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Faith and truth still matter.

So said the Virginia Supreme Court in siding with a public school teacher who criticized his county school districts transgender policy for violating his religious beliefs.

The case involved Tanner Cross, a phys ed teacher who in May told the Loudoun County School Board that his faith precluded him from calling students by their chosen preferred pronouns as a proposed district policy mandated.

I love all of my students, but I would never lie to them regardless of the consequences, Cross told the board back in May. Im a teacher, but I serve God first and I will not affirm a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa because its against my religion, its lying to a child, its abuse to a child, and its sinning against our God.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, the state Supreme Court turned thumbs down on the argument by Loudoun County that student comfort and mental well-being trump the First Amendment.

While LCPS respects the rights of public-school employees to free speech and free exercise of religion, the school district had argued, those rights do not outweigh the rights of students to be educated in a supportive and nurturing environment.

The district also had sought to punish Cross, but a lower court judge blocked that.

On Monday, the Virginia Supreme Court maintained that the county did not produce compelling evidence to overturn the initial ruling.

It is settled law that the government may not take adverse employment actions against its employees in reprisal for their exercising their right to speak on matters of public concern, the courts ruling said.

Cross was opposing a policy that might burden his freedoms of expression and religion by requiring him to speak and interact with students in a way that affirms gender transition, a concept he rejects for secular and spiritual reasons. Under such circumstances, Cross interest in making his public comments was compelling.

Tyson Langhofer, director of the Center for Academic Freedom for the Alliance Defending Freedom, the public-interest law firm that represented Cross, said, Teachers shouldnt be forced to promote ideologies that are harmful to their students and that they believe are false, nor should they be silenced for commenting at a public meeting.

The lower courts decision was a well-reasoned application of the facts to clearly established law, as the Virginia Supreme Court found, he added.

Yet the case is not over.

The School Board last month approved the policy that Cross objected to back in May. Now, the ADF says, it has amended its lawsuit because two other teachers have come forward to object.

Because Loudoun County Public Schools is now requiring all teachers and students to deny truths about what it means to be male and female and compelling them to call students by their chosen pronouns or face punishment, we have moved to amend our lawsuit to challenge that policy on behalf of multiple faculty members, Langhofer said.

Public employees cannot be forced to contradict their core beliefs just to keep a job.

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Virginia Supreme Court Says Teacher Was Within His First Amendment Rights To Reject Gender-Pronoun Policy - The Free Press

In addition to the drastic restrictions it places on a womans reproductive and medical care rights, the new Texas abortion law, SB8, will have devastating effects on online speech.

The law creates a cadre of bounty hunters who can use the courts to punish and silence anyone whose online advocacy, education, and other speech about abortion draws their ire. It will undoubtedly lead to a torrent of private lawsuits against online speakers who publish information about abortion rights and access in Texas, with little regard for the merits of those lawsuits or the First Amendment protections accorded to the speech. Individuals and organizations providing basic educational resources, sharing information, identifying locations of clinics, arranging rides and escorts, fundraising to support reproductive rights, or simply encouraging women to consider all their optionsnow have to consider the risk that they might be sued for merely speaking. The result will be a chilling effect on speech and a litigation cudgel that will be used to silence those who seek to give women truthful information about their reproductive options.

We will quickly see the emergence of anti-choice trolls: lawyers and plaintiffs dedicated to using the courts to extort money from a wide variety of speakers supporting reproductive rights.

SB8, also known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, encourages private persons to file lawsuits against anyone who knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion. It doesnt matter whether that person knew or should have known that the abortion would be performed or induced in violation of the law, that is, the laws new and broadly expansive definition of illegal abortion. And you can be liable even if you simply intend to help, regardless, apparently, of whether an illegal abortion actually resulted from your assistance.

And although you may defend a lawsuit if you believed the doctor performing the abortion complied with the law, it is really hard to do so. You must prove that you conducted a reasonable investigation, and as a result reasonably believed that the doctor was following the law. Thats a lot to do before you simply post something to the internet, and of course you will probably have to hire a lawyer to help you do it.

SB8 is a bounty law: it doesnt just allow these lawsuits, it provides a significant financial incentive to file them. It guarantees that a person who files and wins such a lawsuit will receive at least $10,000 for each abortion that the speech aided or abetted, plus their costs and attorneys fees. At the same time, SB8 may often shield these bounty hunters from having to pay the defendants legal costs should they lose. This removes a key financial disincentive they might have had against bringing meritless lawsuits.

