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Some Trump supporters then spun that around on the other side of the aisle, picking out the fact that freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has blocked people on Twitter as well. Indeed, as Scott Greenfield points out, in the wake of the 2nd Circuit ruling, former NY State Assemblyman Dov Hikind has already sued Ocasio-Cortez, pointing out that she has him blocked on Twitter.

And, again, the whole point we tried to make with our post about the Trump ruling is that the rules are very fact specific -- but based on what's known so far, it looks like Hikind is absolutely correct. AOC famously uses her Twitter feed for official government business all the time. And if she's blocked Hikind for the way he expresses his views, it seems likely that she, too, is on the wrong side of the Constitution. From the lawsuit, it appears Hikind is very much blocked by AOC:

I've seen some people trying to distinguish the two cases -- but mostly that seems based on their political views, and whether they tend to support Trump or AOC. And that's a problem. There may be distinguishing factors that come out later, but from what's laid out in the lawsuit as presented, it seems like Hikind's case is pretty much identical to the Knight case, and AOC shouldn't be allowed to block people from this particular account. One possible distinction would be if AOC can prove that the decisions to block were not based on content (a violation of the 1st Amendment), but on actions, such as harassment -- however, it would be very, very difficult to make that case in a credible way that doesn't also create all sorts of knock-on consequences for speech.

I've seen some raise issues about how she should be able to make use of the tools provided on the platform to block trolls and harassers, but, again, that applies equally to Trump. And going back to basics, if the government official is creating an open forum, they cannot block people based on their expression. That's sort of fundamental to the 1st Amendment. And thus, if you agree that Trump can't block users, it seems that should apply equally to AOC, no matter if you support one of them, neither of them or even (amazingly) both of them.

At the heart of the case is a string of Snapchatted F-bombs. The student, referred to only as B.L., expressed her displeasure using curse words -- a teen tradition that dates back at least as far as the traditions she expressed her displeasure with. The decision [PDF] recounts the sweary events leading to this Constitutional violation, which began with B.L. being passed over for a varsity cheerleading spot:

Posing in street clothes with a friend, middle fingers raised, B.L. took a “selfie” at the Cocoa Hut, a local store and student stomping ground. On top of the photo, B.L. added the following text: “fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer fuck everything.” B.L. then posted the captioned photo—the “Snap”—on her private Snapchat account, where it could have been viewed briefly by about two-hundred and fifty (250) of her friends. She posted a follow-up Snap just after, reading: “Love how me and [my friend] get told we need a year of jv before we make varsity but that[] doesn’t matter to anyone else?” Many of B.L.’s friends on Snapchat are students at District schools; some are fellow cheerleaders.

One of B.L.'s Snapchat "friends" -- who also happened to be a cheerleader and a cheerleading coach's daughter -- took screenshots of this Chat and brought it to the cheerleading coaches. The coaches kicked B.L. off the team, suspending her from cheer activities for an entire year. Supposedly, this was due to multiple complaints about words that routinely come out of teenagers' mouths.

The coaches also claimed B.L. had violated the cheer team rules with her "fuck cheer" post. Specifically, her Snapchat post violated the "Negative Information Rule," which states:

“There will be no toleration of any negative information regarding cheerleading, cheerleaders, or coaches placed on the internet.”

The court notes that students' Constitutional rights do not end when they enter the school. The district argues students' rights "end" if students waive these rights, as it claims B.L. did when she agreed to not post "negative information" about the cheer program on the internet. The court points out this waiver could hardly be considered voluntary.

[N]either B.L. nor her mother had bargaining equality with the coaches or the school; the Cheerleading Rules were not subject to negotiation; and B.L. and her mother were not represented by counsel when they agreed B.L. would abide by the Rules. Additionally, conditioning extracurricular participation on a waiver of a constitutional right is coercive.

After deciding B.L. retained her First Amendment rights despite the wording of the cheer team agreement, the court moves on to dismantle the district's other defense: that B.L. had no Constitutional right to engage in extracurricular activities. As the court points out, this determination is irrelevant to determining whether or not B.L.'s rights were violated by her suspension from the cheer team. The district wants the court to approach the question from the wrong side. The court declines the district's invitation to enter the argument through the back door.

I agree with B.L. What the District’s argument does is put the constitutional cart before the horse. [...] The issue with this reasoning, which assumes all student athlete speech is ipso facto less protected, see Lowery v. Euverard, 497 F.3d 584, 605 (6th Cir. 2007) (Gilman, J., concurring in the judgment) is two-fold: it muddies the First Amendment analysis, and conflates it with Due Process analysis.

[...]

The right a public school infringes by punishing a student for protected speech is not the right to education or to play a sport, it is the right to freedom of speech.

In the end, the court finds the school's punishment of B.L. was unconstitutional. While it recognizes students engaging in extracurricular activities may be subject to more rules governing their behavior, the rules cannot infringe on their protected rights. Speech that occurs outside of the school walls is not completely out of reach of the school's disciplinary policies, but the school needs to show the severely disruptive effect this extracurricular speech caused. In this case, all the district could point to were claims by cheer coaches the f-bombs had the potential to be disruptive.

If teens dropping F-bombs on or off school property were enough to disrupt schools, approximately 0% of the nation's high schools would be operational for more than a few hours at a time, much less the entire school year. "Fuck cheer" is protected expression. The fact that the school doesn't like hearing its activities criticized doesn't budge the free speech needle.

After a round of motions, the court has ruled in favor of everyone being sued. The decision [PDF] makes it clear none of the arguments made by the plaintiffs hold water, much less achieve complete coherence. The only thing the court agrees with is that Loomer and Freedom Watch have standing to bring the suit. But standing is only worth something when your arguments have merit.

While they have established standing, the Plaintiffs have failed to state viable legal claims. Consider first their Sherman Act arguments. Section 1 of the Sherman Act states that “[e]very contract, combination . . . , or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the 7 several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal.” 15 U.S.C. § 1. “Independent action is not prescribed” by § 1. Monsanto Co. v. Spray-Rite Service Corp., 465 U.S. 752, 760 (1984). So a valid claim must allege that the Platforms “had a conscious commitment to a common scheme designed to achieve an unlawful objective.” Id. at 764. The Plaintiffs’ claim fails to do this.

True, the Amended Complaint repeatedly states that the Platforms have engaged in a conspiracy or illegal agreement. See, e.g., Am. Compl. 4, 5, 12, 17. But it offers only these conclusory statements to suggest the existence of such an agreement. It includes no allegations, for example, that any of the Platforms met or otherwise communicated an intent to collectively suppress conservative content.

A conspiracy requires the participation of conspirators. But some of the alleged conspirators still played ball with the plaintiffs, which undercuts the conspiracy needed to sufficiently allege antitrust violations.

The Plaintiffs also suggest that the Platforms “have engaged in ‘conscious parallelism’ and in concert mimicked each others’ refusal to deal with Freedom Watch and Ms. Loomer.” Am. Compl. 21. But Freedom Watch admits that it “has and still does pay Google and YouTube, Facebook and the other Defendants for services.” Id. at 11. This admission contradicts assertions of a coordinated “refusal to deal” with the Plaintiffs.

The complaint fares no better when dealing with the second antitrust allegation -- the supposed "monopoly" power of the [checks notes] four defendants being sued. As the court points out, the plaintiffs could have brought some data to their legal fight. Instead, they chose to bring conclusory statements and assertions about "leftist agendas."

[T]he Plaintiffs offer no market share data for any of the Platforms in either the local or worldwide markets for media and news publications. Instead, they make claims about the “social network global market,” the “social networking advertising revenue” market, the “digital ad revenues” market, and the “mobile ad market.” Am. Compl. 18. And though the Amended Complaint states that “59% of Twitter users get their news through the Twitter platform” and that “48% of all American adults [get] their news from Facebook,” it offers no support for the notion that either firm has achieved or tried to achieve monopolization of the nationwide media and news publications market.

The allegations claiming that kicking Loomer/Freedom Watch violated DC's Human Rights Act is just as ridiculous. The court points out the law refers only to physical public spaces and it's not willing to re-litigate a DC circuit opinion and/or rewrite local law on behalf of the plaintiffs.

Finally, the court addresses the most ridiculous of all the lawsuit's assertion: that moderation decisions by social media services somehow violated the plaintiffs' First Amendment rights. The plaintiffs cite the Packingham decision by the Supreme Court, completely misreading that decision's findings. In that case, the court said the government couldn't prevent people from accessing internet services. Loomer and Klayman pretend it actually said platforms can't ban people from accessing their platforms. The district court points out the distinction the plaintiffs are ignoring.

True, in Packingham, the Supreme Court recognized that Facebook and Twitter are among the “most important places (in a spatial sense) for the exchange of views” in society today. 137 S. Ct. at 1735. But the case involved a challenge to a state law that limited the speech rights of certain criminals on these platforms. Id. at 1738. It did not create a new cause of action against a private entity for an alleged First Amendment violation.

The second citation from the plaintiffs isn't any better, and the court again restates the obvious: moderation decisions by private companies are not actions taken by government entities, no matter how many users the platforms accommodate.

[T]he Plaintiffs here allege no nexus between the Platforms’ actions and a function traditionally reserved exclusively to the state. Nor do they contend that the Platforms were designated by the state to perform a governmental operation. Instead, the Amended Complaint focuses on the Platforms’ alleged suppression of conservative political content. It details, for instance, the seemingly disparate treatment of conservative news publishers on Facebook and of conservative commentators on Twitter. Am. Compl. 4-5. But while selective censorship of the kind alleged by the Plaintiffs may be antithetical to the American tradition of freedom of speech, it is not actionable under the First Amendment unless perpetrated by a state actor. Thus, their claim must be dismissed.

This will surely be appealed. But the outcome will be the same. Actions by private companies can't violate rights and the existence of multiple social media platforms simultaneously preemptively defeats most antitrust allegations.

Some conservatives are convinced there's a leftist agenda being played out in social media. But rather than fight it with more speech, they're trying to bring the government in to fix these perceived problems. Whatever floats your speech boat, but remember, any "fixes" you get will remain in place for years -- even if the perceived pendulum swings the other way. The rules that "level the playing field" will come back to bite these agitators in their asses if they ever manage to talk a court or a bunch of legislators into taking their bad ideas seriously.

Here's Freedom Watch's zesty summation of the lawsuit:

"It's time that someone stood up to the Left's 'Fake News' media, which is bent on destroying anyone who is a supporter of the president and in particular Sheriff Arpaio. My client will not be bullied by the likes of Jeff Zucker, Chris Cuomo, the Huffington Post, and Rolling Stone, as he alone has the courage to stand up for not just himself, the President of the United States but also all fair-minded and ethical Americans."

