September 18, 2025

In the News

Delaware News: Governor Matt Meyer Signs Pro-Free Speech Legislation

.....Today, Governor Matt Meyer signed two bills, Senate Bill 80 and House Bill 119, strengthening free speech protections in Delaware and ensuring free access to books and other library materials in public and school libraries…

Senate Bill 80, sponsored by Sen. Spiros Mantzavinos and Rep. Frank Burns, adopts the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (UPEPA) to strengthen protections against lawsuits meant to intimidate or silence people by burdening them with costly legal battles. Strategic lawsuits against public participation, also known as “SLAPPs,” often appear as defamation, privacy, or nuisance claims but are really aimed at stopping constitutionally protected speech. The model law, written by the Uniform Law Commission, replaces Delaware’s previous anti-SLAPP law, which the Institute for Free Speech rated a ‘D-’ for its lack of protections. The UPEPA has been adopted in 13 other states and is pending in several more.

The Courts

Wiley: Ohio Foreign National Restriction Remains in Force After Sixth Circuit Ruling; Federal PACs’ Non-Federal Activity Negatively Affected

By D. Mark Renaud and Andrew G. Woodson

.....Ohio’s ban on political spending from lawful permanent residents remains in force following a September 16 ruling by a panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The decision dissolved an earlier injunction (that was already temporarily stayed) against Ohio’s 2024 law prohibiting contributions in Ohio state and local elections from lawful permanent residents (known colloquially as holders of valid “green cards”). The appellate court remanded the case back to the district court for further proceedings.

Since Ohio law differs from federal campaign finance law, which permits contributions from lawful permanent residents, this development puts federal PACs in a continuing quandary with respect to non-federal activity in Ohio. Although there can be further developments on remand, given the Sixth Circuit’s opinion, it is less likely that courts will provide judicial relief. As a result, statutory change must come from the Ohio legislature. There, the issue can be resolved if (1) the statute is amended to delete the lawful permanent resident restriction, or (2) the statute is amended to limit this particular restriction to ballot measure activity.

Courthouse News: Ninth Circuit reverses injunction on Arizona election canvass rule

By Joe Duhownik

.....A Ninth Circuit panel reversed an injunction against a new election guideline conservative activists say could disenfranchise whole counties of Arizona voters but affirmed an injunction against another it says could violate First Amendment free speech.

Known as the canvass provision, the first challenged guideline in Arizona’s 2023 Elections Procedures Manual requires the secretary of state to toss a county’s votes if its supervisors refuse to canvass the county’s results by the secretary’s legal deadline to certify the statewide vote. Nonprofits American Encore and the America First Policy Institute lack standing to challenge the first provision, the judges say, having shown no past injury or likelihood of future injury.

“The secretary is unquestionably under a statutorily mandated duty to ‘enforce’ the canvass provision, i.e., canvass the state’s election results by the state canvass deadline,” U.S. Circuit Judge Kim Wardlaw wrote in a 43-page opinion published Tuesday morning. “However, plaintiffs would suffer injury (disenfranchisement) only if the county in which they voted failed to certify its election results by the state’s canvass deadline.”

That has never happened before.

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy):  Hate Crimes Targeting People Based on Political Speech (as in the Charlie Kirk Murder)

By Eugene Volokh

.....The charges in the Charlie Kirk case include:

VICTIM TARGETING ENHANCEMENT: In violation of Utah Code Ann. § 76-3-203.14(2), Tyler James Robinson intentionally selected Charlie Kirk because of Tyler James Robinson's belief or perception regarding Charlie Kirk's political expression.

The Utah hate crimes sentencing enhancement statute indeed includes "political expression" alongside race, religion, and the like as covered "personal attributes," and provides,

Trump Administration

New York Times: ABC Pulls Jimmy Kimmel Off Air for Charlie Kirk Comments After F.C.C. Pressure

By John Koblin, Michael M. Grynbaum, and Brooks Barnes

.....ABC announced on Wednesday evening that it was pulling Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show “indefinitely” after conservatives accused the longtime host of inaccurately describing the politics of the man who is accused of fatally shooting the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

The abrupt decision by the network, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, came hours after the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, assailed Mr. Kimmel and suggested that his regulatory agency might take action against ABC because of remarks the host made on his Monday telecast.

The network did not explain its decision, but the sequence of events on Wednesday amounted to an extraordinary exertion of political pressure on a major broadcast network by the Trump administration.