Moreover, lawsuits may be filed up to six years after the purported aiding and abetting occurred. And the law allows for retroactive liability: you can be liable even if your aiding and abetting conduct was legal when you did it, if a later court decision changes the rules. Together this creates a ticking time bomb for anyone who dares to say anything that educates the public about, or even discusses, abortion online.

Given this legal structure, and the laws vast application, there is no doubt that we will quickly see the emergence of anti-choice trolls: lawyers and plaintiffs dedicated to using the courts to extort money from a wide variety of speakers supporting reproductive rights.

And unfortunately, its not clear when speech encouraging someone to or instructing them how to commit a crime rises to the level of aiding and abetting unprotected by the First Amendment. Under the leading case on the issue, it is a fact-intensive analysis, which means that defending the case on First amendment grounds may be arduous and expensive.

The result of all of this is the classic chilling effect: many would-be speakers will choose not to speak at all for fear of having to defend even the meritless lawsuits that SB8 encourages. And many speakers will choose to take down their speech if merely threatened with a lawsuit, rather than risk the laws penalties if they lose or take on the burdens of a fact-intensive case even if they were likely to win it.

The law does include an empty clause providing that it may not be construed to impose liability on any speech or conduct protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, as made applicable to the states through the United States Supreme Courts interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. While that sounds nice, it offers no real protectionyou can already raise the First Amendment in any case, and you dont need the Texas legislature to give you permission. Rather, that clause is included to try to insulate the law from a facial First Amendment challengea challenge to the mere existence of the law rather than its use against a specific person. In other words, the drafters are hoping to ensure that, even if the law is unconstitutionalwhich it iseach individual plaintiff will have to raise the First Amendment issues on their own, and bear the exorbitant costsboth financial and otherwiseof having to defend the lawsuit in the first place.

One existing free speech bulwark47 U.S.C. 230 (Section 230)will provide some protection here, at least for the online intermediaries upon which many speakers depend. Section 230 immunizes online intermediaries from state law liability arising from the speech of their users, so it provides a way for online platforms and other services to get early dismissals of lawsuits against them based on their hosting of user speech. So although a user will still have to fully defend a lawsuit arising, for example, from posting clinic hours online, the platform they used to share that information will not. That is important, because without that protection, many platforms would preemptively take down abortion-related speech for fear of having to defend these lawsuits themselves. As a result, even a strong-willed abortion advocate willing to risk the burdens of litigation in order to defend their right to speak will find their speech limited if weak-kneed platforms refuse to publish it. This is exactly the way Section 230 is designed to work: to reduce the likelihood that platforms will censor in order to protect themselves from legal liability, and to enable speakers to make their own decisions about what to say and what risks to bear with their speech.

But a powerful and dangerous chilling effect remains for users. Texass anti-abortion law is an attack on many fundamental rights, including the First Amendment rights to advocate for abortion rights, to provide basic educational information, and to counsel those considering reproductive decisions. We will keep a close eye on the lawsuits the law spurs and the chilling effects that accompany them. If you experience such censorship, please contact info@eff.org.

Original post:
New Texas Abortion Law Likely to Unleash a Torrent of Lawsuits Against Online Education, Advocacy and Other Speech - EFF

SOUTHERN INDIANA A federal judge is expected to issue a ruling in a recent lawsuit filed by the new owner at Clarksvilles Theatair X against the town, ahead of a council meeting Tuesday that could affect the fate of the business.

Clarksville Ministries, a limited liability company formed Aug. 3 to reopen the recently shuttered adult business along U.S. 31, filed an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order Aug. 27 against the Town of Clarksville and its building commissioner stating that the town has not granted the company a temporary license required under town statute.

The business called for the decision to be made ahead of the Clarksville Plan Commission meeting Sept. 1 and the Clarksville Town Council meeting Sept. 7, where the council could take action with a zoning ordinance that will mean a new adult business cannot open at the same site where Theatair X has operated for 50 years.

The plan commission did vote Wednesday to recommend to the council language amendments to the town zoning ordinance related to adult businesses. Included is a change in the distance an adult business must be from other types of developments. Specifically it states that an adult business cannot be within 750 feet of other types of businesses, including the motel renovated into apartments in 2019 which is just under 750 feet away from a portion of the Theatair X building. The current zoning buffer before the potential amendment is 500 feet.