Ok, then. If you think the lawsuit itself is a much more buttoned-down affair, then you haven't read a Larry Klayman complaint before. It starts with the usual stuff establishing standing before getting down to the focus of the complaint. The alleged defamation committed by all three defendants is referring to Joe Arpaio as a "convicted felon" when his only conviction was for a misdemeanor. Rolling Stone issued a correction but the other two defendants haven't corrected their original misstatements. Hence the lawsuit -- Arpaio and Klayman's public attempt to stick it to the "Left Fake News media."

Here's why Arpaio feels he's owed $300 million for a couple of standing misstatements. Running for an open US Senate seat must pay really well.

Plaintiff Arpaio’s chances and prospects of election to the U.S. Senate in 2020 have been severely harmed by the publication of false and fraudulent facts in the Defamatory Article. This also harms Plaintiff financially, as his chances of obtaining funding from the Republican establishment and donors for the 2020 election have been damaged by the publication of false and fraudulent representations in the Defamatory Article.

Given the pardon issued to him by the Republican president currently in office, it seems unlikely his reputation suffered any damage from these incorrect statements. If anything, it only further damaged the reputation of these publications, at least in the eyes of Arpaio supporters (which presumably includes a sizeable percentage of Republican voters).

Arpaio managed to survive hundreds of self-inflicted reputational wounds during his years as sheriff, so it's a bit of a stretch to claim three "fake news" sources have done anything more than further cement his reputation as a martyr to the cause.

Arpaio also claims this has damaged his reputation within the law enforcement community. Again, it seems unlikely to have budged the needle there either. Law enforcement agencies tend to view the press with the same suspicion Arpaio does and probably agree the ex-sheriff was persecuted rather than prosecuted.

Nevertheless, there's potential money to be made. And Klayman, representing Arpaio, isn't above using a federal lawsuit as soapbox. At times, the complaint [PDF] more resembles a transcript of a YouTube monologue than a statement of facts and allegations.

Defendants are aware of these prospective business relationships and thus, given their malice and leftist enmity of Arpaio sought to destroy them with the publication of the subject Defamatory Publications.

Defendants published the Defamatory Publications to influence the RNC, the RNCC and affiliated political action committee and persons, and other donors, to withhold funding for Plaintiff Arpaio’s 2020 political campaign by smearing and destroying his reputation and standing in his law enforcement, government and political community.

Plaintiff Arpaio has been harmed as to his reputation as “America’s Toughest Sheriff” and financially by the publication of the Defamatory Article.

[insert fire emoji]

While it's true publications got the facts wrong, Joe Arpaio is an extremely public person. This raises the bar he must meet to succeed in this lawsuit. While the publications may have been careless in incorrectly noting the level of the offense that Arpaio was convicted for, that's not nearly enough to secure a favorable ruling.

The difference between convicted felon and convicted misdemeanant probably doesn't mean much when placed in the totality of Arpaio's recent history. Arpaio was convicted of contempt and spent part of the last decade being investigated by the DOJ. Add this to his long history of civil liberties violations and refusal to adhere to court orders, and the difference between a felony conviction and a misdemeanor is a rounding error.

Arpaio's reputation has been leaking hit points for a long time, but it has never affected his popularity with his presumed voter base. The rest of America may hate "America's Toughest Sheriff," but his supporters can't get enough of him. Three mistakes by three publications is unlikely to have caused $300-worth of damage to the ex-sheriff's Senatorial chances, much less $300 million. Some people are just defamation-proof and it's a good bet Joseph Arpaio is one of them.

Arpaio's welcome to waste the court's time and his own money claiming the "fake news" media dinged his rust bucket of a reputation, but he's not going to be happy when the court apprises him of the above facts. The problem is these three publications will have to spend some money of their own defending against a seriously weak lawsuit. With the DC circuit having decided it doesn't need to apply the District's own anti-SLAPP law to federal cases, it's likely the defendants will be stuck with covering their own costs, even if they prevail. On top of that they'll have to deal with an opposing counsel with a penchant for pissing off judges and treating the courtroom like a heated Periscope broadcast. It's a waste of everyone's time and money but Klayman's. I'm pretty sure he didn't take this on contingency.

The law remained on the books unaltered. Thanks to legislative inaction, the law is still capable of being abused. Since the Appeals Court didn't declare the law unconstitutional, or even this application of it, it has taken another federal court decision nearly a decade later to straighten this out. (h/t Courthouse News Service)

The ruling [PDF] deals with two First Amendment cases. One deals with activists recording cops. The other deals with another set of activists -- James O'Keefe's Project Veritas -- and its secret recording of Democratic politicians. The specifics might be a bit different, but the outcome is the same: recording public officials is protected by the First Amendment. The state law is unconstitutional.

Consistent with the language of Glik, the Court holds that Section 99 may not constitutionally prohibit the secret audio recording of government officials, including law enforcement officials, performing their duties in public spaces, subject to reasonable time, manner, and place restrictions.

That just reiterates Glik's findings. The Massachusetts federal court goes further, though:

The Court declares Section 99 unconstitutional insofar as it prohibits audio recording of government officials, including law enforcement officers, performing their duties in public spaces, subject to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions. The Court will issue a corresponding injunction against the defendants in these actions.

The court also points out the state government's response to the Glik ruling was wrong. The ruling did not limit itself to "openly" recording public officials. It said the First Amendment protected the recording of public officials performing public duties whether or not government officials knew they were being recorded.

In October 2011, the bulletin was accompanied by a memo from the Commissioner citing the Glik decision. The memo instructs officers that “public and open recording of police officers by a civilian is not a violation” of Section 99. The cover memo for the May 2015 recirculation “remind[s] all officers that civilians have a First Amendment right to publicly and openly record officers while in the course of their duties.”

[...]

But Glik did not clearly restrict itself to open recording. Rather, it held that the First Amendment provides a “right to film government officials or matters of public interest in public space.”

The court says siding with the government's interpretation would just result in more bogus arrests under the state's wiretap law.

But the training materials go beyond telling officers when it is impermissible to arrest; taking a narrow construction of Glik, they also communicate that it is permissible to arrest for secretly audiorecording the police under all circumstances. In other words, it gives the green light to arrests that, as the Court holds below, are barred by Glik.

This ruling should put an end to that. You'd think the last ruling would have done the job, but despite the Appeals Court never ruling that secret recordings of public officials were illegal, the state decided to interpret the decision this way, leading directly to the lawsuits requiring the record to be set one more time, seven years down the road.

We've got another panel discussion from the Lincoln Network's Reboot conference this week, all about the law on everyone's minds lately: Section 230 of the CDA. The debate includes law professor Eric Goldman, the EFF's Corynne McSherry, and Dr. Jerry A. Johnson from National Religious Broadcasters, offering up a wide spectrum of opinions on Section 230 and political bias.

Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes or Google Play, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

Last week, we published a series of posts by Mike Godwin looking at Our Bipolar Free Speech Disorder And How To Fix It (check out part one, part two, and part three). But with a topic like this, there's always more to dig into, so this week we've got Mike Godwin joining the podcast to take a closer look at his ideas about free speech in the digital era.

Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes or Google Play, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

The person bringing the lawsuit is Marion Hammer, the first female president of the National Rifle Association. A frequent target of online criticism, hate mail, and harassment, Hammer decided to sue a handful of her many, many detractors. The lawsuit [PDF] alleges an ongoing campaign of harassment and cyberstalking engaged in by the four defendants.

The suit was filed in July. Three of the four defendants failed to respond. The fourth, Lawrence T. "LOL" Sorensen, responded with a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. Sorensen argued his communications with Hammer were protected speech. The judge agrees. In Robert Hinkle's short decision [PDF], the judge reminds Hammer that the First Amendment protects a lot of speech people don't like, even when it's targeting them.

Mr. Sorensen sent Ms. Hammer two emails, each transmitting one or more photographs showing injuries from gunshot wounds. Sending these unsolicited to anyone, even a public figure who advocates gun rights, was inappropriate, indeed disgusting. As Ms. Hammer correctly notes in response to the motion to dismiss, “there are limits on how people can treat those with whom they disagree.” Or at least on how people should treat those with whom they disagree. Emails like these should not be sent in a civilized society.

That does not mean, though, that emails like these can be made criminal or even tortious. Tolerating incivility, at least to some extent, is a price a nation pays for freedom. There is no clear line between incivility, on the one hand, and effective advocacy, on the other. Turning loose a legislature, judge, or jury to ferret out incivility would deter and even sometimes punish the robust public discourse that is essential to freedom—the public discourse whose protection is the main object of the First Amendment.

The judge notes that simply finding someone else's behavior unseemly isn't a federal case, especially not when First Amendment rights are on the line. He notes Sorensen never threatened Marion Hammer "explicitly or implicitly" when he sent her photos of gunshot wounds. All the email said was "Thought you should see a few photos of handiwork of the assault rifles you support." The second was along the same line, noting that the attached photo of a dead John F. Kennedy showed the damage done by an "outdated military rifle" and that today's rifles were far more powerful and "far more destructive."

The court reminds Hammer the First Amendment doesn't work the way she wants it to work. If the First Amendment only protected polite discourse, it would be useless. Not only that, but the sending of gunshot wound photos to an advocate of gun ownership is not harassment or cyberstalking. It's a discussion of a matter of public interest, even if the discussion is largely one-sided.

The photographs were germane to the policy debate that Ms. Hammer regularly participated in and Mr. Sorensen apparently sought to join. Sending these photographs, at least in these circumstances, was not tortious. And treating them as tortious would violate the First Amendment.

As Adam Steinbaugh notes in his follow-up tweet, it would be nice to have a federal anti-SLAPP law in place to deter lawsuits like these. If Hammer felt she may have to pay Sorensen's legal fees for bringing a misguided lawsuit against him, she may have decided to leave him out of it. Now, Sorensen's out time and money for doing nothing more than engaging in protected speech.

The cutoff date to ensure delivery by Christmas with standard shipping is December 11th for US orders and December 4th for international orders! Rush shipping is also available in some locations for an extra fee, pushing the deadline to December 19th.

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(1) A journalist called upon to ask a question will ask a single question and then will yield the floor to other journalists;

(2) At the discretion of the President or other White House official taking questions, a follow-up question or questions may be permitted; and where a follow up has been allowed and asked, the questioner will then yield the floor;

(3) “Yielding the floor” includes, when applicable, surrendering the microphone to White House staff for use by the next questioner;

(4) Failure to abide by any of rules (1)-(3) may result in suspension or revocation of the journalist’s hard pass.

Basically, the White House seems to be setting itself up with the absolute bare minimum framework that it could kinda-sorta claim constitutes viewpoint-neutral due process the next time it wants to kick out a reporter. Functionally the rules don't seem to change much, since who gets the floor at White House press conferences has always ultimately been at the discretion of the person at the podium, but this formalizes the threat of pass revocation for those who don't play nice enough for Trump's tastes. Though many reporters are (rightfully) speaking out against the clear anti-press tone of the rules, and (correctly) pointing out that followup questions are one of the most critical components of good journalism, the reality is that this just puts things in a holding pattern until the next time Trump kicks someone out.