Washington Post: Trump, allies seek to punish speech they dislike following Kirk killing

By Michael Birnbaum, Sarah Ellison and Perry Stein

.....Vice President JD Vance urged supporters to drum those “celebrating Charlie’s murder” out of their jobs and said the administration may strip tax-free status from two prominent foundations he accused of underwriting a “disgusting article” about Kirk. The State Department embarked on a global effort to identify foreign citizens “praising, rationalizing, or making light of” Kirk’s death and put them on a list to prevent them from ever receiving U.S. visas. Attorney General Pam Bondi vowed a sweeping crackdown on “hate speech.”

The governor of Texas celebrated a college student’s arrest after she mocked Kirk’s death at a public vigil. And Trump blasted ABC News’s Jonathan Karl for having “hate in your heart” and hinted at an investigation of his network.

Fox News: Trump to designate antifa a 'major terrorist organization'

By Alexandra Koch 

.....President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced he will designate antifa, a left-wing activist group, a "major terrorist organization."

Trump described the group as "A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER" in a Truth Social announcement.

The president added he will be "strongly recommending" that those funding antifa be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices. 

The announcement comes just days after Trump said he would "100%" consider the designation.

Politico: ‘That is not the law’: Bondi promised to target ‘hate speech.’ She’s facing backlash from all corners.

By Giselle Ruhiyyih Ewing

.....Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday appeared to walk back comments promising to target broadly defined “hate speech” following the killing of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, after facing significant backlash from both conservative and liberal circles over her threat to curb free speech.

In a statement posted to X, the attorney general clarified remarks she made Monday suggesting that hate speech was distinct from free speech protected under the First Amendment.

Reason ("Volokh Conspiracy"): AG Pam Bondi Says "We Can Prosecute You" for Refusing to Print Posters for Charlie Kirk Vigil

By Eugene Volokh

.....But no federal law, to my knowledge, purports to ban stores from discriminating based on the political expression of the material they're asked to print.

Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans discrimination by certain places of public accommodation—such as restaurants, hotels, theaters, and places of public amusement—based on race, religion, and national origin. But it doesn't ban discrimination based on political views, and it doesn't apply to retailers, so it wouldn't apply here. It also bans discrimination based on disability, but that's not applicable here either. Businesses can discriminate, just not on bases that the law forbids; and here, federal law doesn't appear to forbid this sort of discrimination.

Now some jurisdictions do ban political discrimination in places of public accommodation (see this article). If such a ban were applied to a print shop that deliberately refused to process an order based on its political content, then it might violate the First Amendment (see the concurrence in Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Comm'n v. Hands On Originals (Ky. 2019), a case in which Cato Institute and I filed an amicus brief making the First Amendment argument).

Free Expression

Wall Street Journal: Censorship Hurts Our Brains—Literally

By Barbara Oakley

.....But it is also a cultural tragedy, revealing corrosion at the heart of our civic life. Violence against speech is the final symptom of a disease that begins much earlier—in our failure to teach the value of hearing other voices early on, in schools.

Our brains are built to form habits. The basal ganglia—deep learning circuits that automate whatever we repeat—don’t absorb only tennis serves or piano scales. They also wire in patterns of thought. If the only messages we hear are one-sided, the brain’s habit circuits carve them into grooves of thought that resist change.

New York Times: Social Platforms Duck Blame for Inflaming Divisions Before Charlie Kirk’s Death

By Sheera Frenkel, Eli Tan, and Kate Conger

.....After the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot at a university rally in Utah last week, Spencer Cox, the state’s Republican governor, called social media companies a “cancer.”

Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat of Delaware, blamed the internet for “driving extremism in our country.”

President Trump, who helped found the Truth Social platform, also pointed fingers at social media on Monday and said the accused gunman had become “radicalized on the internet.”

Candidates and Campaigns

Early Returns - Law and Politics with Jan Baran: How Crypto Champion, Faryar Shirzad, and Coinbase Are Advocating for America's Digital Future

.....Host Jan Baran sits down with Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad for an educational and illuminating deep dive into cryptocurrency's intersection with law and politics.

The States

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Doctor Can't Be Disciplined by Washington Medical Commission for Blog Posts About COVID

By Eugene Volokh

.....A short excerpt from the very long Wilkinson v. Wash. Med. Comm'n, decided today by Washington Court of Appeals Judge George Fearing, joined by Chief Judge Robert Lawrence-Berrey and Judge Tracy Staab; it strikes me as generally correct: