We’re Hiring!
Senior Attorney – Institute for Free Speech – Washington, DC or Virtual Office
The Institute for Free Speech is hiring a Senior Attorney with a minimum of seven years of experience.
This is a rare opportunity to work with a growing team to litigate a long-term legal strategy directed toward the protection of Constitutional rights. We challenge laws, practices, and policies that infringe upon First Amendment freedoms, such as speech codes that censor parents at school board meetings, laws restricting people’s ability to give and receive campaign contributions, and any intrusion into people’s private political associations. You would work to hold censors accountable; and to secure legal precedents clearing away a thicket of laws, regulations, and practices that suppress speech about government and candidates for political office, threaten citizens’ privacy if they speak or join groups, and impose heavy burdens on political activity.
A preference will be given to candidates who can work in our Washington, D.C. headquarters. However, we will consider strong candidates living and working virtually from anywhere in the country. In addition to litigation or advocacy-related travel, a virtual candidate would be required to travel for quarterly week-long visits to IFS’s headquarters after the pandemic’s impact has receded.
[You can learn more about this role and apply for the position here.]
In the News
Bucks County Courier Times: Unrest in Central Bucks continues as students respond to offensive speech, board president addresses controversy
By Chris Ullery
Tensions over transphobic and anti-Semitic comments at Central Bucks school board meeting last month remained high as the board reorganized Monday for next year…
From a legal standpoint, [board President Dana] Hunter’s decision not to gavel down the commenters last month was probably the safest move to avoid a First Amendment violation, according to Melissa Melewsky, an attorney with the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association…
Pennsbury School District is currently facing a federal lawsuit over alleged censorship of residents speaking against some board policies and actions earlier this year.
The judge in that case recently issued an injunction which effectively prevents Pennsbury from enforcing any of its policies on public meeting comments until that case is resolved.
Melewsky said the policies involved in that case are similar to ones that many school districts, Central Bucks included, adhere to.
Among those rules are allowing the head of the school board to end a person’s comments for various reasons, including speech that is “abusive, obscene, or irrelevant.”
Central Bucks officials indicated that those rules will probably be extensively reviewed at a policy committee meeting in January.
Changes to meeting policies and on-the-fly rulings like Hunter’s Nov. 9 decision are probably going to be common as the Pennsbury case goes forward, Melewsky added.
As school districts reconsider long-held meeting policies, Melewsky said residents have a simple remedy if they hear offensive comments at meetings.
“The answer to offensive speech is more speech … Anytime the (Ku Klux Klan) marches, for example, you will see counter protests. That is the First Amendment in action,” said Melewsky.
RealClearPolicy: Philanthropy and Giving
By The Editors
Philanthropy and other forms of giving have a profound relationship with and effect on American policymaking, politics, civil society, and culture, among other things…
With our “Philanthropy and Giving” section, we at RealClearPolicy aim to provide a regularly updated overview of the normally narrow discourse about these and related matters. The section compiles links to—and sometimes publishes original — research into, journalism about, analysis of, and commentary on grantmaking and the nonprofit sector…
Lawsuit Aims to Restore Nonprofits’ Freedom to Speak About Candidates, Institute for Free Speech
Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta: Questions and Answers, Brad Smith, Institute for Free Speech
Crosstalk America (Audio): WI Family Action vs. Federal Elections Commission
Hosted by Jim Schneider
Joining Jim to discuss [Wisconsin Family Action v. Federal Election Commission] were two guests. The first was Michael Dean. Michael is an attorney with First Freedoms Foundation, a public interest law foundation defending historic civil liberties and constitutional principles through litigation and education.
Also part of the discussion was Julaine Appling, president of Wisconsin Family Action.
Supreme Court
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: U.S. Supreme Court denies appeal over access to Gov. Tony Evers’ press events
By Molly Beck
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to take up an appeal in a lawsuit brought by a Madison-based conservative think tank against Gov. Tony Evers over his decision to keep its writers from attending some press briefings.
