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Hugh Stevens is both a nationally known First Amendment and media lawyer and a versatile litigator. For more than 20 years Hugh served as general counsel to the North Carolina Press Association, which designated him as counsel emeritus upon his retirement in 2002. In 2003 the Association honored Hugh by selecting him to receive its W. C. Lassiter Award in recognition of his zealous defense of the First Amendment. In 2006 he became only the second lawyer inducted into the North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame.

Hugh is a founding member and past chair of the North Carolina Bar Associations Section on Constitutional Rights and Responsibilities. In January, 2015 the Section presented Hugh with its John McNeill Smith Award in recognition of his extraordinary commitment to the ideals embodied in the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of North Carolina.

Hugh also is a founding board member and past president of the North Carolina Open Government Coalition. Seewww.ncopengov.org.

Hugh continues to serve as general counsel to the North Carolina Press Foundation and as outside counsel to several North Carolina news organizations, including The News & Observer and WRAL-TV in Raleigh. He has represented news organizations, non-media companies and individuals in numerous cases involving libel, privacy and access to government records and proceedings, and was ABC News North Carolina counsel in the landmark newsgathering case of Food Lion v. Capital Cities/ABC, et al.

Hughs significant cases include two that dramatically affected the law of privacy in North Carolina Renwick v. News and Observer Pub. Co., in which the North Carolina Supreme Court declined to recognize the false light tort, and Hall v. Post, in which the court rejected private facts claims. He also was lead counsel for the plaintiff in Womack Newspapers, Inc. v. Town of Kitty Hawk, et al., 181 N.C. App. 1 (2007), in which a weekly newspaper obtained the largest attorney fee award ever paid pursuant to the North Carolina Public Records Law.

Hugh also is a versatile and experienced teacher. From 1985 until 2002 he taught a Free Press and Public Policy seminar at Duke Universitys Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. He also has taught First Amendment and media law at the University of North Carolina School of Law and the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He currently teaches a First Amendment course at North Carolina State Universitys Oscher Institute of Lifelong Learning.

In the early 1990s Hugh conceived the idea for a North Carolina Media Law Handbook and persuaded the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation to provide the seed money for it. Since 1992 he has served as co-editor and author of the Privacy chapter for the Handbook, which currently is in its fifth (and first entirely electronic) edition. He also is the author of numerous book reviews, law review articles, Continuing Legal Education manuscripts and other publications. He also writes Hughs Views, a personal blog,http://www.hughstevens.blogspot.com/ and comments on First Amendment issues athttp://aboutthefirstamendment.com.

Hugh traces his interest in First Amendment law to his experience as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina, where he served as co-editor of The Daily Tar Heel and joined other students leaders in fighting to overturn North Carolinas notorious speaker ban law, which forbade left-wing activists and leaders of Communist governments from appearing on university campuses. After completing law school at UNC in 1968, he served four years on active duty as a U.S. Navy JAG officer, during which he honed his trial skills in numerous courts-martial.

In addition to his media law practice, Hugh has extensive experience in commercial and insurance-related litigation. He has tried federal cases involving subjects as diverse as facultative reinsurance; an international airlines web site; fire truck trademarks; insurance broker negligence; ERISA; lawyer advertising; insurance and reinsurance for space satellites and launch vehicles; and defense of a phone card vendor accused of violating North Carolinas anti-lottery law.

Hughs community involvement includes long service as a director of Community Workforce Solutions, a not-for-profit agency that provides training and employment for physically and mentally impaired persons, and of the Episcopal Housing Ministry, which develops and manages apartments and social programs for low-income residents. His service to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, his alma mater, includes membership in the Chancellors Club, the Board of Advisors to the Center for the Study of the American South, and the Board of Directors of the Friends of the Library, of which he is a past chair.

Hugh and his wife Marilyn have three children and five grandchildren. His hobbies are golf, reading, traveling, cooking and Boston Red Sox baseball.

