Nearly half of the University of Wisconsin System students who responded believe administrators should ban the expression of views that some students feel cause harm to certain groups of people, according to an extensive survey on campus freedom of speech released Wednesday.
Some 68 percent of those surveyed say students should report an instructor who says something in class deemed harmful to certain groups.
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The staff of the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum allegedly ridiculed, swore at, and then kicked out an entire group of Catholic pro-life students and their chaperones for wearing hats that say “Rosary PRO-LIFE,” reports the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which now represents the mother of two of the students.
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Veteran Catholic pro-life activist Mark Houck described to Steve Bannon Tuesday the scene at his family’s home on September 23, 2022, when over 20 FBI agents and Pennsylvania state troopers banged on his door at 6:45 a.m.
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Former Arizona State University student Tim Tizon, being represented by the Chicago-based Liberty Justice Center, filed an appeal in the State of Arizona v. Tizon case Thursday after being convicted for trespassing while handing out copies of the Constitution on the ASU campus. Reilly Stephens, a staff attorney at the LJC, told The Arizona Sun Times this appeal is all about protecting First Amendment Rights.
“For us [the LJC], the core idea here is pretty straightforward. If the First Amendment’s going to mean anything, it means that at the public spaces of a public university, a student should not be arrested for handing out copies of the constitution,” said Stephens via the phone. “What could be a more basic free speech principle than that?”
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Arizona State University (ASU) student Tim Tizon was convicted in October of criminal trespassing in the third degree for handing out copies of the U.S. Constitution on the school’s campus. University Lakes Justice of the Peace Tyler Kissell, a progressive, conducted the trial. The Liberty Justice Center is now representing Tizon with an appeal, which was filed on Thursday.
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After being sued for violating the First Amendment, Eastpointe Mayor Monique Owens spent 15 minutes at Tuesday’s council meeting airing her grievances against the public.
Owens complained that at a previous meeting, her daughter heard a member of the public criticizing her.
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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced Tuesday night that he and several other plaintiffs had filed a groundbreaking lawsuit against several major news organizations, accusing them of antitrust and constitutional violations.
During a live interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, Kennedy, chairman and chief litigation counsel for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said the lawsuit targets the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), a self-described “industry partnership” launched by several of the world’s largest news outlets—including the BBC, The Associated Press (AP), Reuters, The Washington Post, Google Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter—in March of 2020. The lawsuit argues that the TNI was launched, in part, because the corporate media organizations believed that smaller independent news outlets were threatening their business models.
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Attorneys for the Elias Law Group announced over the weekend they are representing several left-leaning institutions seeking to nix Ohio’s new law requiring voters to show photo identification to participate in an election.
The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, the Ohio Federation of Teachers, the Ohio Alliance for Retired Americans and the Union Veterans Council are listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R). The firm working the case is headed by Marc Elias who has handled cases for Democrats in the 2020 presidential contest and numerous other national elections.
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After the tiered releases of the Twitter files, many suspicions have been thoroughly confirmed. Namely, social media monopolies like Facebook and Twitter worked hand-in-glove with the FBI, as well as other government agencies, to suppress accounts and censor stories they jointly deemed misinformation, disinformation, or otherwise harmful to the country during the 2020 election.
The most significant malfeasance arises from the coordinated campaign to suppress the New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop. The laptop exposed in great detail Hunter’s dissolute lifestyle, along with his role as the family “bag man” for various overseas financial interests.
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Pennsylvania State Senators Doug Mastriano (R-Gettysburg) and Scott Hutchinson (R-Oil City) Thursday announced they would reintroduce a bill proposed in the last legislative session designed to prevent social media platforms from censoring Pennsylvanians.
Mastriano and Hutchinson introduced the original measure in May 2021. They secured the cosponsorship of four other senators, all Republicans, but the bill did not receive a vote in the Senate Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure Committee. The two lawmakers said new developments impelled them to try again in the new session. They cited the recently released “Twitter files,” internal documents pertaining largely to the social-media company’s decision in late 2020 to deny users access to a New York Post story concerning Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s personal computer.