For one thing, the rules don't actually address any of the due process requirements set out in Sherrill v. Knight and expanded on by the judge's TRO restoring Acosta's pass, so the entire fifth amendment question still falls to how these rules get enforced:

The court in Sherrill held that this process must include notice, an opportunity to rebut the government's reasons and a written decision. And ... although the court in Sherrill did not have occasion to address it, when an important interest is at stake and when the government is able to provide this process before deprivation, it generally must do so.

Moreover, simply stating that the president has discretionary power doesn't eliminate the first amendment issue. Again, it will come down to how that power is used — specifically, whether it's used for viewpoint-based discrimination. If there is another incident and another legal challenge, these rules won't change much, and something like CNN's initial first amendment argument could easily still apply:

Defendants' justifications for impeding Plaintiffs' First Amendment rights are hollow and hardly sufficiently compelling to justify the indefinite revocation of Acosta’s White House credentials. Consequently, the only reasonable inference from Defendants’ conduct is that they have revoked Acosta's credentials as a form of content- and viewpoint-based discrimination and in retaliation for Plaintiffs' exercise of protected First Amendment activity.

The sole justification for Defendants’ conduct is their dislike for Plaintiffs’ coverage of the administration and critique of the President. But that is insufficient to justify such a substantial restriction on Plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights.

Meanwhile, in the full statement laying out the new rules, Sarah Sanders laments that they were created with "a degree of regret" and are only necessary because they can tragically no longer rely on "a set of understood professional norms."

If only they cared so much about presidential norms.

Charter Spectrum, the nation's second biggest cable operator, has been trying to embrace this argument a lot lately as it fights off state lawsuits for terrible service. It recently tried to use the First Amendment card again in a legal battle with Byron Allen's Entertainment Studios Networks (ESN), which recently accused Charter of violating the Civil Rights Act of 1866 by refusing to carry TV channels run by the African-American-owned ESN.

While Charter tried to have the suit dismissed by claiming that the First Amendment prohibits such claims because an ISP enjoys "editorial discretion," the ruling (pdf) by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit didn't agree. The court noted that while ISPs and cable companies do enjoy some First Amendment protection, it doesn't apply here, just like it didn't apply in the net neutrality fight:

"As part of its defense, Charter had told the court that by choosing which channels to carry, the company was engaging in a form of editorial discretion protected by the First Amendment. Therefore, it said, the court would have to use a stricter standard to evaluate Entertainment Studios’ claim of a legal violation — a standard that might result in the claim being rejected.

The Ninth Circuit said otherwise, saying that just because Charter engages in corporate speech when it selects which channels to carry does not “automatically” require the court to use the tougher standard.

As a result, the court is letting the case move forward. For its part, ESN's discrimination complaint alleges that its complaint is based on more than just having its channel withheld from the company's cable lineup:

"The opinion on Charter’s motion to dismiss also marks a victory for the 25-year-old programming firm founded by comedian Byron Allen, which bought the Weather Channel in March and accused Charter executives in court of hurling racist insults at Allen and other black Americans in numerous encounters. In one alleged instance, Charter chief executive Tom Rutledge called Allen, who is black, “boy” at an industry conference and advised him to change his behavior, according to court documents. In another alleged example, the court said, Charter’s senior executive in charge of programming, Allan Singer, approached a group of black protesters outside Charter’s offices to tell them to “get off of welfare."

Consumer groups like Public Knowledge were quick to applaud the ruling, happy to see another effort to "weaponize" the First Amendment shot down. The district court will now proceed to determining whether Charter did engage in racially discriminatory conduct.

"Holding us accountable for absolutely anything violates our free speech" rights was historically something telecom lobbyists often just throw at a wall in a bid to see if it sticks. But these efforts have escalated in the last few years. For example FCC staffers under Ajit Pai, at this point nearly indistinguishable from big telecom lobbying efforts, have even tried to claim that community-run broadband (an organic, voter-approved response to terrible service) is a threat to free speech, a charge there's absolutely zero supporting evidence for.

It's a legal argument giant ISPs have also embraced more recently in large part because they hope that new Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who bought into some of these arguments during previous net neutrality battles, will ultimately be a deciding vote should many of these battles wind their way to the Supreme Court. So far, however, these efforts haven't worked out all that well, and while that's not likely to change when the net neutrality court fight kicks off next February, it could be an important issue should that fight make its way to the highest court in the land.

Last week I wrote about the case that CNN and its reporter Jim Acosta had filed against the White House for the removal of his press pass over some trumped up claims that he had "assaulted" a White House intern (he did not, he simply resisted returning the microphone to her after she attempted to grab it from him). As we noted, the removal of the pass was clearly based on the content of his questioning and it seemed fairly obvious that the White House would lose the lawsuit, especially based on the existing precedent in Sherrill v. Knight, which gave CNN clear basis under both the 1st Amendment and the 5th Amendment.

Perhaps not surprisingly, a bunch of Trump supporters quickly ran to the comments to screech at me about how wrong and biased I was against them. Let's be clear: this is bullshit. I would have written the same article had Obama removed the press pass of a Fox News reporter under identical circumstances (and, frankly, the Trump supporters here should learn to think beyond their obsession with defending "dear leader" in everything he does, because the same rules will apply when other Presidents are in charge, and they may not always like it in the other direction). The Constitutional elements here are pretty clear. The White House is allowed to set non-content-based rules for who gets a press pass, but once they do that, they absolutely cannot remove a press pass for anything having to do with content, and they can't simply make up rules to remove someone without any form of due process.

The judge in this case, Timothy Kelly, (who, we'll note, was appointed by Trump, even though it shouldn't make a difference), moved quickly on this case, issuing a temporary restraining order on the White House and ordering it to return Acosta's press pass Friday afternoon. The basis for his ruling from the bench was the 5th Amendment due process question, noting that there was no clear reason at all given by the White House:

the government must provide Mr. Acosta due process if it is to revoke his hard pass. Accordingly, the likelihood that the plaintiffs succeed on the First -- on the Fifth Amendment claim hinges on whether the government provided adequate due process to Mr. Acosta. The court in Sherrill held that this process must include notice, an opportunity to rebut the government's reasons and a written decision. And all the court -- although the court in Sherrill did not have occasion to address it, when an important interest is at stake and when the government is able to provide this process before deprivation, it generally must do so. There is no evidence that one of the few exceptions to this rule would apply here such as some kind of emergency. So I do hold that plaintiffs have demonstrated a likelihood of success on their claim that adequate process was not provided to Mr. Acosta. Indeed, whatever process occurred within the government is still so shrouded in mystery that the Government could not tell me at oral argument who made the initial decision to revoke Mr. Acosta's press pass -- his hard pass.

Now, it is true that the public and Mr. Acosta were eventually provided two things. First, explanations as to why his hard pass was revoked through Ms. Sanders's tweets; and a written statement of explanation, apparently prompted by this litigation, but given their timing and their lack of connection to Mr. Acosta's opportunity to rebut -- which we'll talk about in a moment -- these belated efforts were hardly sufficient to satisfy due process.

Of course, in typical White House fashion, members of the Trump Administration have continued to trip over each other to make the dumbest statement possible in response to all of this, some of which mean that CNN has already gone back to court in this case, and it's going to continue. First, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders made the following nonsense statement:

"...the court made clear that there is no absolute First Amendment right to access the White House."

Except... that's not what the court said at all. The court actually said that reporters absolutely are protected by the 1st Amendment once they are given a press pass, but that it was premature to rule on the 1st Amendment question when the 5th Amendment procedural question could be dealt with first.

Then the President himself stepped in with more nonsense claiming:

"We want total freedom of the press."

Uh, no you don't. You're constantly whining about the press, threatening them and their revenue sources, or threatening to "pull" some non-existent licenses. And, of course, Trump then went on to misstate what Kelly's ruling said:

But you have to act with respect when you're at the White House, and when I see the way some of my people get treated at news conferences, it's terrible. So we're setting up a certain standard, which is what the court is requesting.

No, the court is requiring (not requesting) due process, which is not that you get to make up new rules to kick out reporters who are asking you questions you don't like (or even ones who are grandstanding). And, reporters don't need to "respect" the President. Indeed, it's better if they don't, because their role is to challenge the President and to ask tough questions that no administration likes.

Then, over the weekend, things got even more ridiculous, with the White House telling Acosta they plan to remove his press pass again once the 14 day temporary restraining order is up, and arguing that this is part of their due process to get around the 5th Amendment issues:

After CNN won a temporary restraining order on Friday, forcing the White House to restore his press pass for 14 days, White House officials sent Acosta a letter stating that his pass is set to be suspended again once the restraining order expires.

From the looks of the letter, the W.H. is trying to establish a paper trail that will empower the administration to boot Acosta again at the end of the month.

Of course, as Julian Sanchez points out, telling a reporter ahead of any process that you'll be removing his press pass would seem to be evidence of your own lack of due process, so this might get rejected on 5th Amendment grounds again (while still avoiding the 1st Amendment questions, which would likely go against the White House as well...).

The letter itself is quite ridiculous. It still says that they're planning to remove the press pass for his actions back at the November 7th press conference, when the court already made clear that the White House had no legitimate reason to do so based on that conference.

In response to this, CNN has already gone back to court, saying that this retrospective due process is not nearly enough. They ask for a hearing as quickly as possible to deal with the White House making this move.

Either way, this whole fight seems particularly stupid, and one that the White House simply cannot win in any court other than the one of Trump's super fans insisting that everything the President does must be perfectly correct. It is not. It is unconstitutional. And the sooner Trump's kneejerk fans recognize that Trump can and does make mistakes, the sooner they can get back to actually respecting the Constitution they now only pretend to support.

Perhaps ironically, this puts Donald Trump on the same team, legally, as the people he repeatedly insists are "the enemy of the people." His lawyers, of course, don't mind the double standard and have been quick to correctly wrap themselves in the First Amendment to try to get the lawsuit dismissed. This is the proper result.

Unfortunately, Trump derangement syndrome means that otherwise competent people keep searching for a "but, Trump... " exception to the 1st Amendment. Over at Just Security, two former Obama White House lawyers -- Bob Bauer and Ryan Goodman -- try to argue the case for why the 1st Amendment doesn't protect the Trump campaign in this case. The crux of their argument is that the campaign was a lot more involved in seeking damaging information, rather than just passing it around once it had been leaked.

It is on fundamental factual distinctions between Bartnicki and the Trump case that the campaign’s First Amendment theory founders.  Unlike Bartnicki’s radio host, the campaign is not free of involvement in illegal activity. It did not merely comment on what the Russians and WikiLeaks conspired to make public. It willfully engaged with both the Russians and WikiLeaks in both the pursuit and the publication of the stolen emails—actions that bump up against clear prohibitions in federal campaign finance law. Foreign nationals may not contribute or spend funds to influence an American election, and, crucially, a U.S. political campaign cannot assist or act in coordination with foreign electoral intervention.

