January 12, 2026

Ed. note: The Media Update will return Thursday, January 15.

The Courts

Politico: Court throws out Sept.11-era convictions on First Amendment grounds

By Josh Gerstein

.....A federal appeals court has thrown out all remaining criminal convictions of an Islamic lecturer from northern Virginia who served about 15 years of a life sentence for soliciting treason by encouraging other Muslim men to fight overseas in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that Ali Al-Timimi’s statements at secretive meetings in the Washington suburbs days after those attacks were protected by the First Amendment, even though he encouraged associates to join a militant group deemed by the U.S. to engage in terrorism.

“Plenty of speech encouraging criminal activity is protected under the First Amendment,” Judge James Wynn wrote in a unanimous opinion for a three-judge panel. “The First Amendment’s protection does not depend on the popularity or palatability of the message conveyed. On the contrary, it is most vital when speech offends, disturbs, or challenges prevailing sensibilities.”

Courthouse News: 11th Circuit kills 'Cop City' opponents' referendum effort

By Kayla Goggin

.....A divided panel of the 11th Circuit on Friday tossed out a Georgia federal judge’s decision, which would have let people living outside the Atlanta city limits join an effort to repeal the local ordinance authorizing the land lease for the nation’s largest public safety training center.

In a 2–1 decision, the Atlanta-based appeals court ruled that the plaintiffs — four people living near the proposed $115 million facility and seeking to gather signatures for a referendum — “have no right to the petition process they seek to utilize.”

The plaintiffs sued the city and state to challenge a municipal code barring non-residents from collecting signatures. Activists gathered more than 108,000 signatures in 2023 to repeal the leasing ordinance that allows Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens to lease 381 acres to the Atlanta Police Foundation for the controversial facility.

The plaintiffs argued the residency requirement violates the First Amendment, shrinks the pool of eligible petition circulators and unfairly blocks them from organizing on an issue that affects them.

A Georgia federal judge in 2023 granted the plaintiffs a preliminary injunction blocking the city from enforcing the residency requirement, finding it imposed “a severe burden on core political speech.”

However, on Friday, a panel of Trump-appointed judges found the plaintiffs cannot show they will suffer “irreparable harm” without the injunction.

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Constitutional to Expel Law Student for Writing "[W]hatever Harvard Professor Noel Ignatiev Meant by … '[A]bolish the White Race by Any Means Necessary' … Must Be Done with Jews"

By Eugene Volokh

.....From yesterday's Eleventh Circuit order in Damsky v. Summerlin, written by Judge Elizabeth Branch, joined by Judge Barbara Lagoa; note that the logic could equally apply to other posts that could reasonably be seen as advocating violence, such as "Globalize the Intifada," calls for attacks on ICE agents, and the like:

Just the News: Judge rules against Arizona city that arrested mom for criticizing bureaucrat at public meeting

By Greg Piper

.....More than four years after the Biden administration authorized investigations of conservative protests at public meetings under the rubric of "domestic terrorism," even for "non-criminal behavior," a court ruling Wednesday against a Phoenix suburb put government officials on notice that squelching criticism may be more trouble than it's worth.

The City of Surprise will have to turn over pretrial information and evidence to a mother it arrested, detained and separated from her daughter at a City Council meeting for criticizing the city attorney's proposed salary increase, under an order denying its motion to dismiss Rebekah Massie's claim under Arizona's Open Meeting Law.

Senior U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver, nominated by President Clinton, said "the statute is clear that if an open call to the public is held, it must be subject to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions," rejecting the city's argument that it has unbridled discretion over public comment because "the open call to the public is permissive."

Bloomberg Law: NLRB Must Face Agency Lawyer’s Free Speech Claim, Judge Says

By Robert Iafolla

.....A federal judge rejected the National Labor Relations Board’s request to throw out an agency lawyer’s free speech lawsuit related to her environmental advocacy.

Carolyn McConnell, a field attorney in the NLRB’s Seattle region, plausibly alleged that her activism in support of a part of the North Cascades National Park was legal and the agency’s view to the contrary violated the First Amendment, Judge James Robart ruled Thursday.

The decision denying the NLRB’s motion to dismiss hands McConnell a major win in her effort to defend her ability to speak out on matters of public interest while working for the ...

