…Louisiana law had never been revised to comply with the First Amendment…
Category: Free Speech
‘No Reasonable Officer’ Would Have Arrested a Guy for a COVID-19 Joke, the 5th Circuit Says
The appeals court ruled that a Facebook post alluding to World War Z was clearly protected by the First Amendment.
U.S. District Judge David C. Joseph dismissed his claims with prejudice, concluding that his joke was not covered by the First Amendment, that the arrest was based on probable cause, and that Iles was protected by qualified immunity. …[T]he U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that Joseph was wrong on all three counts.
Ray Bradbury and Roald Dahl
“I’ve warned my publishers that if they later on so much as change a single comma in one of my books, they will never see another word from me. Never! Ever!” [Dahl] said. With his typically evocative language, he added: “When I am gone, if that happens, then I’ll wish mighty Thor knocks very hard on their heads with his Mjolnir. Or I will send along the ‘enormous crocodile’ to gobble them up.”
Government Keeps Meddling With Private Company Decisions
In the Twitter Files, every conversation with a government official contains the same warning: You can do it happily, or we’ll make you.
https://reason.com/2023/02/02/private-companies-public-pressure/
How the CDC Became the Speech Police
Secret internal Facebook emails reveal the feds’ campaign to pressure social media companies into banning COVID “misinformation.”
The platforms may have thought they had little choice but to please the CDC, given the tremendous pressure to stamp out misinformation. This pressure came from no less an authority than President Joe Biden himself, who famously accused social media companies of “killing people” in a July 2021 speech.
https://reason.com/2023/01/19/how-the-cdc-became-the-speech-police/
Doing Pickering Balancing Right
It is not a workplace “disruption” that co-workers objected to a MAGA hat
The court here correctly, I believe, worked from the assumption that a government school was constitutionally required to be institutionally neutral about political values. The school as such could not prefer Black Lives Matter posters to MAGA hats, and could not base employment decisions on such preferences. It is evident that many university professors, administrators and leaders, at both public and private institutions, would not work from that same assumption.
https://reason.com/volokh/2022/12/29/doing-pickering-balancing-right/
5 Infuriating Ways People Got the First Amendment Wrong in 2022
As free speech becomes an increasingly important part of the culture war, people won’t stop misinterpreting—and outright violating—the First Amendment.
Many elected leaders bungled the First Amendment this year, but the dubious honor of the person who most consistently attempted to attack free speech rights in 2022 goes to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
https://reason.com/2022/12/24/5-infuriating-ways-people-got-the-first-amendment-wrong-in-2022/
Quotation of the Day…
it was not so much from the power of individual reason (which genuine liberals distrusted), as from the results of the interpersonal process of discussion and criticism, that a progressive advance towards truth was expected.