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City of Scottsdale and satanic temple group take the stands in First Amendment-based case

The trial between the city of Scottsdale and the satanic temple is underway. Three years ago, the Scottsdale City Council denied a satanic temple member's request to deliver an invocation at its meeting. Now, the satanic temple argues Wednesday in court that its First Amendment right was violated.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - The trial between the city of Scottsdale and The Satanic Temple is underway.

Three years ago, the Scottsdale City Council denied arequest by a member ofThe Satanic Temple to deliver an invocation at its meeting. Now, The Satanic Temple argues Wednesday in court that its First Amendment right was violated.

The group had no ties to the city, which is required to be able to give that invocation. Michelle Short, a group member, was supposed to give that prayer. She was on the stand and claimed several other groups outside of the city were able to give their prayers.

She listed a few churches that did not have addresses within the city limits there.

Short admitted that during cross-examination thatshe is not a member of the Scottsdale community. She also admitted to never contacting anyone within the city, any representative, about her beliefs and what type of invocation that she was wanting to give.

She argues that she feared for her safety should she havedisclosed it prior to the meeting.

Scottsdale City Manager,Jim Thompson, also took the stand, saying that other groups had substantial connections to the city, which is why they were able to say their prayers, and claims the satanic temple group didn'thave a substantial connection to the city.

He says others in the past did not live withinthe city limits at the time, but they did have those strong ties.

The court session will resume Thursday morning.

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City of Scottsdale and The Satanic Temple take the stands in First Amendment-based case - FOX 10 News Phoenix

Amira Van Leeuwen, Opinion Columnist

College campuses tend to encompass an overwhelming amount of different opinions and ideas when it comes to controversial topics. The First Amendment guarantees freedoms concerning religion, press, expression, assembly and the right to petition, which select college students tend to use as a scapegoat to express their racist ideologies. Although not necessarily a bad thing, it can pose a magnitude of threats to college life.

Texas State is not the only university plagued with white supremacy, racist ideology and fascism. Two years ago, a large banner hung above Alkek Library with the painted words of America is a White Nation, shortly after the 2016 presidential election. A Boston College campus faced a similar ordeal in 2018 when a student vandalized a dorm with racist graffiti, which was later linked to a student who expressed support for the Ku Klux Klan and Hitlers perfect race.

It is often left unsaid how these white supremacy and alt-right groups on campus provide an unsafe environment for college students that do not share such views. Lives are often taken as a result of hate groups who believe in things that have resulted in past genocide and racial segregation, which should have diminished dramatically in the late 1900s.

College campuses are playing tug-of-war with students who argue they have the right to express harmful ideals and hate speech. If there is any backlash from college campus officials, students cry First Amendment violation.

However, the U.S. Constitutions First Amendment does not protect behavior that is targeting, harassing, inciting violence or creating a hostile environment for vulnerable students.

Campus life has entered a new realm of protest and de-platforming other social groups. The issue is not students being prohibited from expressing their opinions; the issue is when equality and free speech are directly opposed in a seditious manner. In times when students have drawn attention to high-strung situations relating to a violation of the First Amendment, universities have tended to provide a general statement to soften the blow.

Although the perseverance of college administrators is more than admirable, the issue cannot be contained in a box with a few words placed in a mass email. Safety on campus should be just as important as ensuring students right to free speech.

However, when this right infringes on the safety of others, it is constitutionally prohibited if encouraging unlawful behavior. The Supreme Court case Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) held the government may forbid incitement speech, which is likely to produce lawless action.

The right to free speech is vital to civic education. Without it, society would be unable to have public discourse among students. A person has the right to their opinion at any given time unless it stimulates an act of violence.

The polarization of the U.S. has led to severe acts of violence on college campuses. A recent example can be seen when an altercation arose on campus after a student knocked off anothers Make America Great Again hat. This resulted in a hostile situation leading to the arrest of four people.

The U.S. Constitution is a living, breathing document up for interpretation in any situation. There is no such thing as valuing another persons First Amendment rights over others unalienable rights.

Protecting a students right to feel safe on campus needs to be weighed heavily when the legitimacy of right-winged idealists are discussed.

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Free speech should not come at the expense of safety - University Star

Instagram, and its parent company Facebook, took down posts regarded as too sympathetic to Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated January 3 in a controversial US airstrike. The news website Coda (1/10/20) was credited with breaking the news, and Newsweek (1/10/20) also reported that:

Iranian journalists have reported the censorship of their Instagram accounts. Posts about Soleimani have disappeared from Instagram, which is currently the only operational international social media site within Iran.

