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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.

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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.

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

Gene Policinski is president and chief operating officer of the Freedom Forum Institute.

When it comes to free expression and the First Amendment, its important for us to know when it protects what we say and write and when it doesnt.

Case in point: Proposed Arizona House bill HB2124, related to access to online content. The sponsor, state Rep. Bob Thorpe, proposes to allow users or the state attorney general to sue an internet site that edits, deletes or makes it difficult or impossible for online users to locate and access content on the site in an easy or timely manner for politically biased reasons.

The bill is in line with complaints now fashionable among political conservatives nationwide that online platforms and social media sites from Google to Facebook to Twitter and others somehow exclude or downplay their views while emphasizing liberal viewpoints.

Nothing wrong with raising such concerns. The inner policies and algorithms of these web behemoths largely generally remain hidden and the entire online world is simply too new and ever-changing to provide an accurate portrait from the outside.

So, in effect we dont know what were not seeing when we search or use such sites, and those companies are free to set their own practices and rules on what we do see or post. Whether for altruistic or political motives, proposals such as the Arizona legislation would change that except that the First Amendment rules out such government intervention in a private business.

The First Amendment guarantees against content or viewpoint discrimination and by extension, access to information apply to government, not private individuals or companies, which have their own First Amendment rights to decide what they will or wont say and post. And even legislation cannot empower individuals (or attorneys general) to override that constitutional protection by using civil penalties rather than criminal law see the old legal adage, you cannot do by the back door what you cannot do by the front door.

Moreover, do we really want to override the First Amendment with such open access laws? Turn to another adage the law of unintended consequences. Requiring internet providers to permit unrestrained access and right to post material denies such companies the ability to respond to their consumers demands on materials that can range from offensive to repulsive. Thorpes bill excludes libelous or pornographic material, but what about currently banned content on most social media sites, such as videos that show public assaults or are intended to bully or harass? Would internet companies and social media sites be mandated to carry deliberate misinformation about health issues?

There is a small window in the wall of First Amendment protection that could possibly permit regulation of private online companies, called the public function exception. In effect, it turns a private concern into a government operation when performing an essential government function. The exception rests on a 1946 Supreme Court decision, in Marsh v. Alabama, involving a so-called company town. The court reasoned that since the town functioned as a government entity, not a private enterprise, it had become one.

But the court has refined its ruling through the years, and in 1974 held that such a conversion takes place only when the private concern is providing services exclusively done by government. Clearly, providing an online platform or a social media site fails to meet that test.

Some critics of the current social media policies argue that those sites are effectively a digital public square by virtue of their ubiquitous presence in modern life. Some reports say that more than seven in every 10 Americans used social media sites in 2018 and that the number increases each year. But the very nature of the web, in which start-ups and competing sites of all kinds arise constantly, would also seem to prevent isolating even dominant companies for such a quasi-government role with the required exclusive provider condition.

As shown in other examples where First Amendment protections come into conflict with practices or actions that offend, or seem to run counter to the marketplace of ideas concept of the widest exchange of ideals or viewpoints, the court of public opinion often functions more effectively and more quickly than legal action or legislation. Public discussions and resulting social pressures to combat online bullying or videos showing assault or even murders have demonstrably changed those private provider policies on what is posted and permitted, for example.

A shortcut through First Amendment protections may seem an expedient method at the time but for very good reasons, free expression advocates should resist quicker solutions for some, in the name of protecting those long-term freedoms for us all.

Gene Policinski is president and chief operating officer of the Freedom Forum Institute. He can be reached at[emailprotected], or follow him on Twitter at@genefac.

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FIRST FIVE: Focus on when the First Amendment protects and doesn't - hays Post

A cross stands in the Roman Colosseum. (Photo credit: Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images)

The editorial in the Feb.18 Orlando Sentinel is critical of private schools, mostly Christian, which participate in a state-school voucher program; the schools uphold biblical teachings on homosexuality. The newspaper says they should not qualify for the program because they discriminate against homosexuals the way Bob Jones University once discriminated against blacks. There are several problems with this line of reasoning.