We know that the Russians were peddling assistance to a receptive campaign, that the campaign learned as early as April 2016 that Russians possessed stolen emails, th... Jr. advised the Russians on when to release derogatory information (“later in the summer”), that the Russian hacking operation continued long after the Russians first made contact with and were greeted receptively by the campaign, that the president himself publicly encouraged the Russian government to locate the so-called “missing“ Clinton emails, and that Russian spies quickly followed by trying to hack Clinton’s personal email. There are also reports that the Russians may have previewed the plan to disseminate the emails before ever doing so.  For the purposes of the ongoing civil suit, those allegations alone rob the campaign of its current defense.

But those paragraphs make a ton of assumptions, often without enough evidence to back it up. But much, much, much worse is the following paragraph that Bauer and Goodman put in, claiming that the media shouldn't be concerned about the 1st Amendment impact of this case:

There is misplaced concern that a defeat for this First Amendment defense puts media protections at risk. Federal campaign finance regulation supplies useful guidance here: It exempts standard journalistic activity, but denies those protections to conduct outside the “legitimate press function.” It is clear from disclosures by an internal WikiLeaks critic and other materials that Julian Assange targeted Hillary Clinton and sought to work with the Trump campaign and the Russians to secure her defeat. This is not a “legitimate press function.” And the conflation of Wikileaks’ plan of campaign attack with standard journalistic activity undermines important distinctions critical to the protection of the free press.

That paragraph is frightening and should worry anyone who believes in the 1st Amendment's protections for the press. These lawyers are basically arguing that they get to decide what is and what is not a "legitimate press function" and that working with a campaign automatically makes it not a legitimate press function. As Glenn Greenwald notes, there's a viable argument that under the description that Bauer and Goodman lay out here someone could just as easily argue that Vox or MSNBC aren't protected by the 1st Amendment either:

Some will argue that there are differences of degree and level of cooperation, but even if that's true (and it's not clear that it is), you've already wiped out the basic 1st Amendment protections because now every media outlet will need to argue, over and over again, whether or not any of its activity counts as "a legitimate press function." That would create massive chilling effects, and is a standard that could be easily abused.

Hell, just to bring this all back around, it doesn't take a stable genius to figure out what President Trump would start doing if he could argue the 1st Amendment doesn't apply to publications engaged in things that are "not a legitimate press function." And, incredibly, the DNC seems to want to hand him this very power. It's mind-boggling.

Dan Froomkin has an excellent reply to the Bauer/Goodman piece. He agrees that there may be some violations of the law buried in everything, but lumping in Wikileaks (even as he calls Julian Assange's recent activities "despicable") here is an attack on the basic 1st Amendment protections for journalists. Even if you dislike Trump massively, supporting these arguments is an attack on the press that will come back to bite everyone by handing the government and others a tool to argue that certain press activities are somehow not protected for not being "a legitimate press function."

Well, that meeting happened this past week, and everybody is still seriously pissed off.

Student organizations demonstrated their issues with Iowa State’s administration for its implementation of a new trademark policy at a meeting Thursday evening.  For the immediate future, Student Government wants an apology from the university and an immediate block on the enforcement of the policy. They have alternate plans of action if this deliberation works out poorly.

Woodruff, other members of Student Government and organization presidents agreed that acts of protest like wearing trademarked clothing and sending emails to university officials were encouraged. Student Government also talked to Student Legal Services regarding a possible lawsuit on using the First Amendment as a basis for suit.

For the second time in a couple of years, ISU might find itself the subject of a First Amendment lawsuit brought against it by its own students. Given its track record and the insane amount of money it had to pay out the last time, it would be flatly insane for the school to allow things to get the point of a lawsuit. But, then, this is ISU we're talking about.

One of the chief issues the student government has is that the administration apparently has tried to cut them out of the process at every turn.

One issue that Student Government had with the process is the lack of transparency. Woodruff said they have not been able to produce any documentation, including the email that was sent out to club organization presidents, Regent or Big 12 policies that may have prompted the new university measures. In addition to this, he said the meetings that the university had about this subject originally were not public and did not have any minutes recorded.

“Things are getting worse, not better,” Woodruff said. “This fuse is getting shorter and shorter.”

And that's not a good sign for the school, given the threat of a possible lawsuit on the horizon. Adding to much of the anger is that much of the iconography and mascot imagery the school uses, and is attempting to control through its trademark policy, were student creations from long ago. To turn the trademark policy like a gun on its own student groups could pretty much only lead to anger.

It's a full on mystery why the school doesn't just scrap this altogether and agree to work with its students on a sane trademark usage policy. Perhaps doing so would end this, ahem, cyclone of dissent.

A few New York lawmakers are reacting to the horrific Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with a gun control bill that makes zero sense. Expanding on criminal background checks, these legislators are hoping to give law enforcement the opportunity to dig through gun buyers' online history.

Eric Adams, the president of Brooklyn Borough, and state Senator Kevin Palmer are currently writing the proposed legislation, which would give law enforcement authorities the power to check up to three years of an individual’s social media accounts and internet search history before they are allowed to buy a gun, WCBS Newsradio 880 reported. One of the main aims is to identify any hate speech shared by the users, as the politicians noted that such offensive comments are generally only discovered after mass shootings occur.

The facile explanation for this ridiculous piece of legislation is this: somehow the Pittsburgh shooter might have been prevented from buying a gun because he posted anti-Semitic content to a social media platform.

This premise will only make sense to those incapable of giving it more than a superficial examination. First off, gun ownership is Constitutionally-protected, whether these legislators like it or not. It doesn't make sense to abridge someone's rights over social media posts, even if the posts contain bigoted speech. That speech is also protected by the Constitution, so combining the two simply doubles the chance the law will be struck down as unconstitutional. Plenty of people engage in ignorant bigotry. Not all of them are would-be criminals.

This law would treat every gun buyer as a suspected criminal who may only take advantage of their guaranteed rights by engaging in government-approved speech. That's completely the wrong way around. This Brooklyn lawmaker doesn't seem to understand this inversion even when he directly, if inadvertently, addresses it.

“If the police department is reviewing a gang assault, a robbery, some type of shooting, they go and do a social media profile investigation,” the borough president pointed out.

Yes. But in these cases, a criminal act has occurred and an investigation is warranted. This legislative proposal treats gun buying as a crime and people's social media history as some weird form of evidence. That's fucked up, no matter how you might feel about the Second Amendment. Lots of shitposting and venting can look dangerous if viewed solely in the context of finding a reason to deny someone a gun.

Then there's the still unaddressed question of what law enforcement is supposed to do if it decides someone's social media posts are worrying enough they should be denied gun ownership. Are officers supposed to head out and arrest this person for being aggressively racist? Is that where this is headed? Are these legislators actually going to enable literal policing of speech?

And how is this supposed to be accomplished? Would potential gun buyers be forced to relinquish account info and passwords to ensure law enforcement is able to see everything purchasers have posted?

These are all worrying questions, none of which anyone involved with this bill seems to have answers for. Sure, it's still early the legislative process, but these lawmakers are speaking about it publicly using specious reasoning and inapt comparisons. This suggests they like the idea they've had, but haven't really thought about it past the point of "the Pittsburgh shooter posted racist memes, therefore this would definitely work."

This quote, given to the New York Post, adds more words but no more clarity. And it certainly doesn't do what Eric Adams claims it does:

Adams said the bills take the First Amendment right to free speech and the Second Amendment right to bear arms into the equation.

“We’re not talking about a person advertising ‘I hate a particular elected official. I hate a policy that’s passed,’” Adams said. “If there’s something that a law enforcement officer of a reasonable mind reviewed that shows this person does not hold the mental capacity to own a gun, then he should not be able to get a permit. We should use the same standard that determines whether a police officer can carry a gun.”

It doesn't take either of those rights into account. It simply says police will now be allowed to view three years of social media history (along with search history from Google, Yahoo, and Bing) to determine gun ownership eligibility. All Adams says is it won't be used to punish certain protected speech. (And it will be used to punish this specific protected speech because any law that can be abused by the government will be abused by it.)

To add to surreality of the proposal, Twitter For Bigots Gab won't be included in the social media monitoring despite this being the site where the Pittsburgh shooter posted the comments these legislators point to as the impetus for this terrible legislation.

No matter how it's pitched, it all comes down to this: no Second Amendment rights for New Yorkers if they don't use their First Amendment rights in a way their government approves.

Like that time FCC boss Ajit Pai tried to claim that net neutrality somehow aids dictators. Or that time Pai's office just made up a DDOS attack to try and downplay massive public backlash to his historically unpopular policies. There's often no real-world data that can defend blindly kissing the rings of widely-loathed telecom monopolies, so bullshit tends to be the weapon of choice when Pai's FCC embraces whatever handout to Comcast and friends is on the menu this week.

The latest case in point: during a speech at the ISP-backed and scientifically-sounding Media Institute, FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly took a moment to broadly declare that community owned and operated broadband providers are an "ominous" threat to free speech:

"I would be remiss if my address omitted a discussion of a lesser-known, but particularly ominous, threat to the First Amendment in the age of the Internet: state-owned and operated broadband networks."

We've long noted how community broadband networks are often an organic response to the expensive, slow, or just-plain unavailable service that's the direct product of a broken telecom market and regulatory capture. While you'll occasionally see some deployment duds if the business models aren't well crafted, studies have shown such networks (there's 750 and counting now in the States) offer cheaper, faster service than many incumbents. This direct threat to incumbent revenues is a major reason why ISP lobbyists have passed protectionist laws in more than 21 states trying to block your town's ability to even consider the option.

If you thought O'Rielly would provide hard evidence of these networks' "ominous" affront to free speech, you'd be mistaken. The closest O'Rielly gets to evidence is a 2015 white paper crafted for an ISP-funded think tank claiming that because these ISPs' TOS include routine language restricting harassment and hate speech (language every private ISP also includes in their TOS and AUP), community-run ISPs' are more likely to censor user speech:

"The closest O’Rielly gets to supporting evidence appears to be a 2015 white paper written by Professor Enrique Armijo for the ISP-funded Free State Foundation. That paper similarly alleges that standard telecom sector language intended to police “threatening, abusive or hateful” language somehow implies community-run ISPs are more likely to curtail user speech."

Of course the implication is that government-run networks must be bad because hey, it's the government. Forgotten in this false narrative is the fact that on the local level, the government is obviously you and I, and these networks are a direct, democratic response to decades of frustration at the obvious failures of the telecom market. And if you talk to folks that actually have some expertise on this subject (like I did over at Motherboard), they'll tell you that because these ISPs actually have a vested interest in the communities they serve, they're far more responsive to user complaints:

"Municipal broadband experts say the argument has no basis in fact.

"There is no history of municipal networks censoring anyone's speech,” Christopher Mitchell, a community broadband expert and Director of the Institute for Local Reliance, told Motherboard.

