Email from The Institute for Free Speech The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech April 30, 2025 Click here to subscribe to the Daily Media Update. This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected]. We're Hiring! Litigation Attorney – Institute for Free Speech – Virtual .....IFS is hiring an Attorney with at least seven years of experience to support its ongoing litigation efforts. The position is located either in the Washington, DC office or remotely at any location within the United States with reasonable access to air travel. This is a rare opportunity to litigate to protect and advance Constitutional rights. IFS challenges laws, practices, and policies that infringe upon First Amendment freedoms of speech, assembly, press, and petition concerning politics. Cases typically secure people’s rights to speak at public meetings, such as school boards and legislative hearings, protect people’s ability to give and receive campaign contributions, and ward off any intrusion into people’s private political associations. You would work to hold censors accountable and 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, or impose heavy burdens on political activity. In the News Reason: Brickbat: Red Card Penalty By Charles Oliver .....A federal judge in New Hampshire ruled against a group of parents who wanted to wear pink wristbands with "XX" (symbolizing female chromosomes) at Bow High School soccer games to protest a transgender girl playing on an opposing girls' team, denying their request to override the school district's ban on such displays. The parents sued after receiving no-trespass orders for wearing the armbands at a September 2024 game. They claimed the order violated their First Amendment rights and the wristbands were a "passive statement" supporting women's sports. But U.S. District Judge Steven McAuliffe sided with the school, saying the wristbands could be seen as harassment targeting the transgender student, as they were only worn at the game in which she was playing. The ruling allows parents to attend games but bans the wristbands. Dallas Morning News: Former Miss Venezuela: Why Texas must keep protecting citizens from meritless lawsuits By Carmen María Montiel .....The Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA), our state’s anti-SLAPP law, saved me from years of stressful and expensive litigation. It allowed my attorneys to quickly file a TCPA motion to dismiss this frivolous lawsuit designed solely to punish and silence me. This strong anti-SLAPP law has earned an “A-minus” grade in the Institute for Free Speech’s comprehensive Anti-SLAPP Report Card, a state-by-state analysis of such laws. The TCPA allows victims of meritless lawsuits to quickly dismiss cases targeting protected speech and requires plaintiffs who file such suits to pay defendants’ legal costs. It safeguards Texans across the ideological spectrum, from pro-life activists to journalists exposing corruption to survivors sharing their stories. Now, the Texas Legislature is considering two bills that would gut the TCPA’s crucial protections. House Bill 2988 would make the award of attorney’s fees discretionary rather than mandatory when a defendant prevails. This change would make filing a SLAPP much less risky for plaintiffs while increasing the potential damage caused to the defendant’s finances. The Courts Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Deportation for "Pro-Palestine or Anti-Israel Political Speech" May Violate the First Amendment, Court Holds By Eugene Volokh .....From today's decision by Judge William Young (D. Mass.) in American Ass'n of Univ. Profs. v. Rubio: Maine Morning Star: Republican legislator appeals to Supreme Court to end censure over social media post By Lauren McCauley .....A Republican lawmaker who had been censured by her legislative peers for posting personal information about a transgender student on her official social media account is taking her fight to the U.S. Supreme Court. Rep. Laurel Libby of Auburn said she filed the petition Monday after the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied her motion for an expedited appeal to end the censure by the Maine House of Representatives. “For over 60 days, my constituents have had no say in actions taken by their government, actions that directly impact their lives,” Libby said in a press release. “Every vote taken on the floor of the legislature is a vote my constituents cannot get back. The good people of our district have been silenced and disenfranchised.” Reuters: US law firm Jenner asks court to permanently bar Trump executive order By Mike Scarcella and Sara Merken .....U.S. law firm Jenner & Block asked a judge on Monday to permanently bar Republican U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order punishing the firm for its affiliation with a prosecutor who investigated ties between his 2016 campaign and Russia. A lawyer for the firm told U.S. District Judge John Bates at a hearing in Washington that the danger of Trump's pressure campaign against law firms had only grown since Jenner was targeted in the March order. "We've seen more executive orders, and we've seen nine prominent, powerful law firms bend to the threat of the executive order, reaching unknown accommodations with the administration," attorney Michael Attanasio said. Trump's order "reeks of unconstitutionality," he said. Bates heard arguments for nearly two hours but did not issue a ruling. The judge, a Republican appointee, expressed concerns about the scope of Trump's order and the justifications that the administration has made for it. Congress Washington Post: Congress passes bill to fight deepfake nudes, revenge porn By Will Oremus .....The bipartisan Take It Down Act, which passed the Senate unanimously in February, now heads to the desk of President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it into law. The bill makes it a federal crime to publish nonconsensual intimate imagery, or NCII, of any person and requires online platforms to remove such imagery within 48 hours when someone reports it… The act has its critics, however. Among them is Lia Holland, legislative director of the digital rights group Fight for the Future, who called it “well-intentioned but poorly drafted.” Comparing the bill to the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which requires online platforms to remove copyrighted material whenever someone declares it is being illegally used, Holland predicted that bad actors will use Take It Down to scrub from the internet legitimate content they dislike. “If only Senator Cruz or anyone on the Hill had taken the time to make a few minor corrections, this would be a great bill,” Holland said. Becca Branum, director of the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology’s Free Expression Project, said the bill’s reliance on Trump’s “partisan” Federal Trade Commission raised concerns of “weaponized enforcement” for political ends. Free Expression New York Times: Harvard Promises Changes After Reports on Antisemitism and Islamophobia By Anemona Hartocollis and Vimal Patel .....A Harvard task force released a scathing account of the university on Tuesday, finding that antisemitism had infiltrated coursework, social life, the hiring of some faculty members and the worldview of certain academic programs. A separate report on anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian bias on campus, also released on Tuesday, found widespread discomfort and alienation among those students as well, with 92 percent of Muslim survey respondents saying they believed they would face an academic or professional penalty for expressing their political opinions. The findings, conveyed in densely packed reports that are hundreds of pages long, come at a delicate time for the university. Harvard is being scrutinized by the Trump administration over accusations of antisemitism, and is fighting the administration’s withdrawal of billions of dollars in federal funding. The Atlantic: Americans Don’t Do This By Caitlin Flanagan .....I have a pretty high tolerance for student protests, even as the outrageous cost of college has turned many of them into exercises in bourgeois decadence. But the Columbia protests have been different from past campus uprisings in several stark ways. They have exposed the whole “belonging” and “inclusion” system of handling offensive speech as fraudulent. The amount of intimidation and harassment experienced by Jewish students over the past year and a half should have been more than enough to alert that particular cavalry, but Jewish students turn out to belong to the only religious minority unprotected by it. (A regular talking point to emerge from last year’s encampment was that no Jewish students at the university had reason to feel harassed or intimidated by the protests, an assertion that was at best ignorant and at worst sinister.) And yet despite my strongly held feelings about these matters, when I learned that Mahmoud Khalil had been arrested in the lobby of his New York apartment building, handcuffed, folded into an unmarked vehicle by men who would not give their names, and transported first to a facility in New York, then to a detention center in New Jersey, and then to one in Louisiana, every siren in my body screamed. Down to the marrow of my bones, I am an American. And we don’t do this. The Bedrock Principle: A New McCarthyism By Jacob Mchangama .....Combating antisemitism is an important and legitimate government interest, and both Americans and noncitizens are safer when bigotry is confronted. But for six decades America has prohibited censorship and relied on counterspeech as the main xxxxxx against hatred, not least because leading Jewish and black civil rights groups have long recognized the danger of giving the government power over speech. Had the administration focused on noncitizens engaged in illegal or seriously disruptive conduct targeting Jewish students—which clearly occurred on some campuses after the October 7 terrorist Hamas attacks—few could have objected. But it’s now clear that the government is targeting noncitizens for ideas and speech protected by the First Amendment. The most worrying example (so far) is a Turkish student at Tufts University, apparently targeted for co-authoring a student op-ed calling for, among other things, Tufts to divest from companies with ties to Israel. One report estimates that around 1,700 students from universities across the country have had their visas revoked so far. Online Speech Platforms Washington Post (Tech Brief): Researchers call for new way of thinking about content moderation By Jeremy B. Merrill .....Facebook’s loosening of its content moderation standards early this year got lots of attention and criticism. But a new study suggests that it might matter less what is taken down than when. The research finds that Facebook posts removed for violating standards or other reasons have already been seen by at least three-quarters of the people who would be predicted to ever see them. “Content takedowns on Facebook just don’t matter all that much, because of how long they take to happen,” said Laura Edelson, an assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University and the lead author of the paper in the Journal of Online Trust and Safety. The States Maine Public: Bill would require disclosure of 'deepfake' political ads By Kevin Miller .....A bill under consideration in the Maine Legislature would not prohibit political operatives from using AI to create "deceptive of fraudulent political communication." But the bill, LD 1690, would require a disclosure statement saying "This communication contains audio, video and/or images that have been manipulated or altered." Bill sponsor Rep. Amy Kuhn, D-Falmouth, said the bans and criminal penalties enacted in some states have raised constitutional questions about limiting political speech. "This approach adopts the viewpoint that the remedy to disagreeable speech is more speech," Kuhn said told members of the Legislature's Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee. "Adding more information to the marketplace of ideas allows viewers and voters to consider the content with eyes wide open." WEMU: Michigan House bills would stop utilities from making political donations By Colin Jackson .....New bills introduced in the Michigan House would stop public utilities from donating to political campaigns. The ban on political giving would apply to utilities, their officials, and their lobbying organizations. It would also apply to some government contractors with awards totaling more than $250,000. The restrictions on contractors would span the length of the contract as well as a year-and-a-half period before and after the award. The package hopes to address concerns that the utilities and contractors are using political influence to avoid accountability. Package co-sponsor Representative Jason Morgan (D-Ann Arbor) accused utilities of doing more to pressure lawmakers than provide reliable service. Read an article you think we would be interested in? Send it to Tiffany Donnelly at [email protected]. For email filters, the subject of this email will always begin with "Institute for Free Speech Media Update." The Institute for Free Speech is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that promotes and defends the political rights to free speech, press, assembly, and petition guaranteed by the First Amendment. Please support the Institute's mission by clicking here. For further information, visit www.ifs.org. Follow the Institute for Free Speech The Institute for Free Speech | 1150 Connecticut Ave., NW Suite 801 | Washington, DC 20036 US Unsubscribe | Update Profile | Constant Contact Data Notice