District 11 on the State Board of Education, expressed alarm.

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‘All they did was wear wristbands!’ Judges question school district’s ban on ‘XX’ at girls’ games

Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island risk becoming hotbeds of censorship by school districts if the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals construes perceived offense as harassment. School districts risk massive liability for harassment if it does not.

Lawyers for censored parents and New Hampshire’s Bow School District laid out alternate visions of legal calamity to a three-judge panel of the Boston-based court at a hearing Wednesday on the constitutionality of Bow banning “XX” wristbands, a silent form of advocacy for female-only sports, from school athletic events.

Parents and a grandparent sued the district more than a year ago, after it threatened to arrest them at a Sept. 17, 2024, girls’ soccer game featuring a male player for not removing their wristbands, which refer to the female chromosome pair, and issued no-trespass orders. Bow set up a “protest zone” for critics of male inclusion soon after the suit was filed. 

Their passive protest shortly followed a federal judge blocking The Free State’s law that “prohibits biological males from participating in female athletics,” an injunction that applied only to the male athletes who sued, not every male who identifies as a girl.

A district judge nominated by President George H.W. Bush rejected a preliminary injunction against Bow this spring, claiming the wristbands send a “demeaning and harassing” message to males who identify as girls and participate in girls’ sports.

Wednesday’s oral argument suggested the panel might buck the 1st Circuit’s reputation as a rubber stamp for schools on gender identity, frequently leaving Bow School District lawyer Jonathan Shirley seeming to stumble for answers that would satisfy their questions.

Another panel upheld a school district’s ban on a student wearing an “Only Two Genders” shirt because it “assertedly demeans characteristics of personal identity” even if done “passively, silently, and without mentioning any specific students.” Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas blasted their colleagues for not accepting that case.

One of Wednesday’s panel members, Judge Julie Rikelman, served on another that upheld a school district’s practice of hiding students’ identification as the opposite sex from their parents. President Biden nominated Rikelman, who argued to preserve federal abortion rights in Dobbs, a month after SCOTUS ruled against her abortion-clinic client.

The 1st Circuit was the only federal appeals court until recently without any active GOP-nominated judges, which Reuters reported has made its lower courts “magnets for lawsuits challenging Trump’s agenda by Democratic state attorneys general and advocacy groups.” The Senate confirmed President Trump nominee Joshua Dunlap on Tuesday.

Wednesday’s panel included two judges with senior status, meaning they are allowed to handle a reduced caseload compared to active judges: Jeffrey Howard, nominated by President George W. Bush, and Sandra Lynch, by President Clinton.

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When the Government Censored Dracula, Frankenstein, and King Kong

In 1931, Universal Studios released a pair of films that still haunt American culture. The first to emerge from the shadows was Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi as the titular vampire who creeps by night to feed on the blood of his victims. Then, shambling in the bloodsucker’s wake, came Frankenstein, starring Boris Karloff as the tragic creature who was pieced together from dead body parts and brought to unnatural life by the titular mad scientist.

Some modern horror fans might find these films to be too slow or tame for their liking. But we must remember that they were genuinely frightening or disturbing to many audiences back in the day. They were so upsetting to some people, in fact, that the official censorship boards that then existed in multiple states took a page from Dr. Frankenstein and sliced off the best parts.

Today, the idea of an official state censor requiring specific cuts to a mainstream Hollywood movie in order for that movie to be shown to paying adult customers would be laughed out of court on First Amendment grounds.

But no such robust First Amendment jurisprudence existed in the 1930s. In fact, it was not until 1925 that the U.S. Supreme Court first recognized that the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech applied to the actions of state and local governments. And, as we will see, it was not until 1952 that the First Amendment’s protections against state censorship were extended to the movies.

So Dracula and Frankenstein both faced the censors’ knives when they were first released. For example, in his invaluable book, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, David J. Skal noted that Massachusetts mandated several cuts to all Sunday screenings of Dracula, including the removal of a shot “showing part of a skeleton in a casket as well as one of a beetle-like insect emerging from a miniature coffin.”

As for Frankenstein, Skal reported that one of the most commonly maimed scenes involved the creature encountering a young girl who was tossing flowers onto a lake and watching them float. Seemingly charmed by the girl’s joyful actions, the creature, behaving with a sort of child-like innocence of its own, tosses the girl onto the water to watch her float like a flower. But the girl (predictably) drowns, compounding the creature’s pathos and isolation.

Many censors objected to that upsetting scene and it was typically cut in a way that removed the sight of the creature actually tossing the girl onto the water. Yet, as Skal observed, such an edit “ironically [left] some viewers with the impression that they had been spared the spectacle of some shocking molestation.” In other words, the censors arguably made the scene even more disturbing by forcing audiences to draw their own conclusions about the full nature of the girl’s fatal meeting with the creature. The censors thus defeated the point of their own clumsy censorship.

Several years later, Frankenstein‘s even better (in my view) sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein, faced its own angry mob of censors. The “list of eliminations ordered by the Ohio Censor Board,” complained one Universal staffer, in a report quoted by Skal, were “very drastic and very harmful to the success of this picture.”

