Lawyers from the National Council of School Attorneys seem to have talked the School Boards Association into fighting the First Amendment. These lawyers have a tendency to badmouth students and employees who sue schools that caused harm to them, but it's the school lawyers that are the premier practitioners of lawsuit abuse.
School boards are trying to reverse a federal court ruling banning administrators from controlling the free-speech rights of teachers and other school employees.
According to a brief filed yesterday in 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) and the California School Boards Association (CSBA) argue that public K to 12 schools need discretion to regulate their employees’ expressions in the workplace.
“Public-school officials need authority over what teachers say and do in the classroom,” said NSBA Executive Director Anne L. Bryant in a press release. “Nearly every teacher posts artwork and other materials on their walls, and schools have a responsibility to ensure those materials are appropriate for students.”
The case stems from an incident in Poway Unified School District. According to published reports, Principal Dawn Kastner of Westview High School asked teacher Bradley Johnson to remove banners he posted around his classroom with the phrases: "In God we trust," "One nation under God," "God bless America," "God shed his grace on thee" and "All men are created equal, they are endowed by their creator."
Johnson claims the school violated his First Amendment free-speech rights and contradicted an internal policy that allowed teachers to display messages and items in their classrooms “that reflect the individual teacher’s personality, opinions and values, as well as messages relating to matters of political, social and religious concerns, so long as these displays do not materially disrupt school work or cause substantial disorder or interference in the classroom.”
In February, a federal judge agreed with Johnson, saying the district had practiced viewpoint discrimination...
North Africa isn't the only place where free speech is under fire. San Diego Superior Court Judge Judith Hayes was asked by Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz law firm to arrest me for mentioning the name of their law firm on this blog. She refused. Why? She has been very partial to Ray Artiano in this case, brazenly violating the constitution by creating a permanent order that I may not mention the name of the law firm. (I'm violating that order right now.) But she's not a dummy. It appears she was hoping that I'd be so frightened of the possibility of being arrested for contempt of court that I would voluntarily give up my constitutional rights and erase my website. But since that didn't work, she didn't want to keep pushing her luck. The mainstream media might pick up the story if I were jailed. In this country, the media hasn't been silenced, but it does censor itself to some degree, which is why we need bloggers in America.
North African bloggers get creative to evade censorship May 16,2010 by By Sarra Grira When confronted with free speech as an act of self-expression, authoritarian powers throughout history have tried to assert their legitimacy and remove threats to their rule through censorship. To achieve this, the censor has had to be quicker than the pen.
This task was relatively easy in the days of the printed word. However, today’s Internet revolution – especially blogs and other online social media – has turned the job of censorship into a censor’s nightmare.
Gone are the days when newspaper dailies were seized before they hit the stalls and books were branded with the seal of interdiction in the printing shop. Due to email and blogs, words today are less expensive and, more importantly, circulate more easily and quickly to readers around the globe.
The blog is arguably a privileged means of expression: simple, accessible and personal, it serves as a notepad on which anyone can jot down their ideas for everyone to see. Bloggers’ concerns range from the color of their summer holiday bikinis to local social issues and the fate of the latest political opponent arrested in one’s country. It is here where censorship meets its match.
For example, in Tunisia in November 2009 the arrest of Fatma Al Rihani, who has a blog “Arabica”, stunned the blogosphere and unleashed a wave of solidarity amongst Tunisian Internet users. And in January in Morocco, following a series of arrests of bloggers that had been writing about student demonstrations, Moroccan bloggers expressed their disapproval with a ”week of mourning” for the loss of freedom of speech in Morocco.
But censoring blogs does not always suppress information. Censorship may work in the short term, but the result is the opposite in the long term – thanks in large part to the “magic” of the Internet. Despite the difficulties censorship creates, some blogs soar to untold heights of popularity and countless hits once they return online after having been censored...
One of America’s leading defenders of free speech has named Southwestern College one of the nation’s 10 worst violators of the First Amendment for 2010.
SWC Superintendent Dr. Raj K. Chopra and Vice President of Business and Financial Affairs Nicholas Alioto were singled out for criticism by the Virginia-based Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression “for promulgating and enforcing a policy limiting even peaceful and non-disruptive protests to a designated ‘free speech’ patio.” The Jefferson Center awarded its notorious “Jefferson Muzzle” to the college for events that arose from an October 22, 2009 student rally and a February 2010 effort by students to collect signatures for a petition to recall three SWC Governing Board members.
A federal judge has struck down a Florida law prohibiting the publication of a police officer’s name, phone number or address, calling the statute an unconstitutional restraint on speech.
The decision leaves Arizona, Colorado and Washington state with similar laws on the books. Florida authorities said Wednesday they were mulling whether to appeal.
...Robert Brayshaw, a 35-year-old apartment manager, brought the challenge to Florida’s law after he was briefly jail in 2008 for posting personally identifying information of a Tallahassee police officer on RateMyCop.com — a 2-year-old website that lets users rate and comment on the uniformed police officers in their community.