Reuters: Student, professor face setbacks in law school free speech cases

By Karen Sloan

.....A law professor and a law student who sued their universities last year both faced court setbacks on Thursday in cases involving U.S. campus free speech rights.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit said the University of Florida cannot be forced to re-admit law student Preston Damsky while a lower court weighs his lawsuit against the school, with two of the three judges on the panel finding that statements Damsky made were “likely not protected by the First Amendment.”

The university expelled Damsky for making controversial statements about race and religion, including a post on X that had said “Jews must be abolished by any means necessary."

Also on Thursday, a federal judge in Lexington denied University of Kentucky law professor Ramsi Woodcock’s bid for an order halting the university’s investigation into his speech critical of Israel and lifting his ban from campus.

Free Expression

FIRE: Defending My Enemy: Skokie and the Legacy of Free Speech in America

.....When Nazis wanted to express their right to free speech in 1977 by marching through Skokie, Illinois—a town with a large population of Holocaust survivors—Aryeh Neier, then the national executive director of the ACLU and himself a Holocaust survivor, came to the Nazis’ defense. Explaining what many saw as a despicable bridge too far for the First Amendment, Neier spelled out his thoughts about free speech in his 1979 book Defending My Enemy.

Nearly fifty years later, Neier revisits the topic of free speech in a volume that includes his original essay along with a new chapter addressing present-day First Amendment battles, including the Charlottesville march, book bans, the heckler’s veto, attacks on free speech on college campuses, and the threat to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court decision in The New York Times v. Sullivan.

Including a foreword by Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton and an afterword by longtime free speech champion Nadine Strossen, Defending My Enemy offers razor-sharp analysis from the man Jameel Jaffer of the Knight First Amendment Institute describes as “an icon of justice and fearlessness.”

The States

Boston Globe via Archive Today: Lifting the curtain on the money behind ballot questions

By Editorial Board

.....Massachusetts can and should do better. And legislation that would put ballot question committees on the same footing and same timetables as political candidates would certainly help.

“Any group can get behind a ballot question. And it’s their right to donate to that cause, but it’s also the public’s right to know who’s funding that question,” said Senator Sal DiDomenico, Democrat of Everett and a sponsor of the legislation. “Large amounts of money are being given to fund ballot questions without any transparency for eight months.”

Under current law, ballot campaign spending has an eight-month period when contributions and expenditures go completely unreported. That period ends only 60 days before the election. Under the reform proposal, ballot campaigns would have to immediately name a bank, which would be charged with filing monthly reports to OCPF, then more frequently during those last 60 days, continuing through post-election filings and until any debts of the group are paid off.

The bills — one in the Senate filed by DiDomenico and an identical one in the House filed by Representative Daniel Ryan, Democrat of Charlestown, with at least 18 cosigners — also clearly define in-kind contributions, such as free or discounted goods or services, expenses paid, or staff time. All in-kind contributions of more than $50 would have to be itemized. You could call that the MTA corollary, since some $1.6 million in-kind contributions flowed into the anti-MCAS campaign during those waning, and late reported, days.

Original link

Cleveland.com: LaRose targets $100 million in unpaid Ohio campaign finance fines

By Anna Staver

.....Ohio is owed about $100 million in unpaid fines for campaign-finance violations, and Secretary of State Frank LaRose says the state is done letting them slide.

“If those fines aren’t collected, it becomes a bit of a joke, and that’s not how we’re going to operate,” he said.

LaRose called collecting these outstanding debts a priority during the first meeting of the new Ohio Election Integrity Commission, which is now housed within the Secretary of State’s Office.

A change LaRose pushed lawmakers for during the state budget process last year.

“Finally, we put the elections commission where it belongs...‚” said retired Ohio Supreme Court Justice Terrence O’Donnell, the committee’s new chairman. “This is a great step forward for our state and the citizens of our state.”

Democrats opposed the move, arguing that the previous elections commission was independent and that placing it inside the Secretary of State’s Office puts it under the control of a partisan official.

San Antonio Express-News: Ken Paxton sues DPS over rule that bans religious ads in driver handbook

By Saul Pink

.....Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit this week against the Texas Department of Public Safety, challenging a rule that bans religious ads in the Texas Driver Handbook and DPS mailings.

DPS, however, said it doesn’t run ads in its handbook. Paxton’s filing argues that a rule prohibiting religious ads in the handbook infringes on Texans’ First Amendment rights.