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Hugh Stevens | Stevens Martin Vaughn & Tadych PLLC

To the editor:

The forefathers of our country were very intelligent and insightful people. They were able to see how important freedom of speech and the right to peaceful assembly were to the survival of a democratic government. Both of these ideals were incorporated within the First Amendment.

After watching the riots at Berkeley University over the speaker Yiannopoulos last week, I am highly concerned how easily we are willing to discard the First Amendment.

I listened to some of the students at Berkeley proclaim victory because the speaker was not able to give his presentation. When a student was asked by a reporter if stopping the speaker was not a violation of our freedom of speech as outlined in the Constitution, her reply was that his was not free speech, but hate speech.

I scratch my head and wonder how we have arrived at a point where you are only allowed to speak when other people consent and agree with your point of view. If you do not agree with a presenter, you have options. You can choose to boycott, peacefully assemble to protest or totally dismiss and ignore the ideas of the speaker and go watch a ballgame with some friends.

You are not entitled to keep the presenter from speaking!

The First Amendment, in addition to free speech, also gives you the right of peaceful assembly. It seems that some of the protesters also missed that part of the Constitution. You do not have the right to vandalize ATM machines, break windows, throw bricks, throw firecrackers, spray pepper spray, punch people and set public property on fire. In the name of political correctness, the protesters had the audacity to spray paint fascists on some of the buildings in the riot zone.

Fascisim restricts free speech, yet the protesters wish to restrict who may speak. Now, I ask you who is the real Fascist? One of the core values of a university and its students should be free speech!

When I was principal at ECHS, I had a situation where a group of students had protested the Christian religion in the parking lot. Most of the student body was very upset with this small group.

Concerned, I called the school attorney, who by reputation was one of the top attorneys in the state dealing with school law. He asked me how I felt about what the students had done, and I told him that I as shocked by their actions (Shocked is a school law term). The attorney told me that I had to remember that the First Amendment is not a light switch which can be turned on and off at my or anyone elses discretion. Just because you dont like it, you dont agree with it or you dont consider it politically correct, people are allowed to express their ideas without hindrance.

The wise words of the attorney have stuck with me over the years, and I often think of them during turbulent times and how they apply!

This letter is my First Amendment right to express myself. I thank God that I live in a country that says I have that right..

This issue is not about being a Democrat or Republican. I couldnt give a hoot about this particular speaker, as I am not familiar with his ideas, but I do care about the First Amendment. As a former teacher of the U.S. Constitution, I do recognize that curtailing any aspect of our right to freedom of speech is a slippery slope. The real issue of my concern is that once you start deciding what people can say, where do you stop? Under the guise of political correctness, you now have made yourself judge, jury and executioner of the First Amendment.

A sad epitaph to the Berkeley riot is that the students think they won, but what did they really lose?

Stan Struckmeyer

Albion

Originally posted here:
Our First Amendment rights are quickly slipping away - The Navigator

A pro-family organization is encouraging conservative Christians to join its online effort to ask President Donald Trump to defend religious liberty.

A draft memo that outlined a proposed executive order leaked from the White House in early February, ending up in the hands not of religious organizations but homosexual rights groups.

The existence of the memo was first reported by left-wing news website The Nation.

If the content of the memo is true, says a spokesman for homosexual lobby group Human Rights Campaign, the Trump-led White House is poised to "wildly expand anti-LGBTQ discrimination across all facets of government."

"Discrimination" is common left-wing parlance, along with words such as "hate" and "bigotry," for holding traditional views about marriage and sexuality.

What this memo accomplishes, says American Family Association spokesman Walker Wildmon, is prevent the federal government from "encroaching on the First Amendment rights of Americans of faith, and really it would keep the government from coercing people of faith to violate their religious beliefs."

The fate of the memo in coming weeks is unknown, so Wildmon and AFA are asking Christian conservatives to sign their names to an online petition urging President Trump to sign the executive order. The petition has approximately 109,000 signatures.