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America First Legal (AFL) released a fourth set of documents obtained from litigation against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that reveals more evidence of alleged collusion between the nation’s public health agency and social media companies to censor free speech and silence Americans under the government’s label of “misinformation.”
Last week, AFL’s 600-page document release uncovered evidence that Twitter operated a “Partner Support Portal” for government employees and other selective “stakeholders” that would allow them to delete or flag posts viewed as “misinformation,” noted AFL, which is led by former President Donald Trump’s immigration advisor Stephen Miller.
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A Virginia restaurant owner denied service to a Christian organization about 90 minutes prior to its private party because the group is pro-life and embraces one man-one woman marriage.
Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation of Virginia, which holds pro-life and traditional marriage values, told The Daily Signal that, following her group’s participation in activities outside the Supreme Court Monday morning, while the justices heard oral arguments in a case to decide if a public accommodation law compelling a creative person’s speech or silence violates the First Amendment, she was informed the Metzger Bar and Butchery was “unwilling to serve” the organization.
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Two Republican lawmakers from Ohio filed a lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission (FEC), alleging it violates candidates First amendment rights by limiting their ability to coordinate with political parties, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The lawsuit, filed on Nov. 4 by Senator-elect JD Vance and Representative Steve Chabot, as well as the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) in an Ohio district court, claims that FEC guidelines which “limits… coordinated party expenditures” violates the First Amendment “by strictly limiting how much of [a party committee’s] own money they can spend to influence federal elections in cooperation- or ‘coordination’- with their candidates.”
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The University of Toledo walked back a potential policy which would have required faculty and students use an individual’s “chosen name” after the First-Amendment watchdog group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) accused it of violating free speech rights.
The proposed policy, introduced in February, attempted to mandate the use of a name an individual “choose[s] to be called in day-to-day life” in all verbal communication and on all documents where a legal name is not required such as on course rosters, university identification and directories. FIRE, however, accused the policy of being in violation of the First Amendment for policing speech.
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Senator Mike Lee’s (R-UT) religious liberty amendment to the Democrats’ same-sex marriage bill failed by just one vote, 48-49, an outcome that, if the legislation is signed into law, could give a green light to the federal government’s retaliation against nonprofit faith organizations, such as schools and businesses, whose religious beliefs are incompatible with gay marriage.
Senate Democrats voted Tuesday, 61-36, to codify same-sex marriage into federal law with the help of 12 Republicans, as the Senate Press Gallery noted.
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A bill that would enshrine same-sex marriage in federal law progressed further in the Senate Monday evening with significant Republican support, but without sufficient religious liberty protections, and is now headed to a vote on Tuesday.
The Senate voted, 61-35, with four senators not voting, to end debate on the House-passed bill, dubbed the Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA), that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act which defined marriage in federal law as between one man and one woman.
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Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
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Pennsylvania state Representative Christopher Rabb (D-Philadelphia) this week proposed a bill to establish an “Election Integrity Board” that would monitor politicians rhetoric regarding electoral matters and “combat” what the panel deems “disinformation.”
In a memorandum seeking cosponsors for his legislation, the far-left lawmaker who represents Philadelphia’s Chestnut Hill and Mount Airy neighborhoods lamented the nomination in the 2022 primary of over 100 individuals he considers “election-denying candidates.” He blasted them for asserting what he insists are “unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud” and opined that “our elections are highly secure.” He suggested that politicians and hopefuls who raise concerns about such issues create unnecessary doubt in the minds of the electorate.
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A group of California physicians filed a lawsuit against Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state’s medical board over a new law that will regulate what doctors can tell patients about COVID-19 risks and treatments.