Perhaps the fullest record we have of that era’s heavy-handed government crackdown on horror movies comes from a 1933 pamphlet published by the National Council on Freedom From Censorship titled What Shocked the Censors: A Complete Record of Cuts in Motion Picture Films Ordered by the New York State Censors from January, 1932 to March, 1933.

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Global Cybercrime Treaty Draws Criticism from Rights Groups and Tech Companies Over Surveillance Fears

Sixty-five countries, including the United States and Canada, have signed a United Nations treaty on cybercrime that threatens privacy, online research, and free expression.

The agreement, known as the UN Convention against Cybercrime, was signed in Hanoi and will take effect once 40 member states have ratified it.

Each country must complete its own ratification process. In the United States, a two-thirds Senate vote is required for approval.

The UN Secretary-General António Guterres described the treaty as an essential step in combating cybercrime, saying that “cyberspace has become fertile ground for criminals…every day, sophisticated scams defraud families, steal livelihoods, and drain billions of dollars from our economies.”

He called the Convention “a powerful, legally binding instrument to strengthen our collective defenses against cybercrime” and insisted it “cannot be used for any forms of surveillance or others that could be linked to violations of human rights.”

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which directed negotiations, has argued that the treaty includes protections for human rights and legitimate research.

But organizations such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) disagree.

Before the signing, both groups urged governments not to endorse the treaty, warning that its vague definitions could allow governments to monitor citizens, prosecute security researchers, and suppress political speech.

Technology companies have also raised concerns. The Cybersecurity Tech Accord, whose members include Meta and Microsoft, described the treaty as a “surveillance treaty” that could promote government data sharing and criminalize ethical hacking.

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Texas Is Sued Over Digital ID Age Verification Bill

A major technology association is suing the State of Texas over a new law that threatens both privacy and free expression.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) has filed a federal lawsuit challenging Senate Bill 2420, which is set to take effect on January 1, 2026.

We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.

The group argues that the law forces both app stores and developers to impose invasive ID age checks, obtain parental consent, and label content in state-approved ways that violate the First Amendment.

Under SB 2420, anyone with an app store account would need to complete an age-verification process before downloading or updating applications.

If an app store determines that a user is under 18, that user would be blocked from downloading most apps or making in-app purchases unless a parent gives consent and assumes control of the account.

Minors who cannot link their profiles to a parent or guardian would lose access to app store content entirely.

App developers would also face new rules.

They must classify their apps into multiple age categories and provide written explanations for each rating. Every update, feature addition, or design change would require written notice to the app store.

CCIA says these mandates compel developers to describe their products in ways dictated by the state and pressure companies to collect personal data that users should not have to disclose.

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After SCOTUS ignores ‘only two genders’ censorship, appeals court upholds ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ ban

Five months after Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas blasted their colleagues for refusing to review a ruling against a student punished for wearing an “Only Two Genders” shirt to school, a second federal appeals court has blessed another way for schools to clamp down on disfavored messages: the inference of vulgarity.

A divided 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel upheld a ban on “Let’s Go Brandon” sweatshirts by Michigan’s Tri County Area Schools, ruling Tuesday that school administrators’ perception that the expression is code for “F— Joe Biden” renders it profane and thus exempt from students’ First Amendment rights in schools.

President Trump-nominated Judge John Nalbandian, who appeared to be the swing vote in oral argument, joined with President Clinton-nominated Judge Karen Nelson Moore to apply the SCOTUS precedent Fraser, which upheld a student’s discipline based on a “school assembly speech that had a rather elaborate sexual metaphor.”

This is despite the duo’s admission that “Let’s Go Brandon” has “a wide range of meanings” going back to its creation, when NBC Sports reporter Kelli Stavast falsely claimed crude chants against President Biden at a NASCAR race were support for driver Brandon Brown.

“Some saw it as merely a euphemism for what the crowd really said,” the majority said. “Others used it as a shibboleth to express antipathy” toward Biden and his policies, and yet others “used it to question what they perceived as liberal bias in the media—based on the theory that NBC had been trying to hide the anti-Biden sentiment on display at Talladega.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which represents the anonymous students who wore the sweatshirts, told Just the News it plans to appeal but hasn’t decided yet whether to go straight to SCOTUS or seek a full-court 6th Circuit review.

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Kentucky Man Jailed Over Halloween Decorations That Depicted Local Public Officials Being Hanged

A Kentucky man was arrested over the weekend after placing Halloween decorations in his front yard that depicted fake bodies labeled with titles of local government officials.

According to WKYT-TV, a 58-year-old Powell County man named Stephan Marcum was taken into custody Saturday after being accused of terroristic threatening.

People passing by the man’s home in the community of Stanton saw a Halloween display they found rather haunting.

Commonwealth Attorney Miranda King reported the scene to the Kentucky State Police.

The decorations included body bags marked with the titles of local officials, although no names were on the effigies.

According to an arrest citation, Marcum was taken into custody not long after.

“This is something you just don’t see every day,” Powell County Judge Executive Eddie Barnes, whose title was on one of the bags, told WKYT.

Even though Barnes was not named in the display, he said he was bothered.