The John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy earlier this year appealed a unanimous federal appeals court ruling upholding the Evers policy, asking the nation’s highest court to hear the case.
The justices denied their request to take up the appeal after meeting on Friday, according to the court’s order list released Monday.
The move keeps in place Evers’ policy of at times hosting invite-only press briefings for some but not all reporters, researchers and writers who cover state government — some of which are tied to partisan organizations.
“As this case ends, two things remain clear: the MacIver News Service is run by award-winning journalists, and politicians should not censor their news coverage by hand-picking who covers them,” said Daniel Suhr, managing attorney at the Liberty Justice Center, who represented MacIver.
Congress
Axios: Clyburn predicts Dems will “get around” filibuster on voting rights
By Alexi McCammond
House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) told “Axios on HBO” he expects Senate Democrats will find a way to get around the filibuster to pass federal voting rights legislation…
Clyburn predicted Congress will combine various bills into one — though he couldn’t say when.
“It may require some jiu-jitsu, but that’s not beyond the Senate to do that,” he said.
“They’ll come up with some way to get around it,” Clyburn added. “We had better come up with some way to get around it, because this democracy is teetering on collapse.” …
A small group of Senate Democrats, including Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, have been huddling to discuss rules changes that could help pass voting rights without Republican support — but not end the filibuster…
Clyburn isn’t encouraging his Senate colleagues to eliminate the filibuster, instead arguing the budget reconciliation process “ought to apply to constitutional issues like voting” — even though he isn’t a fan of the partisan political ramrod.
“I happened to have been around in 1964 and ’65, when we had to overcome filibusters to get the Voting Rights Act passed and the Civil Rights Act of ’64,” he told “Axios on HBO.”
USA Today: Democracy in the balance: Revise Senate filibuster to protect elections and voting rights
By The Editorial Board
[The Freedom to Vote Act] is not perfect. Elements left over from an earlier version are designed to tighten campaign finance rules, but risk violating constitutionally protected speech and advocacy. Such areas need to be jettisoned or revised.
Candidates and Campaigns
New York Times: Now in Your Inbox: Political Misinformation
By Maggie Astor
Lawmakers’ statements on social media and cable news are now routinely fact-checked and scrutinized. But email — one of the most powerful communication tools available to politicians, reaching up to hundreds of thousands of people — teems with unfounded claims and largely escapes notice.
The New York Times signed up in August for the campaign lists of the 390 senators and representatives running for re-election in 2022 whose websites offered that option, and read more than 2,500 emails from those campaigns to track how widely false and misleading statements were being used to help fill political coffers…
The people behind campaign emails have “realized the more extreme the claim, the better the response,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster. “The more that it elicits red-hot anger, the more likely people donate. And it just contributes to the perversion of our democratic process. It contributes to the incivility and indecency of political behavior.”
The messages also underscore how, for all the efforts to compel platforms like Facebook and Twitter to address falsehoods, many of the same claims are flowing through other powerful channels with little notice.
The States
Baltimore Sun: Carroll schools should rethink unworkable politics ban
By Baltimore Sun Editorial Board
Last Wednesday, members of the Carroll County Board of Education were on the verge of approving new restrictions on political speech among county educators when the proposal was tabled, apparently because a last-minute addition — the suggestion of a tracking system to help report teachers who stray from political “neutrality” — caused a bit of a stir. Might it be a violation of their free speech rights guaranteed by the 1st Amendment? The board’s lawyer thought that could be the case. And that is probably the chief, if not sole, reason, a majority of the school board did not approve the policy, which is officially entitled “Political Neutrality of Carroll County Public Schools Employees” but might just as easily have been called “What The Hysteria Over Critical Race Theory Has Wrought.” ….
The Carroll County policy would have required school employees to keep a “politically neutral stance in the classroom and curriculum” by refraining from “discussion of political issues, parties, and candidates” unless directly related to classroom content, and by not holding a classroom “captive” to the employee’s particular viewpoints.