A.B. 2098 will make it “unprofessional conduct” for physicians or surgeons to provide their patients “false information” related to COVID-19, including vaccines, “that is contradicted by “contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care.” The legislation discriminates against alternative viewpoints and creates “a severe chilling effect,” contradicting the First Amendment, the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA)-backed lawsuit contends.
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A Vermont high school volleyball player who was suspended from school and her father, the team’s coach, who was suspended from his job, are suing the school district for retaliating against them following their complaint about the policy that allows biological males in the girls’ team locker room.
Blake Allen, 14, a student at Randolph Union Middle School, and her father, Travis Allen, who coaches his daughter’s volleyball team, spoke out against a biological male, claiming to be female, being allowed in the girls’ team locker room while they were changing. Now, the family is suing the school district after Blake was suspended and Travis was fired from his job, asserting the district retaliated against them, the Daily Signal reported Thursday.
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After the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and the Children’s Hospital Association asked the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate critics of transgender surgery for minors, Tennessee’s Attorney General is leading a coalition of his peers in responding.
“We, the undersigned State Attorneys General, write to express our deep concern with the recent letter you received from the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, and the Children’s Hospital Association asking you to investigate and prosecute people who question the medical establishment’s current treatment of children struggling with gender dysphoria,” says the letter penned by Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, and co-signed by 12 other attorneys general. “You cannot and should not undertake such investigations or prosecutions.”
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The endless travails of the Colorado Christian baker Jack Phillips are a measure of America’s pathetic descent into coercive secularism. Phillips has spent at least a decade in court, beating back the ludicrous claims of ACLU-style militants who can’t rest until everyone has been dragooned into the LGBTQ revolution. Phillips was at first persecuted for declining trolling customer demands that he design cakes for gay nuptials. He survived that assault, but now faces fallout from the transgender lobby’s mau-mauing of his business. In 2017, a man pretending to be a woman sued him for not designing birthday cakes in honor of “gender transitions” — an obvious nuisance suit that the state of Colorado and activist judges have humored. Phillips is back in court fighting it.
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed attorney Cece O’Leary of Southeastern Legal Foundation and its director of 1A (First Amendment) violations to the newsmaker line to deep dive into the biased policies limiting freedom of speech on college campuses in America.
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Public officials are not immune from picketing connected to a labor dispute at their homes or private workplaces after a divided Ohio Supreme Court struck down a law that prohibited encouraging “targeted picketing.”
The law made organizing picketing at a private residence and business an unfair labor practice, but in a 4-3 decision the Supreme Court said that violated the First Amendment right of free speech.
Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor and Justices Michael P. Donnelly, Melody Stewart and Jennifer Brunner all joined the majority.
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Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) recently submitted a legal filing, sharing that he will not be defending the legality of House Bill (HB) 2319, which is set to go into effect on September 24th.
“The Attorney General is not the proper party to defend the merits of A.R.S. § 13-3732. The Attorney General will provide notice to the President of the Arizona State Senate and the Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives that local and county prosecutors are the proper entities to defend this statute,” wrote Brnovich.
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Delegate Tim Anderson (R-Virginia Beach) wants to create a ratings system for books sold in Virginia, according to comments he made after a court dismissed an obscenity lawsuit against Barnes and Noble and Virginia Beach Public Schools.
“Every other medium has ratings associated with them, such as movies, music and video games,” Anderson said in a Tuesday statement. “Creating a rating system that warns purchasers and consumers that books contain strong sexual content will be a first step for the legislature to look into and I intend to start that conversation next year.”
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After years of a lengthy legal battle, the case of a postman who says the United States Postal Service (USPS) must provide him with a religious accommodation is taking his case to the Supreme Court.
“Today, First Liberty Institute, Baker Botts LLP, the Church State Council, and the Independence Law Center filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of former mailman Gerald Groff,” the First Liberty Institute said earlier this week. “The petition asks the Court to reverse a Third Circuit Court of Appeals decision finding that the United States Postal Service (“USPS”) is not required to provide religious accommodation allowing Groff to observe the Sunday Sabbath.”