RateMyCop uses public records requests to gather the names and, in some cases, badge numbers of thousands of uniformed cops at police departments around the country, and allows users to post comments about police they’ve interacted with. The site’s launch in 2008 drew cries of outrage from police, who complained that they’d be put at risk if their names were on the internet.
Brayshaw used the site to post anonymous comments about Tallahassee Police Officer Annette Garrett, as well as her name and home address — information not normally cataloged by the site. He wrote that Garrett was rude to him when investigating a trespass call at an apartment complex he was managing.
“He had been investigated for a possible trespass charge, which he was never arrested for,” Brayshaw’s attorney, Anne Swerlick, said in a telephone interview. “He was unsatisfied by the way he was treated.”
The authorities subpoenaed RateMyCop and Brayshaw’s internet service provider to learn his identity, then booked him under the Florida law — a misdemeanor carrying up to a year in jail. The case was later dismissed against Brayshaw for procedural reasons, but he sued, claiming the statute chills his speech.
U.S. District Judge Richard Smoak in Tallahassee agreed, and awarded Brayshaw $25,000 in damages plus legal fees Friday.
The judge ruled the First Amendment does not protect “true threats, fighting words, incitements to imminent lawless action, and classes of lewd and obscene speech.” But publishing an officer’s phone number and address, he said, “is not in itself a threat or serious expression of an intent to commit an unlawful act of violence” (.pdf).
Smoak wrote that he appreciated the intent of the 38-year-old law, but noted that it went too far. “While the state interest of protecting police officers from harm or death may be compelling,” the judge said the law “was not narrowly tailored to serve this interest.”
Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/05/first-amendment-cops/#ixzz0nSY21lt9
This morning, the Supreme Court of New Hampshire handed down an important decision holding that a mortgage industry website, The Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter, is entitled to protection under the state's reporter's privilege.
The case is Mortgage Specialists, Inc. v. Implode-Explode Heavy Industries, Inc., which was argued before the New Hampshire Supreme Court last fall. The dispute centers on an article that Impode-O-Meter published in August 2008, which detailed administrative actions taken by the New Hampshire Banking Department against The Mortgage Specialists, a mortgage lender. The article included a link to a financial document that The Mortgage Specialists allegedly submitted to the state banking authorities, which Implode-O-Meter had obtained from an anonymous source. After the mortgage company discovered the disclosure, it sued the website, demanding that the document be removed from the Internet and that the anonymous source be identified. A Rockingham County Superior Court judge granted these requests.
In the part of the decision dealing with the reporter's privilege, the state high court ruled that New Hampshire's qualified reporter's privilege applied to Implode-O-Meter and could protect the identity of the source who provided the loan document. The court flatly rejected The Mortgage Specialists' argument that "the newsgathering privilege is inapplicable here because Implode is neither an established media entity nor engaged in investigative reporting." ...
May 6, 2010 – The New Hampshire Supreme Court today issued an important decision upholding the First Amendment rights of online publishers. Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic submitted an amicus curiae brief last June on behalf of the Citizen Media Law Project and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in the case, The Mortgage Specialists, Inc. v. Implode-Explode Heavy Industries, Inc. The reasoning of today’s ruling mirrored arguments in the amicus brief, as the Court concluded that a lower court’s injunction preventing a website from posting a leaked document was an unlawful prior restraint on speech.
In 2008, the mortgage industry website, The Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter, published an article detailing administrative actions taken by the New Hampshire Banking Department against mortgage lender The Mortgage Specialists, Inc. The article included a link to a financial document that The Mortgage Specialists allegedly submitted to the state banking authorities, which the Implode-O-Meter website had obtained from an anonymous source. Mortgage Specialists sued the website, demanding that the document be removed from the internet and that the anonymous source be identified. A Rockingham County Superior Court judge granted these requests.
The Supreme Court reversed the injunction preventing publication of the leaked document...
Pendleton Marine back on Facebook ACLU defends rights of those in uniform to criticize government in public
By Jeanette Steele, SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER April 14, 2010
CAMP PENDLETON — Marine Sgt. Gary Stein is back on Facebook with an Armed Forces Tea Party page Wednesday.
A day earlier, his story had sparked widespread debate over the rights of uniform wearers to criticize the government in public forums such as social media sites.
The San Diego office of the American Civil Liberties Union fired off a letter Wednesday afternoon to Camp Pendleton, where Stein is stationed, advising commanders that the sergeant’s speech had been “chilled” Tuesday when he was recalled to base just before he was scheduled to conduct a television interview about his three-week-old Tea Party site...
Marine spokeswoman Maj. Gabrielle Chapin said Wednesday that Stein can administer the Facebook site as a private individual, as long as he follows the Pentagon directives, which include a provision that blogs must be written on one’s own time and computer.
But the ACLU has concerns about the legality of the Pentagon’s entire list of rules, which say that military personnel can’t speak before political groups or advocate a political cause to the media or other group discussions.
“We have serious First Amendment problems with that,” said David Blair-Loy, legal director of the ACLU’s San Diego office.
