In the News
Daily Signal: Taxpayers Take School Board to Court for Trying to Silence Parents’ Criticism
By Kevin Mooney
Four taxpayers in Pennsylvania have decided enough is enough after footing the bill for a school board attorney who told them that the school system could limit their First Amendment rights.
The taxpayers filed a free speech lawsuit in federal court that could set a precedent for invalidating policies that shield both school administrators and elected officials from public criticism.
“Our lawsuit seeks case precedent to establish that citizens cannot be censored or intimidated by government officials for exercising their First Amendment rights at a school board meeting,” Simon Campbell, a former member of the Pennsbury School Board, told The Daily Signal.
In their suit, Campbell and three other taxpayers whose children are or were enrolled in Bucks County’s Pennsbury School District ask the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to strike down school board policies used to “censor” citizens who dissent.
The Institute for Free Speech, a Washington-based nonprofit law firm, represents the four plaintiffs. Their suit names Pennsbury School Board officers and other members as well as the board’s lawyers and current and former district officials…
“Pennsbury officials are trampling on the First Amendment rights of parents and residents to speak their mind about their schools,” Alan Gura, vice president for litigation with the Institute for Free Speech, said in a press release. “They have cut off parents in the middle of sentences, yelled over critics to prevent them from being heard, edited remarks out of recordings of public meetings, and intimidated speakers by forcing them to publicly announce their home address.”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Lawmakers scrutinized for ‘lavish’ spending on resorts, high-end restaurants and limousines
By Joel Jacobs and Ashley Murray
While much of the national controversy in recent years has swirled around dark money and unlimited spending by donors, leadership PACs have created their own corruption risks that have escaped much of the scrutiny of modern campaign reform.
Created in the wake of the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, leadership PACs carried limits on how much money could be contributed to them, but they also came with a major flaw: There were few curbs on how the money could be spent…
Bradley Smith, a former chair of the Federal Election Commission, said reforms have not taken place because leaders of both parties are buoyed by the dollars.
Although Mr. Smith generally favors looser campaign finance laws, he has been critical of leadership PACs.
“You have an incentive to watch campaign funds more. With leadership PACs, there’s more room for, ‘Well, let’s have a nice dinner,’” he said.
With few rules on spending and little incentive to be frugal, the danger of using leadership PACs for personal enrichment increases.
“If one is a bit on the corrupt side, it is easier to do it with leadership PACs,” Mr. Smith said.
New from the Institute for Free Speech
303 Creative v. Elenis: Amicus Curiae Brief of the Institute for Free Speech In Support Of Petitioners
The Tenth Circuit’s decision threatens to shatter strict scrutiny’s protection for speech in every context. Its facile creation of broadly-framed “compelling” interests — “the dignity interests of members of marginalized groups and their material interests in accessing the commercial marketplace” — will encourage the government to shroud ever more speech under those interests’ penumbra. But its example will also encourage the creation of new speech-suppressing interests. Thus, the Tenth Circuit and courts following it will make the standard “strict in theory but feeble in fact.”
Strict scrutiny can only protect our most important freedoms when it limits incursions on those rights to laws serving truly compelling interests. Those interests may not be couched in broad terms, and they must be rare. Thus, for example, the Supreme Court has limited political speech restrictions to laws related to fighting actual or apparent quid pro quo corruption, and it has specifically rejected any other interest. The broadly defined interests asserted below undermine such careful constraints.
The Supreme Court should preserve the vigorous protections against censoring and compelling speech, both because it violates the dignity interests of the speaker and because it is unwise. Such speech control undermines society’s progress, the power that ideas have over us as individuals, and public peace. And decisions like that below will give the government — ever searching for ways to do so — license to control political speech.
The Supreme Court should grant certiorari to prevent strict scrutiny from becoming a rubber stamp for speech regulation.
ICYMI
Spooky Spending? Halloween Maybe, But Not Virginia Campaigns.
By Nathan Maxwell
This year’s Virginia gubernatorial race is already reportedly the most expensive in state history. Frontrunners Terry McAuliffe and Glenn Youngkin have raised a combined $115 million, an amount unfathomable to most. Spooky? Meh. We’re spending $10.14 billion to celebrate Halloween, and there are a thousand millions in a billion.
Money-in-politics hand-wringing might make for good headlines, but it rarely makes for good stories. Instead, it usually just generates alarm where there shouldn’t be any. It also fails to provide a frame of reference, like the far greater amounts we spend on frivolous items like jack-o’-lanterns and cat ears…
Maybe it isn’t all that meaningful to describe a race as “expensive” or to remark at its “cost,” as if informing and motivating millions of voters should (or can) happen for free. More suitably, I’d say the Virginia gubernatorial race has generated $115 million worth of public engagement, and that’s a good thing.