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According to official Florida A&M University (FAMU) student residential policy, “[b]ehavior and/or activities that are considered offensive to others that do not constitute ones freedom of expression is prohibited, while in public areas of the residential facilities.”
This is just one of a multitude of FAMU policies that, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), are in tension with the freedom of speech and expression at the school.
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Three Midwestern states scored best in the nation in analysis of laws restricting speech about government. Wisconsin, Michigan, and Iowa outranked every other state by wide margins.
That’s the conclusion of a report issued by the Institute for Free Speech, a national nonprofit research facility that focuses on First Amendment rights. Wisconsin’s score of 86% out of a possible 100% was followed by Michigan (77%) and Iowa (75%).
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The Wisconsin-based, “freethought” watchdog Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) filed a complaint with the IRS against the Redeemer Apostolic Church in Mesa after pastor and CD 4 candidate Jerone Davis appeared at a prayer revival event hosted by America’s Revival, which is separate from the church. Davison was endorsed there by the founder of America’s Revival, Pastor Joshua Feuerstein. The FFRF wants the church’s tax-exempt status revoked, asserting that it crossed the line into the type of political activity that nonprofit 501(c)(3)s are prohibited from engaging in.
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Republican lawmakers are questioning the constitutionality of a Biden State Department program to fund the spread of atheism and humanism internationally.
At the end of June, a group of 15 Republican members of Congress wrote to President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken about a State Department funding program from April 2021 that “would award grants of up to $500,000 to organizations committed to the practice and spread of atheism and humanism, namely in South/Central Asia and in the Middle East/North Africa.”
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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday in a 6-3 opinion the expressions of a high school football coach who prayed by himself at midfield after games are protected by both the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District that coach Joseph Kennedy was fired “because he knelt at midfield after games to offer a quiet prayer of thanks.”
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National and state teachers’ unions condemned the Supreme Court’s decision Tuesday that held a Maine tuition assistance program that bars families from using the taxpayer funds for religious schools is in violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.
Union officials denounced the ruling as one that “attacks public schools,” “erodes democracy,” “harms students,” and undermines “the separation of church and state.”
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In a major decision for religious freedom and school choice, the Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a Maine law that barred taxpayer tuition assistance funds from families choosing religious schools.
The Court ruled, 6-3, in Carson v. Makin, the Maine law that governs its tuition program’s exclusion of religious schools, while accepting other private schools, is a violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and is, therefore, unconstitutional.
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Cathi Herrod, policy president of the Center for Arizona Policy (CAP), released a statement Tuesday following the Supreme Court’s opinion that said not including religious schools in taxpayer tuition assistance funds was unconstitutional.
“In a victory upholding for parents and private religious schools, the U.S. Supreme Court has, again, stymied attempts to chip away at American’s right to freely practice their religion. The Court affirms that a state cannot offer financial programs to students attending secular schools, while refusing to offer those same programs to students attending religious schools,” Herrod said in a statement.
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The DC Court of Appeals has unanimously ruled in favor of pro-life advocates in the nation’s capital in a lawsuit brought by a public charter school that objected to the group’s efforts to stop a Planned Parenthood “abortion mega-facility” from opening next door to the school.
Two Rivers Public Charter School and its board of trustees brought a lawsuit in December 2015 that alleged longtime pro-life activist Ruby Nicdao engaged in harassment and intimidation of students in her campaign to educate parents and the greater community about the consequences of Planned Parenthood’s plans to erect an “abortion mega-facility” next door to the children’s school, a press release from Thomas More Society explained.
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Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont (D) and Secretary of the State Denise Merrill (D) plan to channel the Biden administration by hiring a full-time “misinformation” expert who will seek to flag social media posts that suggest “bad information” about the state’s elections ahead of the midterms.
“We need to know what’s out there before it goes viral,” said Scott Bates, deputy secretary of the state, according to the New Haven Register. “We need to get ahead of the curve and knock down bad information to protect people from misinformation that would get in their way of voting.”