Scott Bergthold, representing Clarksville in the case, said during oral arguments Friday morning in U.S. District Court Southern District of Indiana that the zoning change would not affect the entire plat where Theatair X sits, but it would include the building itself as being too close.

He has also said that the updates are overdue, and that the town wants to protect the community against negative secondary effects of an adult business while adhering to the First Amendment, which states that they cant be zoned out of town. In the new zoning language, new adult businesses will be in one of 30 locations zoned I-1 or I-2.

The previous owner, Midwest Entertainment Ventures, Inc. (MEV), had been engaged in ongoing litigation with the town since 2019, when it filed an appeal against the town for revoking its business license. The building commissioner had taken this action after multiple zoning code violations, including sex between patrons on the premises, and a license suspension within the previous 12 months.

MEV closed up shop after on Aug. 12, a Clark County judge upheld the towns decision to revoke the business license for one year, although that action was not final and MEV still has an active provisional license. However on Wednesday, the former owner dropped the case against Clarksville.

Clarksville attorneys say the town hasnt been able to approve a temporary license because Clarksville Ministries application itself wasnt complete, and that they believed the business hadnt even closed the sales deal yet with the former owner to be able to apply. On Tuesday, the new owner was notified of the deficiencies in the application so they could be corrected.

Part of that was to include a detailed layout of the interior of the building, along with placement of light fixtures, attorneys said during oral arguments Friday morning in U.S. District Court Southern District of Indiana.

Clarksville Ministries had submitted such a document, but Clarksville representatives said it did not include details on the roughly 40 peep show booths the previous owner operated but that the new owner said the business doesnt intend to use.

Clarksville Ministries attorney Matt Hoffer said the business would not even be aware of what the application deficiencies were if not for the lawsuit being filed, and said the town had stonewalled, and that there was no reason for why the license wasnt issued, he said, adding that the inaction was retaliation by the town.

He also argued that while the town said they needed an accurate design of the interior for things such as first responders knowing where to go inside the building in case of a fire or other emergency, it wasnt something they previously had when re-issuing the license for the previous Theatair X owners.

The judge, referring to the fact that in the new zoning, the Theatair X building would be excluded by about a foot, asked Bergthold Is that by pure coincidence or is that retaliation?

Nothing that has happened is evidence of retaliation, he said.

Continued here:
Federal judge to rule on Theatair X claim before council meeting - Evening News and Tribune

Andrew P. Napolitano| Special to the USA TODAY Network

Biden COVID task force urges vaccine requirements

The White House Coronavirus task force is urging public and private sector vaccine requirements to boost vaccination rates and make headway against COVID-19. (Aug. 31)

AP

I have been writing for years asking if we still have the U.S. Constitution. That issue has come into sharper focus in the past 18 months as mayors and governors have created dictatorial powers and exercised those powers to interfere with personal autonomy in America. They have done this in utter disregard for the freedoms protected by the Constitution they have sworn to uphold by asserting that public health trumps personal liberty.

Here is the backstory.

Government is essentially the negation of freedom. If the values underlying the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights maximum personal liberty and minimal government are to be taken seriously, then we all know that government has gone so far astray as to make it unrecognizable to the revolutionaries who fought the British and the founders and framers who wrote and ratified the Constitution and its first 10 amendments.

Those underlying values are generally articulated in the first eight amendments, which restrain the government from interfering in personal liberty. The Ninth Amendment codifies that our rights are too numerous to list, and thus it requires the government to respect the natural unenumerated rights of all persons, in addition to those rights specifically enumerated.

The 10th Amendment reflects the ratifiers' public understanding that the Constitution is a compact, voluntarily entered into by sovereign states; and when they entered, they only surrendered to the federal government those powers enumerated in the Constitution, and thus they retained the powers not surrendered.

All of this was the theoretical basis and public understanding of the American experiment in the 1780s and 1790s. Of course, not all agreed with all this. Many classical liberals opposed the ratification of the Constitution for fear that a new central government would control economic activities with its own bank, fight needless wars, invalidate state sovereignty and curtail civil liberties. Their fears are now reality.

