In the News
Reason: When They Attack ‘Dark Money,’ They’re Really Attacking Free Speech
By Alex Baiocco
By adopting Democrats’ strategy of attacking so-called dark money groups at this week’s confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, Republican senators are fueling efforts to undermine core First Amendment protections.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R–Iowa), the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, denounced the “role of far-left dark money groups like Demand Justice” in his opening remarks. And he wasn’t the only one to do so. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) made vague references to “the most liberal people under the umbrella of Arabella.” Prior to the hearing, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) criticized the “dark money” being spent to “raise [Jackson’s] profile.”
Predictably, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D–R.I.) responded to Republicans’ dark money fear mongering by suggesting that they support his legislation to “get rid of it.” No one should take the bait.
Whitehouse is a sponsor of the DISCLOSE Act, a bill that Republicans in Congress, including all those quoted above, have thankfully opposed because it would force advocacy groups to publicly expose the names and addresses of their supporters. In today’s polarized political environment, that would be a recipe for disaster. This legislation, which is regularly included in Democratic voting reform proposals, is a direct attack on the First Amendment right to associate privately.
Congress
Wall Street Journal: Ketanji Brown Jackson and ‘Dark Money’
By Kimberley A. Strassel
In the background of this week’s nomination hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, one could hear a welcome noise: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s glass house shattering.
The Rhode Island Democrat has spent a decade hucking boulders at his favorite bogeyman, “dark money.” …
So with no small delight, Republicans spent the week highlighting the extent to which Judge Jackson’s nomination was driven by covert left-wing front groups funded by much bigger checks with the aim of influencing the high court. The reason Mr. Whitehouse is such an expert on “dark money” is that his side has used it longer, and does so far bigger and better. With the Jackson nomination exposing this truth, maybe Washington can finally have a more honest debate about what’s really at stake: free speech.
The Courts
WAFB 9: La. state supreme court says Deray McKesson can be sued for 2016 protest
By Kevin Foster
Black Lives Matter organizer and activist DeRay Mckesson can be sued by a Baton Rouge police officer injured during a 2016 protest, Louisiana’s state supreme court has determined.
The announcement published Friday, March 25, was meant to answer questions raised by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Those questions centered on whether the officer can sue the organizer of an event that ends in a crime…
With those questions now answer the federal appeals court can reconsider arguments about the case.
Online Speech Platforms
New York Post: Elon Musk blasts Twitter, says he may create rival social network
By Ariel Zilber
Elon Musk said he is “giving serious thought” to creating a social media platform that would compete with Twitter, saying that the latter has been stifling free speech.
“Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?” Musk tweeted in a Twitter poll that he posted on Thursday.
The next day, Musk took it a step further, writing: “Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be done?”
In the same thread, a Twitter user asked the Tesla CEO about possibly “building a new social media platform” that would boast “an open-source algorithm.”
The user proposed that the new platform would be one “where free speech and adhering to free speech is given top priority” and where “propaganda is very minimal.”
To which Musk replied: “Am giving serious thought to this.”
Federalist: If Congress Doesn’t Rein In Big Tech, Censors Will Eliminate The Right From Public Discourse
By John Daniel Davidson
Regulating social media giants like Twitter and Facebook as common carriers, prohibiting them from censoring under the absurd pretext that speech they don’t like is “harmful” or “abusive,” would be a good place to start. If that doesn’t happen, Twitter will eventually ban every conservative voice and every media outlet that dares to challenge left-wing pieties about race, gender, and a host of other issues.
Free Expression
Daily Beast: Don’t Stop Using the Term ‘Cancel Culture’
By Komi T. German and Greg Lukianoff
Few terms have been as abused as “cancel culture.” …
But just because the term has been grossly overused doesn’t mean we should give up on its popularly understood definition—which aptly describes a real (and growing) problem. This is the measurable uptick, since around 2014, of campaigns to get people fired, disinvited, deplatformed, or otherwise punished for speech that is—or would be—protected by First Amendment standards. That’s “cancel culture.”
We say “would be” because the First Amendment does not apply to private companies. So, while the NFL was free to punish Colin Kaepernick, and The View was free to suspend Whoopi Goldberg, these are still examples of cancel culture under our definition, because the subjects of each controversy engaged in expression that “would be” protected, were the First Amendment standard to apply.
What happened to Ilya Shapiro, David Shor, and Kathy Griffin? Cancel culture.
New York Times: She Was a Candidate to Lead Levi’s. Then She Started Tweeting.
By Sapna Maheshwari
Before 2020, Jennifer Sey, a top executive at Levi Strauss & Company and a leading candidate to be the company’s next leader, barely used social media. Two years later, Ms. Sey was out of a job, in part, in her telling, because of her activity on Twitter.
Ms. Sey’s unusual exit last month from Levi’s after more than 20 years generated a flurry of headlines, with her claiming in a widely circulated essay that her advocacy for school reopenings during the pandemic made her a pariah at work and ultimately led to her ouster.
But the road to her departure was complicated. It touched on issues like whether corporations can control the personal speech of their employees, particularly in a period of isolation, and the politics tied to speaking on certain platforms, like Fox News opinion shows.
The States
Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): “A Social Media Platform May Not Intentionally Fact Check” a User’s “Religious or Political Speech”
By Eugene Volokh
That’s what Alaska bill SB 214, sponsored by state senators Lora Reinbold and Mia Costello would do in part.
I think some restrictions on platforms’ deleting posts might be constitutional (see my Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? article, or these posts excerpted from that article): To quote Justice Breyer (from a dissenting opinion, but on a point which with the majority didn’t disagree with, and which other majority opinions endorsed),
“Requiring someone to host another person’s speech is often a perfectly legitimate thing for the Government to do.”
But banning fact checking doesn’t just require platforms to host speech on their property—it expressly bars them from engaging in their own speech, since “fact checking” simply means “speech that expresses the platform’s view, or the view of someone selected by the platform, about whether some statement is accurate.” That violates the platforms’ First Amendment rights.
National Review: School Boards Are Not ‘Banning Books’
By David Harsanyi
Public-school curriculum and book selection are political questions decided by school boards. Schools have no duty to carry every volume liberals demand…
Refusing to carry a book is not tantamount to the heckler’s veto, now regularly used by woke college students to shut down ideas in institutions where ideas are meant to be debated. Elementary-school-age kids do not get to choose the topics they learn. Adults do. The debate is about who gets to make that decision, parents or administrators.
Parents who choose to live in conservative communities are now expected to adopt progressive curricula and ideas. The same people bleating about “democracy” are suddenly aghast at the prospect of school boards, elected by parents, using the same powers that districts around the country take for granted.