Race and sexual orientation have nothing in common: race is not a behavioral category but sexual orientation is ineluctably ordered to behavior. Christian sexual ethics, which are based on Judaism, proscribe adultery, homosexuality, and other sexual acts. That is their right.

There is no rational argument for denying a person who is black, brown, or white from marrying to attending a Christian school: race is behaviorally neutral. Indeed, it is because Bob Jones Universitywhich also promoted anti-Catholicismcould not sustain a rational argument that it eventually was forced to change course.

There is a rational argument for allowing religious schools to sanction behaviors it finds sinful. To deny them this option is to deny them their identity. Moreover, to protect the institution of marriageindeed to grant it a privileged positionChristian sexual ethics does not approve of sexual conduct that is outside the union of a man and a woman in the institution of marriage. No such reasoning could plausibly be applied to denying mixed racial marriages.

An investigation of private schools in Florida by the Orlando Sentinel, published Jan.23, found 156 private Christian schools with "anti-gay policies."Almost half are Baptist. Catholic schools were mostly given a pass by the newspaper.

Catholic schools do not reject applicants on the basis of sexual orientation, though they will enforce teacher contracts which bar them from marrying someone of the same sex, and they generally do not admit students whose parents are homosexuals. The reasoning is sound: sending mixed messages to students only confuses them about the validity of Catholic sexual ethics.

As it turns out, for nine schools, the newspaper cites quoted statements as proof of their "anti-gay views." It is important to note that the statements have nothing to do with the status of a student's sexual orientation. Rather, they have to do with beliefs and practices.

1. Central Florida Christian Academy admits students who follow biblical teachings and abstain from "sexual immorality." The newspaper concludes this means "gay children aren't welcome." But it is not clear that it does. The school did not say it does not admit gay students. It suggested it does not admit students who are engaged in sexually immoral behavior. That could mean premarital sex (until recently confined to heterosexuals), as well as homosexual acts.

2. Calvary Christian High School in Clearwater is mentioned because it denies students who practice a "homosexual lifestyle or alternative gender identity" or "promoting such practices." Lifestyle, switching sexes, and [homosexual] practices are all behavioral categories, and as such are entirely legitimate for a Christian school to consider.

3. Wade Christian School in Melbourne says students can be expelled for a "homosexual act." The emphasis is on an "act," not orientation.

4. Master's Academy describes "homosexual behaviors" as sinful and does not enroll those who engage in them. Again, it is the behavior that matters.

5. Mount Dora Academy lists as an offense "sexual misconduct or professing immorality (including homosexuality) on or off campus." Conduct is not neutralit is normativeand is therefore a valid concern for Christian schools.

6. Landmark Christian School in Haines City does not accept or retain "faculty, staff, or students who profess to or practice a homosexual lifestyle." A lifestyle is empirically a behavioral category.

7. Cooper City Christian Academy in Broward County says students should refrain from "talking favorably about or engaging in" such things as "idolatry, Satanism, astrology, profanity...premarital sexual activity, pornography, homosexual behavior, gender-confusion behavior, [and] cross-dressing." All of these beliefs and practices are proscribed by our Judeo-Christian tradition.

8. Worshiper's House of Prayer Academy in Miami says it has a "zero tolerance" policy for "homosexual activity." Activity is conduct.

9. Donahue Academy is the one Catholic school listed. Its "anti-gay" rule bars those who "advocate" or act "upon those [disordered] inclinations romantically or sexually." This speaks to the religious beliefs of Catholic schools and the acting out of proscribed moral conduct.

In short, the Orlando Sentinel counts as "anti-gay views" anything associated with the sexual ethics of the three monolithic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It has a First Amendment right to free speech to do that. But religious schools also have a First Amendment right to free speech, as well as the free exercise of religion.

Bill Donohue is President and CEO of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, the nation's largest Catholic civil rights organization.

