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TheDepartment of Public Safety of Newark, N.J., is warning residents they could be prosecuted for falselyreportingcoronavirus cases in the city.

The citys public safety director, Anthony Ambrose, cautioned Newark residents against posting false information aboutcases on social media, saying it can cause unnecessary public alarm.

Ambrose said in a statementthat the department will investigate and try to identify those making false claims on social media, adding that state laws carry penalties for causingfalse public alarm.

The State of New Jersey has laws regarding causing a false public alarm and we will enforce those laws, Ambrose said. Individuals who make any false or baseless reports about the coronavirus in Newark can set off a domino effect that can result in injury to residents and visitors and affect schools, houses of worship, businesses and entire neighborhoods, he added.

Public Safety Director Ambrose warns against false reporting of coronavirus in Newark via social media https://t.co/U1fS0RALHu via @Nextdoor pic.twitter.com/m75Y2CuB8L

Some on social media criticized the announcement, saying it violates the First Amendment.

The coronavirushas infected more than 1,000 people in the U.S. and killed at least 29.

The global outbreak is affecting the worlds economy and causing many events to be canceled, including sports competitions and political rallies. Several events, like the next Democratic debate, will occur without a live audience.Schools and universities are also canceling classes or moving them online.

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Newark warns of criminal prosecution for 'false reporting of coronavirus' | TheHill - The Hill

Federal law makes it a felony for any person "for the purpose of commercial advantage or financial gain" to encourage or induce an undocumented alien to illegally enter or remain in the United States. On February 25, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case, United States v. Sineneng-Smith, which asks whether that sweeping prohibition should be struck down as an unconstitutional infringement on protected speech.

It should. Applied on its face, the federal prohibition against encouraging illegal immigration for financial gain criminalizes a wide range of lawful speech. For example, let's say that a self-described advocate of open borders writes a book urging civil disobedience in the face of what that author sees as America's unjust immigration regime. The book explicitly advises all undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States, to speak out, and to fight for their rights.

Would the sale of such a book encourage the unlawful presence of undocumented immigrants for financial gain? Clearly it would. But the First Amendment would just as clearly protect the author's liberty to write and sell such a book without facing federal charges.

Here's another example of how the law at issue criminalizes constitutionally protected speech. As the lawyers for Evelyn Sineneng-Smith point out in their brief to the Supreme Court, "the government admits telling a district court that it could use the encouragement provision to prosecute an immigration attorney for advising an undocumented client to stay in the country, and notably does not disavow that position in its brief."

Needless to say, there are plenty of good reasons why an immigration attorney might offer such legal advice. Perhaps the undocumented client has a compelling case and the lawyer believes there's a strong chance of persuading federal authorities to alter the client's legal status. The law at issue, however, makes it illegal for the lawyer to speak and act professionally in such matters.

Sineneng-Smith, the operator of an immigration consulting firm in San Jose, California, was convicted in 2010 on multiple counts of violating the law. Her position is that the law is unconstitutional on its face, not merely that it is unconstitutional as applied to her.

As the Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized, the Constitution frowns upon "overbroad laws that chill speech within the First Amendment's vast and privileged sphere." The overbroad law at the center of U.S. v. Sineneng-Smith fits that description.

Read more here:
The First Amendment Right To Encourage Illegal Immigration - Reason

The San Francisco Giants will be organizing a reunion of their 2010 World Series Championship team in August, without Aubrey Huff. Huff, who played a large role in the championship win, was unanimously left off the invite list due to bigoted and misogynistic comments hes made on social media.

First reported by The Athletic, the Giants confirmed that Huff would not be invited to the teams reunion, saying, Aubrey has made multiple comments on social media that are unacceptable and run counter to the values of our organization.

For reference, there was the time Huff tweeted about kidnapping Iranian women and the time he seemed to be advocating for a violent uprising in the event Donald Trump didnt win the 2020 election. Huff has also criticized the Giants first female coach Alyssa Nakken, saying, I dont believe a woman should be in mens pro sports Theres so many more people, especially men, who grind it out who deserve that spot more than she does.

Its not a huge surprise that the club, when celebrating one of their brightest moments in franchise history, would not want a guy like that around.