“In our experience, the Terms of Service from municipal ISPs have been similar to or better than those of for-profit ISPs in terms of benefiting subscribers,” he added. “And when concerns have been raised about related issues...the municipal ISPs have listened to public sentiments far more than any large cable or telephone company has."

O'Rielly also fails to mention that incumbent ISPs like Comcast routinely argue that absolutely everything the public demands of it (from expanding broadband to adhering to net neutrality) violate its First Amendment rights (an argument new Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh has already supported). Whereas municipally-run ISPs likely won't be allowed to tap dance around First Amendment lawsuits as government-linked entities mandated to avoid speech regulation.

But the biggest irony here is that one of the ISPs targeted by O'Rielly for non-existent free speech violations is EPB broadband in Chattanooga, which was just ranked by Consumer Reports as one of the best ISPs in the nation in terms of value, speed, and service quality. Comcast tried to unsuccessfully sue EPB out of existence. And as long as we're getting vexed about your rights, both AT&T and Comcast also lobbied legislators to pass a law in Tennessee restricting voter-approved broadband networks like these from expanding, even if voters approve it at the ballot box.

Ultimately, Chattanooga's service forced these ISPs to do the one thing they had been hoping to avoid: compete on both service speed and price. That's not to say local-government owned broadband should be the only solution embraced, but it's obviously one of several ways you can actually prod lumbering, pampered mono/duopolies to actually give a damn.

And of course that's the real problem in O'Rielly's mind: that locals would dare impede on Comcast's god-given right to buy itself a geographical monopoly over an essential service, nickel-and-diming consumers until they grew so frustrated they're forced to get into the broadband business themselves.

Of course ISPs could prevent this by simply offering better, faster, and cheaper service. But it's far easier and cheaper to try and buy laws restricting consumer rights, and to have your favorite public official mindlessly demonize something that is, at the end of the day, a legitimate, organic public response to a broadband competition and availability problem ISPs like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast would prefer regulators ignore.

"... the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of freedom of the press."

As we pointed out in that article, if you're a journalist hiring such a firm -- and a bunch of the #MeToo journalists have done so -- to try to stifle stories from other publications, it would suggest you're an incredible hypocrite. Journalists thrive on the First Amendment. If you're a journalist threatening to stifle others' free speech, you're a hypocrite.

Enter Breitbart. Because, of course it would be Breitbart. According to a Daily Beast article, Breitbart has hired Clare Locke to threaten a group of people who have been advocating for advertisers to drop their ads from Breitbart. I should say up front, that I think all of these attempts to push advertisers to drop ads is actually pretty silly. It's mostly symbolic and rarely has a real economic impact. It's just a silly game of tit for tat.

But, according to the letter written by Clare Locke's other partner, Thomas Clare, asking advertisers to stop advertising could be "unfair, fraudulent and deceptive." From the letter:

I write on behalf of my client, Breitbart News Network, LLC. As you of course know, Breitbart has been the target of a months-long smear campaign by the online activist group “Sleeping Giants.” It has recently been revealed that you are a founder and leader of this group. My client is considering potential legal action against you, and we therefore demand that you preserve and retain certain documents in your possession that may be relevant to potential civil claims.

These include potential claims concerning unfair, fraudulent, and deceptive practices intended to cause Breitbart economic harm. We believe that Sleeping Giants has sought to deceive the public and, in particular, purchasers of online advertising, by making false, deceptive, and disparaging claims about Breitbart and the news content it publishes — including, among other things, accusing Breitbart of distributing “anti-Semitic” propaganda, of promoting “white supremacy,” and of being a “neo-Nazi propaganda” website. Sleeping Giants has directed these and similar deceptive and misleading statements to companies that purportedly purchase advertisements appearing on Breitbart’s website — and has encouraged its members and others to do the same — in an effort to drive advertising revenue away from Breitbart, and to solicit donations and sell Sleeping Giants’ branded merchandise.

The letter goes on to angrily deny that it is any of those things (while also plugging the fact that the White House Chief of Staff reads it). It then goes on to concoct quite a fascinating conspiracy theory, arguing that "Sleeping Giants" is really designed for "commercial interests" because many of its founders apparently work in the ad tech business. How that creates any commercial advantage isn't exactly clear at all. It just implies that this somehow is a fraudulent practice.

Although, as stated above, the group and its organizers have long attempted to conduct these tortious actions behind a veil of anonymity, a recently-published article identified you, Matt Rivitz, as the founder of Sleeping Giants and the acknowledged proprietor of its social media accounts. That same article noted that you have long worked in online marketing and advertising. Notably, after your identity was involuntarily disclosed through investigative reporting, you claimed that you hid your identity and role with Sleeping Giants as an act of humility in order to “keep this about the mission rather than the individuals involved.” But your past, conflicting explanations for hiding your identity tell a different story. For example, in January 2017, an individual identified only as a Sleeping Giants “founder” — who cited biographical details specific to you — told the New York Times that Sleeping Giants was conducting its campaign targeting Breitbart’s advertisers anonymously because “some members of the group work in the digital-media industry.” Similarly, in March 2018, a Sleeping Giants “spokesman” acknowledged to GQ that “the people behind Sleeping Giants” elected to remain anonymous because they “work in marketing-related fields” and their targeting of online advertisers “might be perceived as creating some kind of conflict of interest.” These frank admissions, made at a time when you and your supporters in the ad tech world expected their identities to remain a secret, are extremely revealing and hint at a hidden and improper commercial motivation behind Sleeping Giants’ deceptive practices targeting Breitbart. It appears that the reason you and your backers did not want their identities known was because it would have revealed their shared economic interests and deceptive practices.

These unfair, fraudulent, and deceptive practices may give rise to civil liability both for you and the members of the online advertising and ad tech worlds that you coordinated with. These potential claims include, but certainly are not limited to, claims relating to violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law (Business and Professions Code Sections 17200, et seq.), fraud, violation of the Lanham Act, tortious interference with contract, and tortious interference with prospective economic advantage.

I'm trying to figure out what exactly the "shared economic interests" are in getting companies to stop advertising on a site? It seems that a much more logical (and obvious) explanation for why the Sleeping Giants folks wanted to remain anonymous was because working for an ad tech company while supporting advertising boycotts actually goes against their economic interests, and might make their own employers kinda pissed off. But, this letter assumes the exact opposite, without any actual explanation.

It then asks Rivitz to preserve all sorts of stuff, including communications with an insanely long list of individuals, organizations and companies -- including a bunch of Breitbart critics.

This seems like a pretty blatant intimidation tactic. And while the letter, hilariously, claims that this threat is really "about Sleeping Giants’ desire to stifle speech that does not adhere to its narrow liberal politics," it's hard to see how you can claim that when the whole point of the letter appears to be to stifle the speech of people asking for advertising boycotts.

And, of course, asking for advertising boycotts is pretty common on both sides of the traditional political divide. In fact, it's not difficult at all to find a whole host of Breitbart articles happily reporting on campaigns to pull ads from news orgs deemed "liberal." Separately, I'll note that it's fascinating to see a subtle shift in tone when Breitbart reports on similar campaigns targeted at Breitbart allies. Those stories suddenly talk about "liberal outrage," "liberal fascism," and "corporate warfare attacks from the left." Oddly, those earlier stories about removing ads from CNN, MSNBC, TBS and NBC don't have any of that kind of language. Indeed, they seem to focus on whatever "outrageous" thing done on those stations that lead to pressure to remove ads. Must be a coincidence, huh?

So, to be clear: ad boycotts are overrated, but if people want to do them, it is their First Amendment protected speech to call for such boycotts, no matter what the reason, no matter what their politics and no matter how silly. Threatening those who exercise their First Amendment speech in such a way with a lawsuit, however, is not supporting free speech. It is bullying censorial intimidation tactics, and Breitbart should be ashamed (if such a thing were possible). The site regularly likes to whine about liberals and universities stifling free speech, but apparently has no problem at all trying to stifle the speech of people who ask its own advertisers to stop advertising on the platform.

Either way, all this red team, blue team bullshit is getting pretty annoying. Silly people who identify as either left or right wing (which is a stupid designation anyway) will do stupid things. And silly people on the other side will generalize and stereotype based on those things, while doing the exact same things themselves. But, seriously, stop freaking out about one "side" doing the exact same thing your side is doing and then coming up with all sorts of silly rationalizations for why it's okay when your side does it, but a horrific violation of the law when the other side does it.

Most obviously, the First Amendment is what has allowed for Radley Balko's reporting of the story. Speaking truth about power is only possible with strong press protection. By allowing injustice to be discovered and shared, justice becomes possible. With Balko's reporting the public at large can now be aware of the abuse being done in their name, and the revelation is what will allow people to press for change. As it is, publication of the story has already led to charges being dropped against one of its other victims.

Victim Roderick Talley's own First Amendment rights also made a difference, and in several ways. One important way is that they gave him the right to film the world around him, and that let him record the police's abuse, which provided him with compelling evidence to use in his pursuit of justice.

The complex where he currently resided had recently put out a notice to residents to be on the alert for break-ins. So Talley bought a security system to monitor both the inside and outside of his apartment. About a week before the raid, the outdoor camera picked up some strange activity outside Talley’s apartment. As he sat handcuffed while police officers rifled through his belongings, he began to make the connection. The outside camera had recorded two odd incidents. First, a man whom Talley didn’t know approached the apartment while Talley wasn’t home. Looking anxious, the man knocked, waited a few moments and then left. A few days later, the camera picked up a police officer outside the door. The officer looked around, snapped a photo of Talley’s door with his cellphone, and left. .

[…]

After reading the affidavit, Talley went back to check the camera footage of his mysterious visitor from the previous week. “Sure enough,” he says. “The dates matched up. And nobody else came to my apartment that day.” The informant described in the affidavit was the same man Talley’s camera had recorded knocking on his door, waiting and then leaving. Talley wasn’t home at the time. The account given by the detectives and informant was false. And Talley had the video to prove it.

His access to public records was also critical. Through them he was able to discover patterns of abuse affecting not just him but his fellow citizens.

In the months after his own raid, Talley filed open-records requests for every warrant and affidavit involving the detectives who handled his case. He then expanded out and asked for warrants related to other officers on the drug unit.

In those records was also another important piece of information: the informant's mugshot. Remember the story here about mugshots? The one about how people were arrested for having posted these completely public records, simply because they made the editorial decision about which ones to post based on a profit motive? This story shows why it is so important that they be public records that the public has ready access to. Because with the mugshot Talley was able to figure out what had happened to him and others. A name on a search warrant application is an abstraction; but with the picture he could compare the affidavit to his security camera footage to spot the lies.