The Courts
Must Read Alaska: Ninth Circuit lets ‘no limit’ campaign contribution ruling stand
By Suzanne Downing
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will not rehear the case on Alaska’s $500 campaign finance limits.
The apparent meaning is there are no limits on on donations to campaigns in Alaska, until new campaign contribution laws are passed.
A judge on the Ninth Circuit asked that the ruling be heard by a larger panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
But the State of Alaska never requested that the court do so, and with the state uninterested in an appeal, the judge, whose name has not been revealed, withdrew the request for the en banc hearing.
In July, the Ninth Circuit Court ruled that Alaska’s draconian $500 campaign contribution ceiling “significantly restrict the amount of funds available to challengers to run competitively against incumbents.”
The lawsuit Thompson vs. Hebdon has been dragging on for seven years…
The men had challenged the State of Alaska’s statute that puts a $500 annual limit on an individual contribution to a political candidate, (2) the $500 limit on an individual contribution to a non-political party group, (3) annual limits on what a political party—including its subdivisions—may contribute to a candidate, and (4) the annual aggregate limit on contributions a candidate may accept from nonresidents of Alaska.
The decision went to the Supreme Court, which partially remanded it back to the Ninth Circuit. There, two judges made the decision in favor of the plaintiffs, saying the $500 limit is unconstitutional.
New York Times: Florida Bars State Professors From Testifying in Voting Rights Case
By Michael Wines
Three University of Florida professors have been barred from assisting plaintiffs in a lawsuit to overturn the state’s new law restricting voting rights, lawyers said in a federal court filing on Friday. The ban is an extraordinary limit on speech that raises questions of academic freedom and First Amendment rights.
University officials told the three that because the school was a state institution, participating in a lawsuit against the state “is adverse to U.F.’s interests” and could not be permitted. In their filing, the lawyers sought to question Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, on whether he was involved in the decision…
The university’s refusal to allow the professors to testify was a marked turnabout for the University of Florida. Like schools nationwide, the university has routinely allowed academic experts to offer expert testimony in lawsuits, even when they oppose the interests of the political party in power.
Leading experts on academic freedom said they knew of no similar restrictions on professors’ speech and testimony and said the action was probably unconstitutional.
Internet Speech Regulation
Wall Street Journal: Government Control of Speech? No Thanks
By David French
The government should leave social media alone. For any problem of social media you name, a government solution is more likely to exacerbate it than to solve it, with secondary effects that we will not like.
Take the challenge of online misinformation and censorship. Broadly speaking, the American left desires a greater degree of government censorship to protect Americans from themselves. The American right also wants a greater degree of government intervention—but to protect conservatives from Big Tech progressives. They want to force companies to give conservatives a platform.
But adopting either approach is a bad idea. It would not only involve granting the government more power over private political speech—crossing a traditional red line in First Amendment jurisprudence—it would also re-create all the flaws of current moderation regimes, but at governmental scale.
The States
Sun-Sentinel: Hollywood activist says cop warned her not to wear condo costume to Halloween party. She’s wearing it anyway.
By Susannah Bryan
Imagine getting a spooky call from a cop warning you not to wear a boxy condo costume to a Halloween party.
Hollywood mom Cat Uden says it happened to her.
Uden has emerged in the past few months as an outspoken critic of a developer’s plan to build a 30-story condo on taxpayer-owned beachfront land south of Hollywood Boulevard…
On Sunday, she posted a notice on Facebook inviting people to show up at the Hollyweird block party in condo costumes like hers. Those who don’t want to dress up could bring “No Condo” signs instead, she suggested…
A few days later, Uden got a call from a number she didn’t recognize.
It was a police officer, she says, calling to tell her she didn’t have a permit to hold a demonstration at the Hollyweird block party…
Uden says he told her she could not wear her condo costume because it would constitute an unlawful demonstration. She countered that she had a constitutional right to wear the costume. “I told him it’s a costume party,” she said. “I don’t consider it a demonstration and that’s why I didn’t apply for a permit.”…
By the end of the call, she says the officer agreed she could wear the costume, with one caveat.
“He said I could wear it but I can’t tell anyone why I’m wearing it,” Uden said. “He said if I told anyone why I was wearing a condo costume it would be an unlawful protest. I was shocked.”