According to the Facebook corporation, as quoted by CNN (1/10/20), removal of such posts is required by US sanctions; the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, of which Soleimani was a commander, was designated as a terrorist organization by the US government in April:

As part of its compliance with US law, the Facebook spokesperson said the company removes accounts run by or on behalf of sanctioned people and organizations.

One might rightly ask: What constitutes a post supportive of the late military commander? According to the CNN report, merely posting a photo of the general could get the Facebook authorities to take a post down.

The International Federation of Journalists condemned the censorship:

The measures have gone even further, and some accounts of Iranian newspapers and news agencies have now been removed from the social media platform. This poses an immediate threat to freedom of information in Iran, as Instagram is the only international social media platform currently still operating in the country.

The Washington Times (1/11/20) reported:

Ali Rabiei, a spokesperson for the Iranian government, complained from his Twitter account on Monday this week about the disappearance of social media discussions about Soleimani, accusing Instagram of acting undemocratic and unashamed.

Much of the coverage has centered on the fact that Instagram is one of the few social media networks not widely restricted in Iranthus, the blackout serves as a way of censoring information going into Iran. In fact, the US government news agency Voice of America (1/7/20) reported that the Iranian government was clamping down on social media posts too critical of Soleimani, and NBC News (8/21/19) reported on how Iranians used networks like Instagram to skirt government regulation. (The irony here is thick.)

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But this news has also gotten journalists and press advocates worried about what this means for free speech and the First Amendment in the United States. On the one hand, as a private company, Facebook is free to make its own rules about acceptable content. Yet if the network is removing content because it believes it is required to do so by law, that is government censorshipand forbidden by the Constitutions guarantee of freedom of the press.

Shayana Kadidal, a senior managing attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, told FAIR that while it was possible for the US government to restrict media companies from coordinating with sanctioned entities and providing material support to the IRGC, the US government cannot restrict Americans from engaging in what he called independent advocacy.

Independent advocacy, as the law stands, cant be banned, he said. For [Instagram] to remove every single post would mean it was pulling posts that are protected.

The Washington Post (1/13/20) reported that free speech advocates were worried, with the director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation calling it legally wrong. Others concurred:

Eliza Campbell, associate director at the Cyber Program at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC, [said] that the existing laws had failed to keep up with online speech, calling it a field of law that hasnt been written quite yet.

The terrorist designation system is an important tool, but its also a blunt instrument, she said. I think were walking down a dangerous path when we afford these platformswhich are private entities, have no oversight, and are not elected bodiesto essentially dictate policy, which is whats happening right now.

Emerson T. Brooking, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Councils Digital Forensic Research Lab, [said] that Facebook and Instagram are taking a very aggressive position and it may not be sustainable. He said it could result in Facebook removing any speech of any Iranian mourning Soleimanis death and could represent a harsh new precedent.

Regardless of whether the government directed Facebook to take this action, the fact that a media company felt the need to do so is proof of a chilling effect on speech. Who, specifically, is to decide what is so unabashedly pro-Soleimani material that it violates US sanctions? Is an article that merely acknowledges that many Iranians mourned Soleimani and denounced his killing a violation? Is an anti-war editorial that doesnt sufficiently assert Soleimani was no angel constitute such a crime? Could satirical material that facetiously supported the Tehran regime get censored? (The last item isnt so hypothetical: A Babson College professor was fired for jokingly encouraging Iran to follow Trumps lead by targeting US cultural sites.)

All of these questions, and all this ambiguity, should be enough evidence that this kind of censorship would be capricious and unfairly applied, and thus inappropriate in the face of free speech protections.

Free press advocates in the United States should think seriously in the coming days about how to respond. If sanctions can be invoked by a social media network to take down certain content, what is next? In order not to find out, well need a concerted pushback to Facebooks censorship from journalists and civil libertarians.

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Facebooks Soleimani Ban Flies in Face of First Amendment - Common Dreams

Legislators at every level have adopted an operational ethos of ignore all relevant laws and sign it." This is a deeply concerning trend, and one that will result in dystopian realizations as politics continue moving toward the extremes. However, my fragile hope for the future remains intact thanks to the courts consistent rejection of this ethos. The University of Michigan is only the latest subject of both this trend and justices ruling in a case concerning our most potent liberty: speech.