Over the ensuing weeks, Talley scoured Facebook and Instagram. He talked to residents of the apartments and the surrounding neighborhood. He started watching the Arkansas courts website for cases that looked similar to his. He eventually found a mug shot of the informant. The man who falsely claimed to have purchased cocaine from Talley is a nine-time felon whose criminal record includes nine convictions for theft and another five for burglary. He has also been convicted for giving a false name to police officers after an arrest, for filing a false police report, and, while behind bars, for writing a death threat to a police officer, forging another inmate’s signature on the threat, and then reporting the threat in exchange for reducing his own charges.

The mugshot also helped him compare notes with other victims, some of whom remembered seeing the informant lurking around the neighborhood.

Talley found Davis’s case late last year on the Arkansas courts site. After contacting Davis, Talley showed him a photo of the informant. “Oh, that was him,” Davis says. “That was the guy who came to my apartment. He has what you might call a unique look. You don’t forget a guy like that.” The informant told the police that Davis sold him cocaine. The police found only pot, a scale, Davis’s gun, bullets and the registration for his gun.

And then there was social media. Not only did it help him figure out what had happened by letting him find posts and pictures from others' affected, but it gave him a forum to speak out about what had happened to him, and to reach out to other affected community members – er, at least until he was censored by Facebook for having posted public information about the state actors who had abused him…

He also continued to use social media to publicize his case and reach out to others who may have been raided. He says he was at one point suspended from Facebook for posting the officers’ identities, photos and contact information, though Talley insists this was all public record.

His First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of his grievances is also what allowed him to sue for the violation of his other rights. The city tried to seal all the records associated with the case, but fortunately a judge refused to allow that impingement of his First Amendment rights to add to the list of constitutional injuries.

In response to the lawsuit, the city’s first move was to ask a judge to seal the search warrants, affidavits and everything else Talley had found — including Talley’s own security camera videos. Laux and Crump fought the motion and won. Talley had obtained all of that information from his own cameras or from public records. The city couldn’t then bar him from sharing or publishing it.

Because Talley's story, and the records evidencing it, are able to remain in public view, we are able to learn about a renegade police force running around one of America's cities, unfettered by the constitutional limitations put on police power. Fortunately knowledge is power, and thanks to the First Amendment we can start to fight back.

First up is the President issuing an executive order about raising postal rates in retaliation against Jeff Bezos and Amazon, because Bezos (not Amazon) owns the Washington Post, and the Washington Post has been doing pretty strong reporting in revealing all sorts of Presidential misdeeds.

Defendant Trump has repeatedly threatened to use the U.S. Postal Service (“Postal Service”) and its rate structure to retaliate against Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post (also referred to as “the Post”), whose coverage he dislikes.

On April 12, 2018, he followed through on his threats by signing an Executive Order directing the Postal Service to review its rates. This Order, on information and belief, was aimed at Bezos’s company, Amazon, and was motivated by Defendant Trump’s displeasure at the reporting of Bezos’s other company, the Washington Post.

From the beginning of his campaign for President, Defendant Trump has repeatedly attacked the Post for its coverage of him, calling it biased, fictitious, and “a disgrace to journalism.” In a 2016 interview, he called the Post “a political instrument” that was writing “bad” and “wrong” stories “with no proper information,” and accused its reporters of writing a “false” book about him. He has routinely called the Washington Post “fake news” and personally attacked its writers.

During his presidency, when the Washington Post published unflattering stories about the inner workings of his Administration, Defendant Trump frequently responded with pointed denunciations of the accuracy of the Post’s work. On April 8, 2018, for example, after the Post ran a story about John Kelly’s frustrations as Chief of Staff, Defendant Trump tweeted: “The Washington Post is far more fiction than fact. Story after story is made up garbage - more like a poorly written novel than good reporting. Always quoting sources (not names), many of which do not exist. Story on John Kelly isn’t true, just another hit job!”

Defendant Trump has turned his ire over the Washington Post’s coverage into a vendetta against its owner Bezos, targeting Bezos’s main asset, Amazon, by issuing a series of threats to take governmental action that would harm Bezos and Amazon, and which were eventually acted upon.

During his campaign, Defendant Trump repeatedly threatened future action against Amazon, regularly tied to objections over the Post’s coverage. On information and belief, he did this to signal to Bezos and Amazon shareholders that he could – and would – use his official powers to adversely impact Amazon’s tax status and subject it to antitrust enforcement. As candidate Trump put it at a rally on February 26, 2016, while referring to Bezos and Amazon: “If I become president, oh do they have problems. They’re going to have such problems.”

There's a lot more along those lines... and then it talks about Trump's threats concerning the postal rates:

On December 29, 2017, following a Washington Post story on the Administration’s internal deliberations on how to handle “worries of a tough year ahead,” and a satirical end-of-year piece entitled “Was 2017 the end of something or just the beginning,” Defendant Trump tweeted that the Postal Service should be charging more to deliver Amazon’s packages: “Why is the United States Post Office [sic], which is losing many billions of dollars a year, while charging Amazon and others so little to deliver their packages, making Amazon richer and the Post Office dumber and poorer? Should be charging MUCH MORE!”

On information and belief, Defendant Trump has since repeatedly been told by his staff that his assertions about Amazon’s harmful impact on the Postal Service are incorrect, but he continues to repeat them.

Defendant Trump recently renewed and escalated his threats of action against Amazon following unflattering reporting in the Washington Post detailing the damage done to Trump’s family businesses by allegations involving adult film actress Stormy Daniels and Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 election. Defendant Trump repeated his false claims about costs to the Postal Service and his threats to raise Amazon’s shipping rates. Once again, he left no doubt that his motivation was animus against the Post, again calling it a “lobbyist” and “weapon” for Bezos.

In a series of tweets from March 29, 2018 to April 3, 2018, Defendant Trump made repeated false statements about Amazon and issued repeated threats to raise its postal shipping rates. Over the course of these threats from President Trump, Amazon sustained a $60 billion dip in market value.

On information and belief, Defendant Trump’s attacks on Amazon were motivated by animus toward Bezos and the Washington Post on account of its coverage of him and his Administration. For example, in an April 13, 2018 article by Maya Kosoff, Vanity Fair quoted White House sources as saying that President Trump “has zero respect” for the Washington Post and wants to “[f--k] with” Bezos as a result.

On April 12, 2018, Defendant Trump followed through on his retaliatory threats, issuing an Executive Order directing a review of the Postal Service’s “unsustainable financial path.” The order included several provisions directed at Amazon, including an order to review the “expansion and pricing of the package delivery market.”

On information and belief, President Trump had by this time repeatedly and personally directed the Postmaster General to raise Amazon’s rates.

Even during the pendency of the review, Defendant Trump continued to threaten further action against Bezos and Amazon and linked his motivation clearly to the Washington Post’s coverage. On July 23, 2018, immediately following reports in the Post that President Trump was unhappy with the progress of talks with North Korea, the President tweeted that “[t]he Amazon Washington Post has gone crazy against me ever since they lost the Internet Tax Case in the U.S. Supreme Court,” i.e. South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. He then renewed his threats to take antitrust action against Amazon and to raise its postal delivery rates. President Trump tweeted “Next up is the U.S. Post Office [sic] which they use, at a fraction of real cost, as their ‘delivery boy’ for a BIG percentage of their packages. . . In my opinion the Washington Post is nothing more than an expensive (the paper loses a fortune) lobbyist for Amazon. Is it used as protection against antitrust claims which many feel should be brought?”

On October 11, 2018, the Postal Service announced proposed rate hikes for its services, to include rate increases of up to 12 percent for the Parcel Select service used by Amazon. On information and belief, this action by the Postal Service would not have been taken but for the President’s clearly expressed desire to punish Amazon for the reporting of the Washington Post.

This really seems like a case where Trump's own words and tweets could potentially sink him. Normally, it would be pretty difficult to directly link something like raising postal rates on Amazon to direct retaliation for coverage in the Washington Post, but as the complaint lays out, because Trump himself has directly (incorrectly) argued that Amazon and the Washington Post are the same, and that the effort to raise rates was to punish Bezos and the Post, it seems like there's a stronger argument here.

The larger issue may be standing. There appear to be strong arguments here for the Washington Post and possibly Bezos himself and/or Amazon to have better standing, but PEN America is a tougher one. The organization tries to get around this by arguing that its members write for the Washington Post and that this has the potential to harm them. That seems like the key point that will be challenged in court. If they can get over the standing question, then it seems like they have a strong argument, mainly because Trump can't keep his mouth shut.

The second issue seems like more of a long shot to me. It's about the DOJ's effort to block the AT&T takeover of Time Warner (that effort has mostly failed). PEN America's suit argues that the DOJ's antitrust enforcement here was really about Trump's well-known animus towards CNN. And he did sometimes mention the merger, as detailed in the complaint:

Defendant Trump has done far more than exercise the right to make known his dislike of CNN’s reporting. At a rally during the 2016 campaign, Defendant Trump threatened to block a proposed merger between Time Warner, CNN’s parent company, and AT&T, once he gained control of the DOJ, and made clear his retaliatory motive for doing so. On October 22, 2016 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, he denounced the AT&T–Time Warner merger, telling his audience that CNN was part of the media “power structure” trying to suppress his votes. “AT&T is buying Time Warner and thus CNN,” Defendant Trump said, declaring it “a deal we will not approve in my administration.”

Once in office, Defendant Trump followed through on this threat. On information and belief, during the pendency of the AT&T–Time Warner merger review process, advisers to President Trump discussed using the merger approval application as “a potential point of leverage over [CNN].”

On information and belief, DOJ demanded the sale of CNN as a condition of its approval of the merger, leading a source close to the merger process to opine that “[t]his has become political . . . It’s all about CNN.”

This claim seems much weaker than the first. To be clear, it has the same standing issues as the first, but even if we get past those, vague threats to use antitrust action here doesn't mean that's actually what happened. Obviously, the discovery process here would be a big deal, and perhaps they can turn up a smoking gun. But there were plenty of legitimate antitrust reasons to block this merger, so the direct causal line here does seem tough to prove.

Separate from that, however, are threats to use DOJ enforcement powers against Google and other social media companies over the (made up) claim of political bias in search and recommendations. Here, as we've argued, the DOJ appears to be directly positioning the First Amendment-protected moderation and ranking decisions of internet companies as some sort of anti-trust violation. That's clearly in violation of the First Amendment, and the PEN America complaint highlights this as well:

Defendant Trump’s threats to use the DOJ to influence the flow of information to the public is not limited to CNN. On August 28, 2018, he complained, via Twitter, that:

Google search results for ‘Trump News’ shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of . . . results on ‘Trump News’ are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!

Hours later, White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow, standing outside the White House, threatened that the Trump Administration is “taking a look” at imposing regulations on Google.

On September 5, 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced his intention to convene a meeting of Republican state attorneys general to discuss a possible federal investigation of whether Google, Facebook, and other social media companies are violating antitrust and free speech laws.

