The Courts
Chicago Tribune: First Amendment lawsuit over Facebook post about Waukegan mayor, Lake County Board vice chair settled for $17,500
By Emily K. Coleman, Lake County News-Sun
A federal lawsuit filed by a Waukegan man who claimed Lake County Board Vice Chair Mary Ross Cunningham and her son, Waukegan Mayor Sam Cunningham, threatened him over a Facebook post he shared has been settled.
Mike Morales, who filed the lawsuit in September, will receive $17,500 in exchange for dropping the lawsuit, according to the settlement, which was reached in May and approved by a federal judge in June…
Morales alleged in the lawsuit that he was threatened with the loss of his public housing and being jailed after he shared a Facebook post that showed altered photos of the two Cunninghams with devil horns crudely drawn on, red dots for eyes and a trickle of red coming out of the corner of their mouths.
Morales’ attorney, Kevin W. O’Connor, claimed his client’s First Amendment rights were violaed when the mayor called Morales late at night several times in an attempt to “intimidate” Morales for sharing the image, which was originally posted by community activist Ralph Peterson Jr.
According to O’Connor, Mary Ross Cunningham called Morales and told him to remove the post or he could lose his Lake County Housing Authority voucher, which he receives because he is disabled.
O’Connor said Mary Ross Cunningham told Morales that he could be arrested and serve up to 10 years in prison. She also told him her son was a “frat buddy” of state Attorney General Kwame Raoul, according to the lawsuit.
FEC
Washington Free Beacon: FEC Complaint Alleges Hickenlooper Violated Campaign Finance Laws
By Alana Goodman
Former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper (D.) may have violated campaign finance laws by coordinating an advertisement with an outside super PAC backing his Senate campaign, according to a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission.
According to the FEC complaint, filed by the conservative watchdog group Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), Hickenlooper posted a statement on one of his campaign websites that was picked up days later in a similarly worded advertisement by the Senate Majority PAC, a committee tied to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.).
“The facts demonstrate there was coordination between Hickenlooper’s campaign and Senate Majority PAC. Hickenlooper posted a ‘request or suggestion’ ask using language we have seen several times in the past,” said Kendra Arnold, executive director of FACT. “The fact that 12 days after the ask was published Senate Majority PAC ran the advertisement leads me to believe there was coordination between the campaign and super PAC.”
Trump Administration
The Hill: Trump tells Treasury to review universities’ tax exempt status
By Morgan Chalfant
President Trump on Friday threatened the tax-exempt status of and funding for universities and colleges, claiming that “too many” schools are driven by “radical left indoctrination.”
“Therefore, I am telling the Treasury Department to re-examine their Tax-Exempt Status and/or Funding, which will be taken away if this Propaganda or Act Against Public Policy continues,” Trump tweeted. “Our children must be Educated, not Indoctrinated!”
Trump did not name specific institutions whose tax-exempt status he wants the Treasury Department to review. Most private and public colleges and universities are exempt from taxes because they qualify as 501(c)(3) organizations.
It would fall to the IRS, a bureau of the Treasury Department, to conduct the review that Trump described. However, federal law prohibits the IRS from targeting groups for regulatory scrutiny “based on their ideological beliefs.”
The Atlantic: What a Direct Attack on Free Speech Looks Like
By David A. Graham
[W]hat Trump is doing [by directing the Treasury Department to re-examine the tax-exempt status of “radical left” universities] is making a bona fide threat against First Amendment speech itself, trying to use the power of the government to punish people whose expression he finds objectionable…
Fights over progressivism on campus are nothing new in American politics…
Trump is doing something different here. He is not merely complaining about liberal professors, nor is he complaining (as some of his antecedents have) that politics has no place in the classroom. He does not charge that colleges are using their tax-exempt status to make generically political speech; that would be politically incoherent because Trump has also allowed tax-exempt churches to engage more freely in political activity… In the past, he has also threatened to block funding to colleges that don’t allow conservatives to speak. But this isn’t about what speech is allowed either.
Instead . . . Trump is explicit that the problem is that schools are engaging in political behavior he deems excessively leftist. Or, put differently, Trump wants the federal government to punish the speech of private institutions based on the specific content of that speech.
Ironically, this is exactly what conservatives warned that the Obama administration was up to when it questioned the tax-exempt status of some conservative groups. (Investigations found no wrongdoing, though the Trump administration settled lawsuits over the matter.)
First Amendment
National Review: Don’t Cancel the First Amendment
By Charles C.W. Cooke
Of all the strange and fanciful notions that have bubbled up to the surface of our politics in recent decades, the idea that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution represents a boon to the “ruling class” must be the silliest one of all.