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A U.S. congressman from Virginia Wednesday celebrated the pause of the creation of a federal government “Disinformation Governance Board,” which was marred by controversy from its inception.
“Victory for free speech: the Biden Administration is not proceeding with its Ministry of Truth. As a cosponsor of [House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA-23)]’s bill to defund the so-called DHS Disinformation Governance Board, I welcome this news. I will stay vigilant against threats to the First Amendment,” said Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA-09).
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On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the city of Boston was in violation of the First Amendment over its attempt to ban the Christian flag.
Axios reports that the opinion was written by outgoing Justice Stephen Breyer. In the opinion, Breyer states that the city government of Boston “violated the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment” by forbidding a Christian organization from flying the Christian flag in front of city hall, which Breyer said constituted discrimination “based on religious viewpoints.”
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In 2018, Congress unanimously passed legislation, H.R. 3359, that authorizes the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to disseminate information to the private sector including Big Tech social media companies in a bid to combat disinformation by potential foreign and domestic terrorists.
According to the agency’s website, CISA says it “rout[es] disinformation concerns” to “appropriate social media platforms”: “The [Mis, Dis, Malinformation] MDM team serves as a switchboard for routing disinformation concerns to appropriate social media platforms and law enforcement.”
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The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that the city of Boston violated the U.S. Constitution when it refused to allow a local organization to fly a Christian flag in front of City Hall.
The nine justices said the city has established a public forum outside of City Hall, and invited all organizations to use the flagpole in front of the building to commemorate events. Not allowing the Christian flag to be flown denied the group the same rights as those afforded to all others and was a violation of free speech, said the court.
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Pennsylvania State Rep. Kevin Boyle (D-Philadelphia) this week announced to colleagues his proposal for public funding of some state-legislative campaigns.
The measure would require a candidate to have raised at least $10,000 from “small-dollar donors,” meaning those who have contributed between $1 and $200. State Rep. Boyle would allocate payments to hopefuls amounting to six times the total small-dollar contributions they’ve amassed.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed official guest host Grant Henry in studio for another edition of Grant’s Rants.
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Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, covered the oral arguments heard on April 25, 2022, by Supreme Court justices in the Kennedy v. Bremerton School District case.
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When the far-right website Infowars was banned by all the major tech platforms in 2018, mainstream media outlets didn’t come to the defense of founder Alex Jones, whom they described as a conspiracy theorist.
Two years later, the same outlets had a similar non-response when Big Tech imposed another media ban — this one on the New York Post, one of America’s oldest and most well-established newspapers.
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The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is celebrating a court victory for one its clients, a professor who was punished by his employer for refusing to use the preferred gender pronouns of a student.
“Dr. Meriwether’s victory is a free speech victory for professors all across the country,” Tyson Langhofer, senior counsel and director of the Center for Academic Freedom at ADF told The Ohio Star Wednesday. “The court rightly decided that his First Amendment rights were likely violated and vindicated these rights for all professors. No one should be forced to say something they believe is untrue and we are grateful the court has recognized that.”
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Grant Henry in studio for another edition of Grant’s Rants.
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Sunday will mark the 15th annual celebration of Easter on Chicago’s Daley Plaza – government property – including a sunrise service on Easter Sunday itself, to honor the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
This sacred observance of Easter begins at Daley Plaza on Holy Thursday, 7:30 p.m. CDT, when a giant 19-foot-high cross is erected at 50 West Washington Street.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed official guest host Grant Henry in studio for another edition of Grant’s Rants.
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A teacher in the Plainville Community School District in Connecticut successfully exercised her First Amendment right to stop financial support for the activities of the Connecticut Education Association (CEA).
Christina Corvello invoked her rights under the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Janus v. AFSCME to end payment of dues to CEA despite union officials’ efforts to restrict her right to an “escape period,” i.e., a limited number of days several months in the future.
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