On September 22, 2018, the White House leaked a draft Executive Order that would instruct federal law enforcement and antitrust agencies to open investigations into social media companies. This leak was intended to, and did, have a negative market impact on these companies. The intent of leaking this information was to show these companies and other speakers the President dislikes that his White House has the power to significantly injure them with a simple leak if it dislikes their content. The intent of leaking this information was also to incentivize investors to pressure these companies to modify their content to be more to the liking of the President in order to avoid retaliatory actions that could impact the investors’ bottom line.

Once again, the standing issue is a big one here that may be difficult for PEN America to get past. But this kind of activity has clear First Amendment problems. We detailed out a bunch of cases that highlighted how the courts have ruled against politicians and government officials who use the power of their office to intimidate companies into publishing (or not publishing) protected speech.

Next up is Trump's semi-regular threats to "pull" the licenses from major TV networks over negative coverage of his Presidency. He does this every so often even though there aren't any such licenses to pull. Even networks like NBC, ABC and CBS have local licenses for their affiliates, but not a general license for their parent companies -- and Trump can't "pull" those non-existent licenses anyway.

Minutes later, Defendant Trump followed that tweet with another threatening NBC’s broadcast license. “With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!”

Later the same day, Defendant Trump broadened his threat to more outlets: “Network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked. Not fair to public!”

Beyond the standing question (again), the issue here will be the lack of action. It's just Trump venting stupidly on Twitter, and again such licenses don't even exist. Obviously, PEN's argument here is that the local affiliate licenses do exist, and these threats to pull general licenses may be interpreted by them as a threat to pull the local licenses -- and that could impact and influence coverage at the local level. But... that seems like much more of a stretch than the other claims.

Next up are attempts to limit the access of White House reporters to information in the White House.

Defendant Trump’s behavior in denying journalist critics access to information from the White House and about his Administration is a pattern dating back to his campaign. Prior to the election, on August 25, 2015, Defendant Trump had Jorge Ramos, Univision’s lead anchor, removed from a press conference after Ramos tried to ask Defendant Trump a question about immigration policy.

While on the campaign trail, Defendant Trump barred reporters from several news organizations, including the Washington Post, from obtaining press credentials at his rallies, news conferences, and other events.

As President, Defendant Trump has continued to threaten journalists whose coverage or questioning he found unfavorable to him or his Administration with revoking their access to official Administration and White House events.

On information and belief, Defendant Trump has repeatedly directed White House staff to ban reporters critical of his Administration from covering official events or to take away their press credentials. This included reporters from the Washington Post, CNN, and NBC News, and Defendant has specifically told his staff to consider blacklisting Jim Acosta of CNN and April Ryan of the American Urban Radio Networks in retaliation for their coverage, of which he disapproves.

Again, there's a standing issue here, and I'm a bit surprised PEN America didn't find a journalist to be a co-plaintiff at least on this claim, as that would make it stronger. Beyond that, there are some questions about what standards the White House uses in favoring some journalists over others, that could potentially raise some First Amendment issues. If the decisions are specifically based on their coverage and if it's positive or negative, then there's a stronger case there. The White House, of course, will likely suggest there are other reasons for limiting access to certain journalists.

In the end, this should be an interesting First Amendment case to follow, though I do think the standing question will be a tough hurdle for PEN America, without specifically naming individuals or organizations directly harmed by these actions (some of which do appear to raise big First Amendment questions).

"I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they spent a whole lot more. I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about.'"

Of course it's this kind of thinking that is the reason why we support stronger anti-SLAPP laws and, in particular, a federal anti-SLAPP law to protect people from having to deal with potentially life-ruining defamation lawsuits from those better positioned to handle them. Of course, this is also why we figure that any movement on a federal anti-SLAPP law is dead in the water while Trump is still President. Given his comments on moving libel laws in the other direction, it seems unlikely he'd ever sign such a bill.

But... Trump just won a defamation lawsuit filed by Stormy Daniels, and it was because of a strong anti-SLAPP law in Texas, that might now allow him to go after legal fees as well. Of course, there have been moments when Trump has recognized that "opening up our libel laws" might come back to bite him. As he said in a NY Times interview, when asked about opening up libel laws:

Actually, somebody said to me on that, they said, ‘You know, it’s a great idea, softening up those laws, but you may get sued a lot more.’ I said, ‘You know, you’re right, I never thought about that.’ I said, ‘You know, I have to start thinking about that.’

And now that Trump has successfully used an anti-SLAPP law to get out of a lawsuit, perhaps he'll be a bit more open to the idea of anti-SLAPP laws as well.

This particular lawsuit, brought by Stormy Daniels, represented by Michael Avenatti, was always an incredibly stupid lawsuit that Trump was obviously going to win. There are a bunch of legal disputes and arguments among these two, but just to clarify, back when Daniels was on 60 Minutes, she claimed that she had agreed to tell her story of her affair with Trump back in 2011, but was allegedly threatened in a Las Vegas parking lot:

Then in 2011, after she had agreed to tell her story to In Touch magazine for $15,000, Daniels said she was threatened by a man in a Las Vegas parking lot who warned her to "Leave Trump alone. Forget the story."

Sometime after this, Stormy Daniels had a sketch artist sketch the man she said approached her in Las Vegas. Some Trump supporters noted what they believed to be an uncanny similarity between the eventual sketch and Daniels' ex-husband, and tweeted this. Trump then retweeted one such tweet along with the following text: "A sketch years later about a nonexistent man. A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!"

And it's that tweet that Daniels/Avenatti sued over. Again, this was clearly going nowhere. That tweet is not at all defamatory under the 1st Amendment. In his defense, Trump, who was represented by Charles Harder*, filed an anti-SLAPP motion, arguing that Trump was protected under Texas' anti-SLAPP law, that the case should be dismissed, and that Trump should be awarded attorneys' fees. And the court easily agreed.

* Big disclaimer here: Harder is at this moment representing a plaintiff in a still ongoing lawsuit against me personally (as well as Techdirt), claiming defamation, and in which we made a motion using California's anti-SLAPP law. In the Trump case, however, it is Harder/Trump making use of anti-SLAPP laws (in this case, Texas') and I agree with Harder and Trump that this claim was a SLAPP suit and am glad the case was dismissed.

In their motion for the anti-SLAPP dismissal, Harder argued that Trump's tweet was clearly protected by the First Amendment, and thus the anti-SLAPP law should lead to the dismissal of the case. Frankly, I think Harder makes a very strong argument here:

Here, the Comment nowhere implies that President Trump has any special information or insight as to what did or did not happen in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011. Rather, he gives an opinion that he does not find Plaintiff’s account credible. This is constitutionally-protected and therefore nonactionable, especially because the Comment arose from a public dispute between a major politician and one of his adversaries.

It does not matter that the President used strident language (“nonexistent,” “con job,” and “fake news”) in expressing his opinion doubting the veracity of Plaintiff’s allegation rather than using more genteel terminology. Rhetorical hyperbole is not actionable as defamation. Neely v. Wilson, 418 S.W.3d 52, 83-84 (Tex. 2013). Courts throughout the United States have routinely held that terminology similar to that used by the President is constitutionally protected opinion and non-actionable. See e.g., McCabe v. Rattiner, 814 F.2d 839, 843 (1st Cir. 1987) (“scam” not defamatory); Oilman v. Evans, 750 F.2d 970, 987 (D.C. Cir. 1984) (en banc) (political columnist labeling a political figure a “Marxist” not defamatory); Letter Carriers v. Austin, 418 U.S. 264, 282-83 (1974) (use of term “scab” in labor dispute not defamatory); Buckley v. Littell, 539 F.2d 882, 893-94 (2d Cir. 1976) (labeling political writer a “fascist” not defamatory); Greene v. State, 21 So.3d 348, 352 (La. App. 2009) (labeling state employee “pathological liar” not actionable).

Any finding by the Court that the Comment has a defamatory meaning and is not protected opinion could have a chilling effect on political debate throughout the United States forever. Politicians frequently express their opinions about their political adversaries, often in strident and blunt terms. In 1964, for instance, Lyndon Johnson ran an advertisement that implied his opponent, Barry Goldwater, would start a nuclear war. John Kennedy campaigned against incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon in 1960 based on claims of a “missile gap” with the Soviet Union that turned out to be grossly misleading. Bill Clinton allegedly misstated the budget deficit in his 1992 campaign against George H.W. Bush. None of these statements were anything more than opinions, and none could or should form the basis of a defamation suit.

Indeed, since the founding of our republic, politicians have often expressed their opinions by branding their opponents as “liars.” Doing so does not subject every such politician to a defamation claim. President Trump himself has expressed his opinions regarding multiple adversaries, sometimes referring to his opponents by colorful names such as “Lyin’ Ted” and “Crooked Hillary.” A defamation standard that turns typical political rhetoric into actionable defamation would chill expression that is central to the First Amendment and political speech.

It's a strong argument. And the judge easily agreed, noting that the tweet was clearly rhetorical hyperbole:

The Court agrees with Mr. Trump's argument because the tweet in question constitutes "rhetorical hyperbole" normally associated with politics and public discourse in the United States. The First Amendment protects this type of rhetorical statement.

"It is well settled that 'the meaning of a publication, and thus whether it is false and defamatory, depends on a reasonable person's perception of the entirety of a publication and not merely on individual statements." See Bentley v. Bunton, 94 S.W.3d 561, 579 (Tex. 2002) (quoting Turner v. KTROK Television, Inc., 38 S.W. 3d 103, 115 (Tex. 2000)). To assess whether a statement is "rhetorical hyperbole," this Court looks to the statement "as a whole in light of the surrounding circumstances and based upon how a person of ordinary intelligence would perceive it."

Furthermore:

The instant case is similar to Rehak in that Mr. Trump, as President, made a hyperbolic statement against a person who has sought to publicly present herself as a political adversary to him. In filings before this Court, Ms. Clifford has challenged the legitimacy of Mr. Trump's victory in the 2016 Presidential election. Mr. Trump's tweet served as a public rejoinder to allegations made by Plaintiff. If this Court were to prevent Mr. Trump from engaging in this type of "rhetorical hyperbole" against a political adversary, it would significantly hamper the office of the President. Any strongly-worded response by a president to another politician or public figure could constitute an action for defamation. This would deprive this country of the "discourse" common to the political process. In short, should Plaintiff publicly voice her opinions about Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump is entitled to publicly voice non-actionable opinions about Plaintiff. To allow Plaintiff to proceed with her defamation action would, in effect, permit Plaintiff to make public allegations against the President without giving him the opportunity to respond. Such a holding would violate the First Amendment.

And thus, in the end, Trump wins his anti-SLAPP ruling and can now move to seek legal fees if he so chooses. Of course, Avenatti -- in a now deleted tweet -- called the ruling "limited":

It is not, in any way, limited. It is the proper application of Texas' anti-SLAPP law to a bogus defamation claim which Avenatti himself admits is part of an effort to cost Trump more money through the other lawsuits Avenatti has going against Trump. Soon afterwards Avenatti posted that he had already appealed the ruling to the 9th Circuit appeals court:

He and Daniels will almost certainly lose this appeal and Trump will almost certainly win. But the real question is whether or not this helps Trump recognize the value of strong anti-SLAPP laws. It seems like now would be a good time for Congress to finally move on the federal anti-SLAPP law, while reminding Trump that it may have just saved him a bunch of money...