Huff, who initially said he was quite frankly, shocked. Disappointed about the decision posted a longer statement on Twitter on Monday night, alleging that the Giants were in fact attacking his First Amendment rights, persecuting him for his political beliefs, and, by association, doing nothing less than tearing at the fabric of our democratic process.

We live in a country that is under attack Huff, a vocal Trump supporter, wrote in his statement. Society is desperatly trying to take away our 1st amendment, our freedom of speech and our freedom of political associationWhile Im disappointed the Giants are so opposed to President Trump, and our constitutional rights that theyd uninvite me to my teams reunion, it shows me now more than ever we have to stand up for our 1st amendment rights. Otherwise the America we know and love is already dead.

To be clear, the Giants iterated via the Athletic that Huffs exclusion from the event was based purely on his vile social media behavior, and had nothing to do with his political beliefs.

Whats also clear from Huffs statement, aside from casting himself here as the victim, is that he has no idea what the First Amendment actually promises. For claritys sake, the amendment says, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Its right there in the first word. Congress.

The first amendment says the government can make no law abridging free speech. It doesnt mean that people who say dumb, hurtful, crude things on Twitter wont suffer personal consequences. Huffs been able to say whatever he wants for some time now, a right that he exercises all the time. The government has never stepped in and deprived him of his ability to be awful online, and so far, neither has a platform like Twitter. All Huff is suffering from is the consequences of his own actions. Being vocal on social media and having a large platform also means there will be plenty of people who dont agree with your views, especially when those views are highly derogatory towards women.

Its laughable that being excluded from a private event by his former employer would be equal to a violation of Huffs constitutional rights. Those rights guarantee a whole host of freedoms that Huff readily enjoys. Huff seems to think that his political beliefs are why hes being uninvited to the celebration, when the truth is frankly far simpler, though probably harder for him to swallow. Its not his politics that his former teammates cant stand, its him.

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Aubrey Huff has no idea what the First Amendment really means - For The Win

Sanctioning lies infringes upon U.S. citizens right to free speech, journalist and legal scholar Garrett Epps said at an event Wednesday.

The event, titled The Right to Lie, was hosted by the Free Speech Project and the Georgetown University Lecture Fund. The Free Speech Project, a student- and faculty-run nonpartisan initiative that works to assess free speech across the United States, hosts monthly discussions on campus on topics concerning free speech.

Whether the government should be able to restrict free speech it deems false or defamatory is an especially relevant question given the rise of social media, according to Epps. Social media has created greater platforms for all perspectives, including those that are not truthful, Epps said.

A lot of people began to think, Well, you know, we need to look very carefully at what is allowed and what isnt allowed, Epps said. And were still dealing with that question, and were dealing with it in a very complicated, fast-moving and in many ways maligned media landscape that nobodys really prepared for.

President Donald Trump has used social media to tweet 3,083 false or misleading statements between the start of his presidency and January of this year, according to The Washington Post. Such statistics raise the question of whether false speech should be regulated, according to Epps.

While people should continue to discuss concerns regarding the proliferation of false speech and possible ways to address this issue, allowing the government to decide what should be considered false speech will only lead to an abuse of power, according to Epps.

You dont want the government coming in and deciding this is true and this is false; or this is too rude, you cant say that; or this is too inflammatory, you cant say that. Because history shows us that governments who have that power inevitably will abuse it, Epps said. And either just abuse it in the sense of being just sort of heedlessly bureaucratic or deliberately attempting to skew and suppress criticism of the government and points of view that it finds to be inimical.

People who argue the law should not protect false speech are primarily concerned with defamation, according to Epps.

We dont want to live in a society where theres no boundaries on what people can say, Epps said. The idea that we dont protect false statements of fact that injure peoples reputation and the law of defamation is very old; its very highly developed. We know how to assess when someone has suffered damage as a result of false and defamatory statements about them.

However, while the precedents set by defamation laws do condemn some false speech, they do not imply the government has the right to suppress any speech it deems false, Epps said.

Out of that enormous well of case law, going back well before the settlement of the New World, we have this proposition that falsity, false and defamatory speech, has no value at all, Epps said. But that doesnt create, as its quoted, a general principle that if something is false, government can suppress it.

Epps has been a professor of law at the University of Baltimore Law School since 2008, where he teaches Constitutional Law and First Amendment and specializes in constitutional law.