And yet, bubbled up it most certainly has. Per a poll conducted last year by the Campaign for Free Speech, 59 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 agreed with the proposition that the First Amendment should be altered to “reflect the cultural norms of today,” 50 percent favored the criminalization of “hate speech,” and 47 percent contended that the punishment for violation should be jail…
The best guarantor of free and open debate is a legal regime that strictly prohibits the government from discriminating against anyone, and the best way of maintaining such a legal regime is to decline to privilege one target of censorship over another. It is always tempting to draw distinctions between “good” and “bad” speech, but to do so in any systematic way is to abandon the mutual guarantee that is the prerequisite to keeping the First Amendment alive.
Free Speech
Business Insider: The Harper’s ‘letter’ proves we need to have a serious talk about free speech
By Anthony L. Fischer
There are those who see free speech as a concept that benefits only the powerful, and then there are those staunch free-speech advocates – myself among them – who view free speech as the most effective tool available for marginalized voices; no meaningful positive social change could occur without it…
The most interesting criticism I came across was from Ken White, the civil-libertarian lawyer who also blogs and tweets as “Popehat.” White is often my go-to legal-splainer on First Amendment issues, so when he criticized the [Harper’s] letter, my ears perked up.
I spoke with White about the concept of the “preferred first speaker” conundrum. Put simply, it’s the idea that there should be few limits on speech but substantial limits on the response to such speech.
“Sometimes I feel that criticisms of ‘cancel culture’ amount to an attempt to impose civility codes on the marketplace of ideas, sometimes by the same people who otherwise would be objecting to such civility codes applied to the first speaker,” White told me.
He added: “Calling a group of people a ‘mob’ is a way to avoid addressing their argument. It deprives them of agency, assumes they are taking their position out of groupthink or rage rather than because of values, and implicitly suggests that their proposition is less credible because too many people are sharing it.” …
And for those who are free-speech absolutists, the right of free association remains a tenet of the value. That’s a sometimes difficult circle to square, so specificity is necessary. Perhaps the argument is of course you CAN fire someone because they said something that offended a colleague, but don’t make that an action of first resort or treat every instance of offense the same.
Media
Washington Post: New York Times shreds Trump campaign lawsuit over Russia op-ed
By Erik Wemple
Recently, [Trump’s] presidential campaign filed a volley of defamation actions complaining about his treatment by news organizations. Targets include The Washington Post, the New York Times and CNN…
The Times filed a motion Thursday to dismiss a complaint the Trump campaign filed in February over an opinion piece the newspaper published in 2019 by former executive editor Max Frankel…
The complaint, filed in New York State Supreme Court and drafted by attorney Charles Harder, rests on a disingenuous reading of the Frankel column as a literal assertion of conspiracy that was refuted by the Mueller report. In fact, the column made no such case, as is clear from the headline and the very first paragraph. The lawsuit is a time-wasting joke…
There’s more to the story, though. In its motion to dismiss, the Times argues that Frankel’s article is straight-up opinion and not a statement of fact. That distinction is central to the paper’s defense, since “[o]nly false statements can be grounds for a libel action,” as the motion states. To boost its argument in this regard, the newspaper made reference to a case the New York State Supreme Court decided a few years ago: Cheri Jacobus v. Donald J. Trump, Corey Lewandowski, and Donald J. Trump for President, Inc…
Online Speech Platforms
Bloomberg: Facebook Considers Political-Ad Blackout Ahead of U.S. Election
By Kurt Wagner
Facebook Inc. is considering imposing a ban on political ads on its social network in the days leading up to the U.S. election in November, according to people familiar with the company’s thinking.
The potential ban is still only being discussed and hasn’t yet been finalized, said the people, who asked not to be named talking about internal policies. A halt on ads could serve as a defense against misleading election-related content spreading widely right as people prepare to vote. Still, there are also concerns that an ad blackout could hurt “get out the vote” campaigns, or limit a candidate’s ability to respond widely to breaking news or new information.
Facebook doesn’t fact-check ads from politicians or their campaigns, a point of contention for many lawmakers and advocates, who say the policy means ads on the platform could be used to spread lies and misinformation. The social-media giant has been criticized in recent weeks by civil rights groups that say it doesn’t do enough to remove efforts to limit voter participation, and a recent audit of the company found Facebook failed to enforce its own voter suppression policies when it comes to posts from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Daily Caller: Reddit Removed Subreddit Dedicated To Tracking Hate Crime Hoaxes, Accused Of Promoting ‘Hate’
By Chris White
Reddit banned a subreddit dedicated to tracking alleged hate crime hoaxes on the same day the platform removed a subreddit in June devoted to President Donald Trump.