A resident of Hamilton, Texas, posted a political sign in her front yard composed of a white label board remix of political cartoonist Ann Telnaes' remix of the GOP logo.

Here's the original:

And here's the sign that was, until recently, in homeowner Marion Stanford's yard:

As one does in this age of social media telegraphy, outraged parties brought this to the attention of a local politician with a sizable following -- Texas Ag Commissioner Sid Miller -- who dumped his own petrol on the partisan bonfire by posting it to Facebook and calling it an example of "Democrat sleaze." He also claimed the picture was supposed to be "Judge Kavanaugh's young daughter" -- a claim made without supporting evidence but with the amplification of 738,000 Facebook followers.

Shortly thereafter, Marion Stanford began receiving threats. Unfortunately, this is the predictable part of the backlash. Stanford also received a visit from local law enforcement, which was a bit less predictable. But they weren't there about the threats. They were there about the sign, as the Dallas Morning News reports.

Tuesday evening, she said, police came to her house and said they had received complaints.

“Police told me to remove the sign or they would take it and would arrest me,” Stanford said. “So I let them take the sign.”

This claim has been denied by the city, which issued this statement via the city manager.

The city manager of Hamilton, which is about 100 miles southwest of Fort Worth, denied that police mentioned arrest or forcibly took the sign.

“It’s political season, and a citizen here placed a yard sign that featured a political animal taking an inappropriate position with a young child,” Pete Kampfer said. “A police member visited the owner’s home, and the owner asked the officer to take the sign.”

This denial is more than a little weird. First off, even if officers did not mention arrest, they said something that caused her to hand over the sign to them. The police had no business being there in the first place, so their presence is completely inexplicable… or is at least something the city manager isn't willing to explain.

Second, the whole sentence starting with "it's political season" makes zero sense. "Political season" or no, the sign was protected expression the government had no business interfering with. The addition of "taking an inappropriate position with a young child" suggests the city -- and possibly the police -- are no smarter than the idiot commenters on Sid Miller's page who claim the picture is pretty much child porn. It isn't and only someone hoping to see someone punished by the government for protected speech would make this claim. That group apparently includes the city manager.

This is lawsuit bait. Even if the police did not threaten arrest, officers did visit a citizen to discuss protected expression -- protected expression that ended up being removed by police officers and taken to the station. Whatever the chain of events, it makes everyone involved at the government level look bad. There was no reason to visit, much less take the sign. Even if the homeowner offered to give it up, officers shouldn't have been there to ask the question, much less take her up on her offer.

Other cops have argued the hand gesture that pissed them off so much they broke the Constitution is some sort of universal distress signal. The ensuing interaction wasn't about being offended, but rather their outsized concern someone in the vehicle might be in need of assistance. Courts have found this argument literally unbelievable.

In this case, the cop being sued made no such argument. Instead, Officer Wayne Minard maintained he had probable cause to pull Debra Cruise-Guylas over again because he had only issued a warning about her speeding. The court doesn't agree with this assessment. It points out Guylas had already been pulled over for speeding. The citation ultimately issued by Officer Minard may have been for impeding traffic, but the purpose of the original stop was fulfilled when the citation was issued. No further violation had occurred when Minard pulled Guylas over a second time. From the decision [PDF]: (h/t Adam Steinbaugh)

The evidence before the Court included a state court record that established the Plaintiff had received and paid a ticket for impeding traffic. [...] While Defendant could have, at that time, issued a ticket for speeding, he did not. It was only after the initial stop had been completed, and Plaintiff drove off and "flipped the bird" that Defendant stopped her a second time without any legal justification.

Also, the cop's lawyer wasn't much help:

[A]t the September 21, 2018 hearing, Defendant's counsel conceded: "No doubt the gesture helped -- it probably was the foundation for the change of his [Defendant's] mind" [to implement a second stop] … "I can't argue around that, your Honor."

The court notes there's plenty of precedent on point that says officers can't detain people for offending them. The lawsuit proceeds and Officer Minard will have to deal with the unpleasant outcome of his idiotic actions.

The Constitution may cover giving officers the finger, but that doesn't mean officers won't make you miserable for exercising your First Amendment rights. Sure, you may gain some satisfaction from the courts, but you'll be out a lot of time and money. This isn't to say self-censorship is the way to go, but there are real costs attached to exercising your freedoms if you happen to anger the wrong [sigh] "public servant."

Government employees can violate rights in mere seconds and defend against allegations using someone else's money. Citizens don't have that luxury, which is why stupid shit like this continues to happen. A better cop would have let it go, costing no one anything. Officer Minard isn't one of those cops, and his willingness to abuse the power entrusted to him should be a major concern to his employers.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions opened the meeting by raising questions of possible ideological bias among the tech companies and sought to bring the conversation back to that topic at least twice more, according to D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine.

Of course, the fact that the others in attendance mostly pushed past the question of political bias isn't exactly good news for the internet platforms, as the AGs apparently focused on other ways they could and should target the companies:

“We were unanimous. Our focus is going to be on antitrust and privacy. That’s where our laws are,” Jim Hood, Mississippi’s attorney general, said in an interview.

Of course, it seems like almost journalistic malpractice to quote Jim Hood talking about going after social media platforms without mentioning the fact that he was the centerpiece of a the conspiracy by the top movie studios to attack Google with nonsensical complaints about illegal things he found while doing searches on Google. If you don't recall, the Sony hack revealed a plot by the legacy movie studios to have their lawyers effectively run an investigation for Jim Hood -- and even the NY Times revealed that his eventual subpoena to Google was written by the MPAA's lawyers. A judge reviewing Google's legal fight with Hood noted that it seemed pretty clear that Hood's actions were done in "bad faith." So... consider me at least marginally skeptical that Hood is an objective voice on what is and is not appropriate for a state Attorney General to investigate regarding the big internet platforms.

Obviously, if there are real antitrust violations, then that's a valid issue to explore. But, so many of the attacks themselves seem to be a hell of a lot more "politically biased" than any of the claims about how the internet companies themselves are politically biased.

And while there was some talk about the privacy practices of the various platforms (which, while they may be concerning, it's not clear how any of them violate any laws...), some of the talk also involved an astounding incomprehension of the encryption discussion. And, for that, we'll go back to Jim Hood again:

For other states, the issue was the tech industry’s relationship with law enforcement. That included talk about Apple and “how we in law enforcement depend on cellphones.” Hood said that Apple has “waved at us and didn’t use all their fingers” in its handling of encryption.

That is not at all an accurate portrayal of what happened. Apple was making sure that everyone's information was safe by using strong encryption. The FBI sought to undermine that safety by demanding that Apple make a massive, and very dangerous, change to its software.

Indeed, it's quite incredible for Hood to bring this up in the context of the AGs discussing "privacy" concerns about how the big tech companies handle data. If you want them to protect data, you want them to use strong encryption. Yet, here, Hood is whining that Apple dared to actually protect people's privacy.

So... if tech companies actually protect people's privacy with strong encryption, they get yelled at and threatened with legal action by Attorneys General. And if they don't protect people's privacy... they get yelled at and threatened with legal action by Attorneys General. Just what exactly are they supposed to do?

Again, it is entirely possible that these companies have violated various laws. Perhaps they're in violation of antitrust laws, though the evidence there is lacking so far. But, from everything that's been said coming out of this meeting, it does not inspire much confidence that there are reasonable and objective reasons for taking legal actions against these platforms. Instead -- and this is all too typical for state AGs -- there appears to be a lot of grandstanding and bluster without much substance.

Late last week, we signed onto a detailed letter put together by the think tank TechFreedom, explaining why this meeting is so problematic.

We write to express our concern over your plans to convene a meeting of state attorneys general later this month “to discuss a growing concern that [operators of popular social media services and search engines] may be hurting competition and intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas on their platforms.” The First Amendment bars the government from attempting to “correct” the first alleged problem, political bias, including through the antitrust laws, and sharply limits how the antitrust laws can be used against anticompetitive behavior beyond editorial bias. Essentially, antitrust law can prescribe anticompetitive economic conduct but “cannot be used to require a speaker to include certain material in its speech product.” … For all these reasons, we are skeptical that there are any grounds for legal action that could arise out of your inquiry.

The letter also highlights why the very idea of a "fairness doctrine" for the internet is Constitutionally impossible, not to mention ridiculous, given that the push for it is coming from the very same Republicans who have spent years falsely "warning" that the Democrats wanted to bring back a "fairness doctrine" for broadcast TV.

A Fairness Doctrine for the Internet Would Be Unconstitutional. The President and top congressional Republicans have talked about the need to ensure the “fairness” of social media platforms and search engines. Consciously or otherwise, this invokes not antitrust law but the “Fairness Doctrine” imposed on radio and television broadcasters by the Federal Communications Commission from 1949 until 1987. In theory, the Fairness Doctrine required broadcasters to represent a wide spectrum of opinion on controversial issues of public importance. The Supreme Court upheld this Doctrine in Red Lion (1969) — but only because it declined to extend the full protection of the First Amendment to broadcasters on the grounds that they received government licenses to use a scarce public resource: the airwaves. Five years later, the Court categorically rejected mandating that newspapers offer a right of reply.

Anything like the Fairness Doctrine would undoubtedly be struck down as unconstitutional if applied to any other media — whether to Fox News (the cable network) or Internet media....

Ironically, it was conservatives who led the fight to repeal the Fairness Doctrine over four decades — because it hurt conservatives most: The threat of losing an FCC license discouraged broadcasters from including non-mainstream voices in their coverage and made impossible alternative media offerings with an unabashed conservative “bias.” Indeed, it was President Reagan’s FCC that repealed the Fairness Doctrine in 1987.

The letter, targeted at Jeff Sessions repeatedly reminds him how such a tool might be used in the other direction as well:

The last thing conservatives should want is a Democratic administration with such arbitrary power (or a Republican administration, for that matter). A Warren administration, say, could use such powers to coerce existing social media sites and search engines to disadvantage conservatives (in the name of neutrality and fairness, and stopping “fake news,” of course) and also to prohibit the “Facebook for conservatives” network recently called for by Donald Trump, Jr.

It's quite incredible that we're even discussing this. A fairness doctrine doesn't make any sense, and is broadly unconstitutional for a whole host of reasons. What's bizarre and troubling is how quickly those who like to wear blue or red uniforms like to rush to it as soon as they feel one area of the media is "biased" against them, not recognizing how it would clearly be used in other areas of the media as well.

While it appears that Sessions' gathering with Attornerys General will happen, hopefully all it serves to do is remind them all that the First Amendment exists, and that they are Constitutionally prohibited from messing with how online platforms present content.