The first serious federal attack on personal liberty came in the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, which criminalized criticisms of the federal government and the administration of President John Adams. The same generation in some cases, the same human beings that had written in the First Amendment "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech" did just that a mere seven years later.

In response to the Alien and Sedition Acts, the two most prominent thinkers in America Thomas Jefferson, who had written the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison, who was the scrivener of the Constitution and the author of the Bill of Rights secretly authored the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. These manifestations of the compact theory of the Constitution were enacted into law by the Virginia and Kentucky legislatures. They declared the Alien and Sedition Acts unconstitutional in their states.

These resolutions reflected the views of many ratifiers of the Constitution that the states that formed the federal government retained the power to correct it. Stated differently, these state statutes declared the Alien and Sedition Acts which were blatant violations of the freedom of speech to be null and void in Virginia and Kentucky. The underlying value here is that because the Constitution is a voluntary compact, those states that formed it and joined it voluntarily have the sovereign power to leave it.

Nullification and secession as ideas were cast aside by the Supreme Court and by the outcome of the War Between the States. But the defeat of an idea politically, legally or even militarily cannot always bury the idea permanently. When an idea's time has come, nothing can stop it.

Jefferson and Madison believed that the Constitution protects the right to leave the government whenever it interferes with or fails to protect fundamental liberties. The very idea of secession terrifies government, whether it be the feds or the states, because if successful it diminishes government power and income.

Has the Constitution failed us?

There are two approaches to this question: A formal and a functional approach. Formally, the Constitution is still the supreme law of the land and enjoys vitality. Formally, the government the Constitution established persists in America. But functionally, as an instrument of restraint, the Constitution is an abysmal failure. The feds regulate, tax, coerce, steal and kill, and they bully the states as they see fit. Every day, some government official who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution violates it with impunity.

None of these violations short of the War Between the States has been more public, affected more people and produced more harm than the executive orders issued by mayors and governors in the name of public health. Even the states caved, as very few tried to protect the liberties that the Constitution guarantees.

It will soon get worse.

As the Biden administration grows more fearful of its inability to control the latest strains of COVID-19, it will begin to use coercive means to compel mask-wearing and vaccine administration. These so-called health measures are essentially experiments that, when administered coercively by the government, violate the letter, values and lessons of Nuremberg.

If vaccines work, why do we need masks? If masks work, why do we need vaccines? If I am a free person, why do I need the government telling me how to be healthy? If only the legislative branch of government can write laws, why do we allow mayors and governors and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to do so? If the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, how can government attack the rights the Constitution protects? If freedom is our birthright, what has become of it?

The time has come to nullify government interferences with personal autonomy by disregarding them, and to threaten seriously to leave and ignore the governments that hate our freedoms. If we don't do this, make way for voluntary servitude.

AndrewP.Napolitano, a former New Jersey Superior Court Judge,haspublished nine books on the U.S. Constitution.

Go here to read the rest:
When the Constitution fails us | Napolitano - New Jersey Herald

Bad Texas regulations could be at odds with each other. The new Texas abortion ban may contradict the mandates of social media regulation passed by the Texas Legislature. Under the mandates of the two statutes, social media platforms could be required to both take down and leave up information about abortion, Techdirt's Mike Masnick points out.

The social media lawHouse Bill 20was passed by the Texas Senate on Wednesday (the same day Texas' new abortion law took effect).

Similar to a law that was passedand blockedin Florida, H.B. 20 is designed to treat social media platforms like common carriers (such as phone and cable companies).

A "blatantly unconstitutional bill," H.B. 20 "tries to prevent social media websites from moderating content," writes Masnick. "While the bill does include some language to suggest that some content can be moderated, it puts a ton of hurdles up to block that process."

Meanwhile, the new Texas abortion law (Senate Bill 8) prohibits "knowingly engag[ing] in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion, including paying for or reimbursing the costs of an abortion through insurance or otherwise."And it allows civil lawsuits against those suspected of helping someone get an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.

The aiding and abetting provision could be construed to prohibit providing information about where to get an abortion, abortion pills, how to get funding to travel out of state for an abortion, etc.

