Free Speech

The federal Fifth Circuit court has just released its ruling on Netchoice v. Paxton rejecting the argument that Texas's new social media law violates the First Amendment. Basically, the law is a response to the way social media sites blocked and disabled people's accounts over the last few years, often to the detriment of Trump supporters, Covid minimizers, and anti-vaxxers … [Read more...] about Netchoice, Pruneyard, and the digital public square

Eugene Volokh notes a disturbing federal case regarding 18 U.S.C. § 1513(e), part  of the witness retaliation statute, which appears to criminalize retaliatory speech against witnesses: And U.S. v. Edwards, a nonprecedential decision handed down Thursday by the Sixth Circuit, read it precisely this way: Joy Edwards made numerous derogatory posts on Facebook about a … [Read more...] about Snitches Get Disses

Immediately after the terrible Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka, the government there took the questionable step of blocking a bunch of social media sites.There can be legitimate reasons for such drastic measures: If you know the terrorists are using cell phones or the internet to set off remote-detonated bombs, it makes a lot of sense to shut down those communications … [Read more...] about Sri Lanka and the Ongoing Social Media Panic

The New York Times is reporting that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has hired Marc Randazza to defend him against the lawsuit filed by the families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims over Jones's claims that the shooting was some kind of hoax. Since days after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Mr. Jones has spread bogus theories that the … [Read more...] about Marc Randazza, Freedom Fighter

A while back, the Los Angeles Times published an op-ed by Laura Beth Nielson arguing that there's a case for restricting hate speech. As a sociologist and legal scholar, I struggle to explain the boundaries of free speech to undergraduates. Despite the 1st Amendment—I tell my students—local, state, and federal laws limit all kinds of speech. We regulate advertising, obscenity, … [Read more...] about The Perils of Restricting Hate Speech