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Orlando Sentinel's Attack on Schools Barring Gay Acts Is an Attack on the First Amendment - CNSNews.com

Recent antics to stir up controversy are disingenuous.

by THE DARTMOUTH EDITORIAL BOARD | 2/21/20 1:00am

If the Dartmouth College Republicans had not used the phrase Theyre bringing drugs in the subject line of an email sent to campus earlier this week, it is quite likely that none of what is described in the remainder of this editorial would have happened.

But, of course, that is what the College Republicans titled their email announcing a policy talk with a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, Bryant Corky Messner, who was scheduled to have an event at the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy on Tuesday on the topic of the need for more border security specifically, a wall at the southern border to fight the opioid crisis.

Setting aside the rather galling implication that a border wall constitutes a serious solution to one of the United States most important problems today, one might reasonably understand why titling an email Theyre bringing drugs would upset people and lead to students expressing concern which is exactly what happened.

What cannot be reasonably understood is why, two days later, the College Republicans announced that the event had been postponed, citing serious security concerns. If there had been legitimate security threats made, then the College and local police would have been involved in the postponement decision which, as this newspaper reported yesterday, was not the case. In fact, as College Republicans secretary Griffin Mackey 21 told The Dartmouth, the decision to cancel was made because the group determined it did not have the budget or time to secure security resources.

So maybe this was all one big mix-up, in which the College Republicans sent out a provocative email to campus that was misconstrued by students concerned about the event. But that would not explain why the leadership of the College Republicans then told a right-wing news outlet that the event was postponed due to a possible violent response by left-wing campus activists at a campus with a large contingent of radical leftists, in the words of then-College Republicans chairman Daniel Bring 21.

This version of events has since spread to a few other right-wing websites, all of which tell the same story about liberal intolerance for free speech and conservative ideas on college campuses. Yet missing from any of these accounts or from the College Republicans themselves is any proof that there was a serious threat of violence from members of the Dartmouth College Democrats or others directed toward the event or Mr. Messner.

Much to his discredit, Messner has full-throatedly embraced the right-wing narrative that he was silenced by campus leftists.

.@DartRepublicans were forced to cancel my appearance due to the militant stance of the Dartmouth College Dems, Messners campaign posted on Twitter Tuesday evening. Security threats demonized free speech at an institution of higher learning. Stop liberal censorship!

The tweet, already on shaky grounds in terms of veracity the College Democrats never made any sort of militant stance toward Messner links to a page on Messners campaign website with a large photo of Mr. Messner, with his mouth covered with a black box with the word SILENCED written in white letters.

Liberals have taken over higher learning and have officially CANCELLED my appearance, the page reads. Help stop liberal censorship on campuses across the country by signing below. Strong believers in the First Amendment then need only to provide their name, email address and ZIP code and click on a button proclaiming DEMAND FREE SPEECH!

But the threat of violence must have subsided, as Messner braved the snows of New Hampshire and made the trek to Hanover on Wednesday, where he filmed a brief video apparently taken on the Green.

The First Amendment applies to everybody, Messner declared in the video, which his campaign posted on Twitter. And shouting down and intimidating people so they cant exercise their First Amendment rights is absolutely wrong. We will fight this battle. We will fight it hard.

This editorial board would be the first to agree with Mr. Messner about the freedom of speech after all, the First Amendment is the lifeblood of any newspaper. But the battle he is fighting is a rather pathetic attempt to spin a controversy out of something that, for all we can tell, did not actually happen.

Taking advantage of dubious controversies to promote free speech cheapens the cause of free speech. By casting himself as the victim of a supposed conspiracy, Messner cynically abused the cause of free speech to further his own campaign. But we do hope that Mr. Messner comes to campus to speak its his right to do so.

Nonetheless, Messners campaign antics ranging from misrepresentations to blatant lies are unbecoming of a candidate for the United States Senate. And the College Republicans evident attempt to stir up trouble is a sad reminder of just how far our political culture has fallen.

The editorial board consists of the opinion editors, the executive editor and the editor-in-chief.

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Verbum Ultimum: Crying Wolf - The Dartmouth