Reddit users who keep tabs on potential hate crime hoaxes via the popular subreddit are met with a label notifying them that “r/hatecrimehoaxes has been banned from Reddit.” The page also notes that the page was banned for “violating Reddit’s rule against promoting hate.”
Candidates and Campaigns
HuffPost: Republicans Are Meddling In Texas’ Democratic Senate Primary
By Kevin Robillard
Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars meddling in the Democratic primary to face him, airing television and radio advertisements to boost a state legislator over Washington Democrats’ preferred candidate.
Tuesday’s runoff election pits Air Force veteran M.J. Hegar against long-time state Sen. Royce West, with the winner set to face Cornyn, the second-highest ranking Senate Republican, in November.
The States
Fox News: Georgia GOP congressional race gets personal over illegal immigrant ad claims
By Marisa Schultz
The congressional race for an open seat in Georgia has gotten heated and personal between two Republicans with the frontrunner, Marjorie Taylor Greene, hiring a high-profile lawyer to demand her opponent, John Cowan, take down a “false and defamatory” ad that accuses her of failing to screen out illegal immigrants at her construction business.
But Cowan refuses to remove the campaign ad and says the cease and desist letter filed by Greene’s attorney proves his claims on immigration are true. Greene countered with a new ad that says it’s really Cowan who doesn’t use E-Verify to vet employees…
Greene hired lawyer L. Lin Wood, who sent Cowan a sharply worded letter Wednesday threatening legal action if he doesn’t retract the ad and apologize…
“The false accusations made by you on behalf of your campaign to discredit your political opponent unlawfully exceed the permissible parameters of political speech and makes you, and your campaign, liable for monetary damages for defamation,” Wood wrote in a letter.
Albuquerque Journal: Arbitrator rules against Cowboys for Trump
By Dan McKay
An independent arbitrator has ruled that Cowboys for Trump – a group led by controversial Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin – must register as a political committee in New Mexico, disclose its donors and pay $7,800 in fines.
The decision by arbitrator Christian Doherty of Albuquerque is binding but separate from a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Cowboys for Trump against state elections officials. The suit is still pending.
The arbitration ruling comes as part of the state’s own administrative process – in which a group subject to an enforcement action by the Secretary of State’s Office may contest the decision and take it to an arbitrator on contract with the state government.
At issue was whether Cowboys for Trump is subject to New Mexico’s campaign law requiring political committees to register and file reports disclosing their donations and spending.
Insider NJ: NJ Political Parties Have Been Down Before. They Can Come Back Again
By Jeffrey Brindle
Recent legislative and judicial trends in campaign finance law have weakened the political party system in New Jersey, which is bad for transparency and accountability…
Understanding these patterns can better equip decision makers in New Jersey to fashion laws that better serve the public good by directing money in ways that bring greater accountability to the electoral process. ELEC [“Election Law Enforcement Commission”] has set forth recommendations that would help create that accountability by strengthening political parties and putting them in better position to offset the growing influence of independent groups, which often operate in secret with little public oversight.
These recommendations include: electioneering communication disclosure by outside groups, inclusion of PACs under pay-to-play and exclusion of parties under the law; party participation in gubernatorial elections; increased contribution limits for parties; and, pay-to-play disclosure by independent groups. As a personal recommendation, I would add tax credits for contributions to parties and candidates.
Tucscon Weekly: Crossing the Line
By Austin Counts
Last Thursday, Mayor Regina Romero alerted Tucsonans via Twitter she was urging City Manager Mike Ortega to revoke a permit he previously approved for pro-law enforcement group, Tucson Back the Blue, to paint in front of TPD’s main headquarters.
Romero cited two homophobic and racist posts shared on the Facebook profile of Timothy Cesolini, the man who filed for the request, more than three to five years ago as the reason for the permit’s revocation.
While not naming Cesolini directly, she referred to him as “an individual with known ties to white supremacist ideology” in her Twitter statement and said his group’s permit requests an “effort that services to incite and divide our community, and minimizes the Black Lives Matter movement.” …
“[A city] employee pushed it up to my office and was very concerned that the city manager’s office had requested this group and individual be helped with a street mural,” Romero said. “The employee found out the requestor, Tim Cesolini, had posted racist and white supremacist content on his Facebook profile he made public himself. He was practicing his First Amendment rights.” …
“For me, it was more about the request being submitted at a time when Donald Trump is attempting to claim Black Lives Matter is a symbol of hate,” Romero said. “This was about taking a stand against this happening in our city. This has nothing to do with my support of TPD officers, but I don’t think they want a person like Mr. Cesolini representing them.”