“We think service members ought to be entitled to virtually the same free speech rights as civilians with very limited exceptions for the necessity of combat,” Blair-Loy said in an interview Wednesday.
“Is the average civilian going to assume that the Marine Corps endorses what (Stein) says, just because he says he’s a Marine? I don’t think anybody would believe that.”
Ever since Sally Smith got ousted from the Serra High School site council, I've been trying to find a story I read a few months ago about a woman who was ousted from a planning board, and reinstated by a judge.
I searched the SDUT archives and Google, all to no avail. But today Shannon Lopez, Assistant to the Editor, answered my request for help.
Veterinarian kicked off panel prevails in court by Greg Moran SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE Sep 27, 2009 Dr. Almeda Starkey of Pine Valley sued to regain her seat on a county conservation program committee after county officials ousted her.
At all of seven typed paragraphs long, the statement that Dr. Almeda Starkey read at a meeting of a San Diego County land-use steering committee in May 2008 doesn't appear particularly controversial...
But that short statement would get Starkey kicked off the committee two weeks later by county planning officials.
It also touched off a court fight that ended last month when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the county had violated Starkey's First Amendment rights, and ordered her back on the committee.
In a five-page decision, a three-judge panel said the record "flatly contradicts" the county's claim that Starkey was removed because she was uncooperative.
"The only identifiable act that led to Dr. Starkey's removal was her reading of a brief, prepared statement into the record of a committee meeting," the panel wrote in an unsigned opinion. "Viewpoint discrimination of this nature is particularly odious under the First Amendment."
The case drew the attention of Californians Aware, the California First Amendment Coalition and the American Civil Liberties Union, who all sided with Starkey. They said it highlighted a key principle in First Amendment law -- that governments cannot squelch a point of view they simply don't want to hear.
Starkey's return to the committee may have to wait. Budget cuts have led county planners to suspend the committee's work, so it is no longer active.
The East County Multiple Species Conservation Program is intended to map out large habitat preserves to protect threatened and endangered species and would impose land-use restrictions on large chunks of property.
Starkey was brought on the committee to represent the San Diego-Imperial County Cattlemen's Association, which is concerned about the plan's effects on private landholders in the backcountry.
In her statement last year, Starkey proposed creating the preserve on publicly owned lands and private lands that were already designated for conservation. That approach would exempt agricultural lands, including ranches, from the habitat preserve.
Once land is designated part of the plan, Davis said, changing its use -- such as putting in different crops -- is almost impossible.
"We have most of the acreage the county would be looking at, and we needed a seat on the committee," Davis said.
Getting that seat was difficult, he said. In 2007, the association sought a seat, but county planners balked...
Starkey was stunned. The committee was supposed to solicit different viewpoints, and that was what she had done. "That's what democracy is," she said...
A request to interview Murphy and other planning officials was referred to Ellen Pilsecker, the county lawyer who argued the case. She said it was not anything Starkey said that got her removed, but her overall demeanor.
[Maura Larkins comment: When you have no facts to support your position, you claim that there was a "perception" that the person you don't like did something improper. It's hard to argue with such a claim, but I'm glad that Dr. Starkey did just that.]
"It was more of a perception issue," Pilsecker said. "What I have been told is it was supposed to be a group of people working together, and other members of that group did not feel she was being a team player."
Pilsecker also said that before Starkey was on the committee, she had been trying to obtain documents from the county under the state Public Records Act. Her lawyer had written the county to say that if not all the records were produced, Starkey might sue to get them -- a step that is allowed under the law. [Maura Larkins comment: Starkey has the constitutional right to petition for redress of grievances. This is the same type of complaint that was made about Sally Smith.]
Pilsecker argued that it fueled the county's perception that Starkey would not be a cooperative member of the committee.
The lawsuit over Starkey's dismissal ended up in federal court. Starkey asked for a court order that would place her back on the committee, but District Judge Janis Sammartino ruled Starkey did not have a First Amendment right to a seat on the committee and sided with the county.
Pilsecker had argued that Starkey could come and speak to the committee as a member of the public.
But Guylyn Cummins, who argued the appeal for the cattlemen's association, said there is a distinct difference between speaking during the public comment portion and having a seat on the committee. (Cummins has also represented The San Diego Union-Tribune in First Amendment and public-records-access litigation.)
Moreover, Cummins said, Starkey's seven-paragraph statement was in response to a request from the committee...
TIMELINE > > February 2008: > > Dr. Almeda Starkey is named to the East County Multiple Species Conservation Program steering committee as the representative of the San Diego-Imperial County Cattlemen's Association. > > May 28, 2008: > > Starkey reads a statement into the record during her second meeting. > > June 12, 2008: > > San Diego County officials inform the cattlemen that she is off the committee. > > September 2008: > > Starkey and the cattlemen sue the county, saying her First Amendment rights were violated and seeking her reinstatement on the committee. > > December 2008: > > Federal Judge Janis Sammartino rules in favor of the county. The case is appealed. > > August 2009: > > The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules in favor of Starkey and orders her reinstated.