While S.B. 8 does say "that the aiding and abetting rule should not apply to 1st Amendment protected speech," Masnick doesn't see that "making much of a difference in the long run because (1) the 1st Amendment already protects such speech so you don't need a law to say that and (2) it's unlikely to stop people from suing over speech that they claim is aiding and abetting"

The digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) also has concerns that the Texas abortion law could target speech about abortion. "In addition to the drastic restrictions it places on a woman's reproductive and medical care rights, the new Texas abortion law, SB8, will have devastating effects on online speech," warns EFF:

The law creates a cadre of bounty hunters who can use the courts to punish and silence anyone whose online advocacy, education, and other speech about abortion draws their ire. It will undoubtedly lead to a torrent of private lawsuits against online speakers who publish information about abortion rights and access in Texas, with little regard for the merits of those lawsuits or the First Amendment protections accorded to the speech. Individuals and organizations providing basic educational resources, sharing information, identifying locations of clinics, arranging rides and escorts, fundraising to support reproductive rights, or simply encouraging women to consider all their optionsnow have to consider the risk that they might be sued for merely speaking. The result will be a chilling effect on speech and a litigation cudgel that will be used to silence those who seek to give women truthful information about their reproductive options.

So what happens if someone posts to a Texas Facebook group about how or where to get an abortion after six weeks?

"Until the courts actually rule on this, we don't just have a mess, we have a contradictory mess thanks to a Texas legislature (and governor) that is so focused on waging a pointless culture war against 'the libs' that they don't even realize how their own bills conflict with one another," Masnick writes. As it stands,

Under Texas's social media lawremember "each person in this state has a fundamental interest in the free exchange of ideas and information"Facebook is expected to keep that information up. However, under Texas' anti-choice lawremember, anyone can sue anyone for "inducing" an abortionFacebook theoretically faces liability for leaving that information up.

So who wins out? Well, it should be that both bills are found to be unconstitutional, so it doesn't matter. But we'll see whether or not the courts recognize that. Section 230 should also protect Facebook here, since it pre-empts any state law that tries to make the company liable for user posts, which in theory the abortion law does. The 1st Amendment should also backstop both of these, noting that (1) Texas' social media law clearly violates Facebook's 1st Amendment rights, and (2) the broad language saying anyone can file civil suit against anyone for somehow convincing someone to get an abortion also pretty clearly violates the 1st Amendment.

In other news related to the Texas abortion ban

"An activist has made a script to flood a Texas website used to solicit information on people seeking abortions with fabricated data, according to a TikTok video from the developer and Motherboard's test of the tool," Vice reports.

The Cato Institute's Walter Olson riffs on some of the elements of the Texas abortion ban and how few of "these ways of turbocharging litigationare new techniques." Twitter thread starts here:

Dating apps Bumble and Match "are creating relief funds for people affected by a Texas law that bans abortion from as early as six weeks into pregnancy," reports TheTexas Tribune.

"The Texas abortion ban could force tech to snitch on users," warns Protocol.

Amazon's web hosting wing may start cracking down on the kinds of content it hosts. The company "plans to take a more proactive approach to determine what types of content violate its cloud service policies, such as rules against promoting violence, and enforce its removal," Reuters reports.

Over the coming months, Amazon will hire a small group of people in its Amazon Web Services (AWS) division to develop expertise and work with outside researchers to monitor for future threats, one of the sources familiar with the matter said.

It could turn Amazon, the leading cloud service provider worldwide with 40% market share according to research firm Gartner, into one of the world's most powerful arbiters of content allowed on the internet, experts say.

"I would not at all be surprised that the adequate, full regimen for vaccination will likely be three doses," top COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci said at a White House briefing yesterday.

A lawsuit accusing Twitter of sex trafficking can move forward, says a federal court. The case could portend a dangerous expansion of how courts define "sex trafficking."

The South Carolina Supreme Court says Columbia city schools and daycares can't make students and staff wear masks.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has made feeding peacocks a crime punishable by up to six months in jail and/or a $1,000 fine.

An NBC News poll conducted August 1417 finds 54 percent of respondents think abortion should be legal always or most of the time. Thirty-four percent say it should be illegal with exceptions, and 8 percent say it should be illegal without any exceptions.

The World Health Organization is monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, dubbed the "mu" variant.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, Planned Parenthood, and Oklahoma abortion providers are challenging five new abortion restrictions passed by the state this year.

Originally posted here:
Texas Abortion and Social Media Laws Are a 'Contradictory Mess' - Reason