On May 2, 2018, the Universitywas sued by Speech First, an organization dedicated to upholding the First Amendment on college campuses. The subject of the legal dispute was the Universitys Bias Response Team (BRT), which, according to Speech First, stifled freedom of speech and was therefore unconstitutional. In September 2019, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the BRT acts by way of implicit threat of punishment and intimidation to quell speech," and the Universityagreed to disband the BRT. This case is hugely symbolic, more so than it may appear.

The most basic freedom belonging to each person is life, defined by their freedom of conscience. Both life and free conscience are impossible to breach without direct action perpetrated by one unto another. Freedom of speech, therefore, is the concretization of our freedom of conscience. And fundamentally, this is why Speech First v. Schlissel is so symbolic: The courts defended our most basic right.

No student at the University should ever feel discriminated against. Yet, while the BRT held this same belief as its cornerstone, the metric used to determine if an offense had occurred the Universitys anti-harassment policy did not offer any objective definitions as to what constituted a violation. And here lies the unconstitutionality, as described by the Department of Justice: The University imposes a system of arbitrary censorship of, and punishment for, constitutionally protected speech.

This broader conflict is not unique to the University. Colleges across the country face similar challenges in trying to secure welcoming campus environments without infringing upon students First Amendment rights. In this, Im sympathetic with the universities. Were riding a 50-year wave of legal victories for equality in a number of areas; so, in keeping with the trend, lets try to fix campus speech, right? Sure, but not like this.

Todays political climate is one of friction and frustration on both sides. Any comment not perfectly impartial sets off a firestorm, regardless of the reasoning behind the statement, the context or the speaker. We are on a hair trigger. So, how, in this era so characterized by scrutinizing the most minute actions and verbiage, did the University fly right by the First Amendment?

Sadly, today, the legitimacy of actions taken in pursuit of something noble are largely ignored. Those in charge act impulsively without considering their actions. The University wanted to create a safer campus climate, so it created an agency capable of implicitly punishing students who voiced opinions that offended others. To me, this sounds like a paragon of this trend, a laudable end to be achieved by censorship. And the courts said no.

At last, herein lies my optimism for the fate of America: the judiciary. Currently, it seems the shared methodology to enact change, among both parties, is to act now and consider legality later. And yet, the courts have stood tall. The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the state of California for violating Article 1, Section 10; a federal judge blocked Alabamas abortion ban; and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Universitys Bias Response Team. This case was altogether important and worrying, but I find its conclusion reassuring for the future. The courts remain the protectors of our fundamental rights amidst brazen violations, and it looks like they might just continue holding the torch even if legislators at every level keep trying to blow it out.

David Lisbonne is a junior in the College of Engineering and can be reached at lisbonne@umich.edu.

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Op-ed: Did the University forget about the first amendment? - The Michigan Daily

CAPE CORAL, Fla. Tonight we are learning more about the lawsuit against State Representative Spencer Roach who is being sued by a civilian for blocking him on Facebook.

Anyone can sue anybody for anything. Question is, whether or not they will win, said Pamella Seay, FGCU criminal justice professor.

Randy Scott believes he will. Scott is suing State Representative Spencer Roach for blocking him on his public Facebook page. Saying he sees Roach not wanting to engage in public discourse.

That is representative Roach having a disdain for public discourse that is critical of him and his other people in Lee County who want to just have a free ride at public discourse, said Scott.

However, FGCU criminal justice professor Pamella Seay says this is not a public figure's account, but one for a candidate for public office so the limitations are different.

The key when you're looking at one of these social media accounts is whether or not it is a public forum, as he is using this particular account it is not a public forum. So yes he does have the right to block someone from that account, said Seay.

State Representative Spencer Roach emphasizes this is not an official government page.

That page is a campaign page, it is a promotional page, its an advertisement page that is paid for with funds in my campaign account. It is not an official government page, said Roach.

Roach says he welcomes criticism but claims Scott has personally threatened him and he will not tolerate it.

You know we welcome criticism and defense and especially policy debate on my campaign Facebook page ,but once you make a threat to kill me I think that kind of crosses the line and thats not something I am going to tolerate on that page."

Roach says the fight is not over.

I look forward to vigorously defending any lawsuit this or any others that attempts to harass me or my staff, said Roach.

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Breaking down the first amendment lawsuit against Florida State Representative Spencer Roach - Fox 4