U.S. citizens and policymakers should not become complacent with current free speech laws and instead should constantly reevaluate and reexamine them, according to Epps.

If you bring in someone like myself who makes his living teaching the First Amendment, you are very likely to have someone tell you that weve struck the appropriate balance, so, you know, the American law of free speech is great, Epps said. I dont know that I want to take that position because I think that any regimen of free speech has benefits and it has costs, and we are constantly reassessing what the costs are.

More here:
Sanctioning All Lies Violates 1st Amendment, Speaker Says - Georgetown University The Hoya

Twitter is a toilet bowl and so is Facebook.

The latest proof is the raging story of Aubrey Huff, the sadly misguided former San Francisco Giants player who got himself dumped from the invitation list of the team's commemoration of its 2010 World Series title. That party will be at Oracle Park in August.

Before he was a Twitter troll, Huff was the 2010 Giants first baseman who was not the biggest star on the team, but definitely a home run producer who got some big hits in the postseason and rode the wave of an unlikely title run that took everyone by surprise _ including the Giants themselves.

Sadly, Huff's life after baseball has devolved into a tweet storm of vulgarity and despicable musings that target people of color and especially women. He recently tweeted a picture of himself with a gun and this statement: "Getting my boys trained up on how to use a gun in the unlikely event @BernieSanders beats @realDonaldTrump in 2020."

Cool, huh?

Listen, I'm not going to promote his vile tweets. There are many others about women that are vile and indicate someone who probably needs help. You can find Huff's handiwork with ease, but the larger point is this: Huff and his fellow backward supporters like former pitcher Curt Schilling are making his exclusion from a 2010 celebration a First Amendment thing.

It's not and if you think it is, you are either ignorant on purpose or by accident about how free speech works. Neither type of ignorance is good.

One could make an argument that our country and democracy are in trouble because of a shocking lack of knowledge about civics, but let's stay on point. The First Amendment is protecting Huff right now. The government hasn't arrested him, detained him or questioned him about his stupid tweets. His right to be stupid, abusive, disgusting, unkind and bereft of humanity is not only preserved, its protected status is unquestioned.

Huff still routinely makes nasty comments about women, including Alyssa Nakken _ the former star athlete from Sacramento State and Woodland High School recently hired by the Giants to be a coach. She'll be the first woman on a big league coaching staff _ ever.

It was a great story that Huff was only too happy to trash on his Twitter feed. Again, he had the constitutional right to do that and nobody stood in the way.

But Huff doesn't have a constitutional right to attend what is essentially a private party thrown by a private business, just as the Giants get to invite whoever they want. They don't have to include someone they find objectionable.

The Giants said: "Aubrey has made multiple comments on social media that are unacceptable and run counter to the values of our organization. While we appreciate the many contributions that Aubrey made to the 2010 championship season, we stand by our decision."

Huff wants to make it about politics, but it's clear from the Giants statement that its not about politics, but common decency.

For whatever reason, Huff seems to lack common decency for people he views with contempt. But perhaps his most outlandish statement yet was this one in his interview with The Athletic: "If it wasn't for me, (the Giants) wouldn't be having a reunion."

OK, Huff had a really good year in 2010 with the Giants. He hit 26 home runs and drove in 86 runs. He hit a home run and drove in four runs in the 2010 World Series. Was he the MVP? No. Was he a solid contributor? Yes. Did the Giants win the World Series because of Huff? Come on, now. That's when we veer back into social media crazy land.

And that's where Huff lives now. He preens about his physique and what he expects in a woman. "She has to be hot," he tweets.

He pens stick figure drawings extolling President Donald Trump and brags when he sells them for $265. He says the Giants wouldn't have won the World Series without him.

OK, dude. You be you. But come August, this little tempest will have blown over. It will be forgotten and Huff won't be sharing the joy of the 2010 Giants title run because Huff doesn't know how to act like a human being around others.

His rights will be intact on that August day, but what a sad and self-defeating way to ruin your blessings and isolate yourself from the joy of brotherhood because you can't help but be a hateful ass.

Read more:
Commentary: If you think this Aubrey Huff mess is about the First Amendment, youre as dumb as he is - Monmouth Daily Review Atlas