“At first I didn’t know what to think about it because I actually drove by and [saw] it in his yard and I’m thinking, you know, ‘Wow, you know, that’s kinda harsh,’” Barnes said.

Barnes said he has known Marcum for decades.

The judge told WKYT he views Marcum as someone who can be “a good person,” and was confused by the Halloween display.

University of Kentucky Political Science Associate Professor Stephen Voss told WKYT that Marcum’s display was not protected by the First Amendment.

“If you’re actively threatening someone in a terrorizing way, that may not be covered by the general right to free expression,” Voss said.

“I think we’re seeing a little bit less tolerance for violent communication or violent imagery because there seems to be a greater risk people will enact it or carry it out,” he added.

WKYT reported that Marcum was held at the Powell County Detention Center on a $5,000 bond.

Police said the Halloween decorations were collected and taken to a nearby Kentucky State Police station.

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Whoops—Ohio Accidentally Excludes Most Major Porn Platforms From Anti-Porn Law

Remember when people used to say “Epic FAIL”? I’m sorry, but there’s no other way to describe Ohio’s new age verification law, which took effect on September 30.

A variation on a mandate that’s been sweeping U.S. statehouses, this law requires online platforms offering “material harmful to juveniles”—by which authorities mean porn—to check photo IDs or use “transactional data” (such as mortgage, education, and employment records) to verify that all visitors are adults.

But lawmakers have written the law in such a way that it excludes most major porn publishing platforms.

“This is why you don’t rush [age verification] bills into an omnibus,” commented the Free Speech Coalition’s Mike Stabile on Bluesky.

Ohio Republican lawmakers introduced a standalone age verification bill back in February, but it languished in a House committee. A similar bill introduced in 2024 also failed to advance out of committee.

The version that wound up passing this year did so as part of the state’s omnibus budget legislation (House Bill 96). This massive measure—more than 3,000 pages—includes a provision that any organization that “disseminates, provides, exhibits, or presents any material or performance that is obscene or harmful to juveniles on the internet” must verify that anyone attempting to view that material is at least 18 years old.

The bill also states that such organizations must “utilize a geofence system maintained and monitored by a licensed location-based technology provider to dynamically monitor the geolocation of persons.”

Existing Ohio law defines material harmful to juveniles as “any material or performance describing or representing nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sado-masochistic abuse” that “appeals to the prurient interest of juveniles in sex,” is “patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable for juveniles,” and “lacks serious literary, artistic, political, and scientific value for juveniles.”

Under the new law, online distributors of “material harmful to juveniles” that don’t comply with the age check requirement could face civil actions initiated by Ohio’s attorney general.

Supporters of the law portrayed it as a way to stop young Ohioans from being able to access online porn entirely. But the biggest purveyors of online porn—including Pornhub and similar platforms, which allow users to upload as well as view content—seem to be exempt from the law.

Among the organizations exempted from age verification requirements are providers of “an interactive computer service,” which is defined by Ohio lawmakers as having the same meaning as it does under federal law.

The federal law that defines “interactive computer service”—Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—says it “means any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including specifically a service or system that provides access to the Internet and such systems operated or services offered by libraries or educational institutions.”

That’s a bit of a mouthful, but we have decades of jurisprudence parsing that definition. And it basically means any platform where third parties can create accounts and can generate content, from social media sites to dating apps, message boards, classified ads, search engines, comment sections, and much more.

Platforms like Pornhub unambiguously fall within this category.

In fact, Pornhub is not blocking Ohio users as it has in most other states with age verification laws for online porn, because its parent company, Aylo, does not believe the law applies to it.

“As a provider of an ‘interactive computer service’ as defined under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, it is our understanding that we are not subject to the obligations under section 1349.10 of the Ohio Revised Code regarding mandated age verification for the ‘interactive computer services’ we provide, such as Pornhub,” Aylo told Mashable.

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Burning the Flag or Torching the Constitution: Only One Destroys Freedom

“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”Ray Bradbury

Cancel culture—political correctness amped up on steroids, the self-righteousness of a narcissistic age, and a mass-marketed pseudo-morality that is little more than fascism disguised as tolerance—has shifted us into an Age of Intolerance.

Nothing illustrates this more clearly than President Trump’s latest executive order calling for criminal charges for anyone who burns the American flag—a symbolic act long upheld by the Supreme Court as protected political expression.

This push is not about patriotism—it is political theater.

For an administration under fire—from the Epstein cover-up to tanking approval ratings and mounting constitutional crises—flag burning serves as symbolic outrage staged as political cover, a culture-war diversion to distract from more serious abuses of power.

Consider the timing: on the very same day Trump announced penalties for flag burning, he also signed an executive order establishing “specialized” National Guard units to patrol American cities under the guise of addressing crime.

This is the real bait-and-switch: cloak military policing in patriotic theater and hope no one notices the deeper constitutional violations taking root.

In other words, Trump’s flag fight is a decoy.

Yet in today’s climate, where mobs on the left and censors on the right compete to silence speech they dislike, even this form of protest is under fire.

In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Texas v. Johnson that burning the flag of the United States in protest is an act of protected free speech under the First Amendment.

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