Writing at The Daily Signal, researcher Ryan Anderson says the memo suggests protecting federal employees from punishment if they hold traditional views about marriage, citing the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Such an executive order would conflict with the pro-homosexual propaganda of the Obama administration, which pushed such "progressive" views within the Department of Justice, the Pentagon, and other agencies.

Beyond the federal government, Ryan writes, the memo suggestsprotecting the nonprofit status of religious organizations that express views about political issues, marriage and sexuality, and abortion.

In all, Ryan writes, there are 10 suggestions outlined in the memo, many of them rolling back Obama-era executive orders that were applauded at the time by homosexual activists and abortion rights groups.

"The executive order is good, lawful public policy," Ryan suggests in his commentary. "And it makes good on several promisesthen-candidate Trump made to his supporters."

Wildmon says the petition is one way tell President Trump that "amongst the people who elected him, voted him into office, this executive order and things like it are very popular."

American Family Association is the parent organization of American Family News, which includes news website OneNewsNow.

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AFA: Help us urge Trump to protect First Amendment - One News Now - OneNewsNow

Last summer, a Florida federal court reached some unusual conclusions in a lawsuit filed by SEO company e-ventures, which felt Google had overstepped its bounds in delisting a lot of its links. Google defended itself, citing both Section 230 and the First Amendment. The court disagreed with both arguments.

As to Section 230, the court found that Google's delisting efforts weren't in "good faith." The reason cited was e-ventures' claim that the delisting was in "bad faith." So much for this seldom-used aspect of Section 230: the "Good Samaritan" clause which states no third-party company can be found liable for actions it takes to remove content it finds questionable. And so much for "viewed in the light most favorable to the non-moving party." Apparently, Google's long history of spam-fighting efforts is nothing compared to an SEO wrangler's pained assertions.

The court also said Google had no First Amendment right to handle its search rankings however it saw fit, which is more than a little problematic. While it admitted Google's search rankings were protected speech, its statements about how it handled search engines weren't. And, for some reason, the court felt that Google's ads undermined its First Amendment protections because its desire to turn a profit somehow nullified its "editorial judgment."

It was a strange decision and one that suggested this court might be considering getting into the business of telling service providers how to run their businesses. It also suggested this court believed the more successful the business was, the fewer rights and protections it had. These dubious conclusions prevented Google from having the case dismissed.

Fortunately, this wasn't the final decision. As Eric Goldman points out, last year's denial only delayed the inevitable. After a few more rounds of arguments and legal paperwork, Google has prevailed. But there's not much to celebrate in this decision as the court has (again) decided to route around Google's Section 230 "Good Samaritan" defense.

Regarding 230(c)(2), the court says spam can qualify as harassing or objectionable content (cite to e360insight with a but-see to the Song Fi case). Still, the court says e-ventures brought forward enough circumstantial evidence about Googles motivations to send the case to a trial. By making it so Google cant even win on summary judgment, rulings like this just reinforce how Section 230(c)(2) is a useless safe harbor.

Had it ended there, Google would be still be facing e-ventures' claims. But it didn't. The court takes another look at Google's First Amendment claims and finds that the search engine provider does actually have the right to remove "spammy" links. Beyond that, it finds Google even has the First Amendment right to remove competitors' content. From the order [PDF]:

[T]he First Amendment protects as speech the results produced by an Internet search engine. Zhang v. Baidu.com, Inc., 10 F. Supp. 3d 433, 435 (S.D.N.Y. 2014). A search engine is akin to a publisher, whose judgments about what to publish and what not to publish are absolutely protected by the First Amendment. See Miami Herald Publg Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U.S. 241, 258 (1974) (The choice of material to go into a newspaper . . .whether fair or unfairconstitute[s] the exercise of editorial control and judgment that the First Amendment protects.) The presumption that editorial judgments, no matter the motive, are protected expression is too high a bar for e-ventures to overcome.

And the court walks back its earlier conclusion -- the one that seemed to find profit-motivated "editorial judgment" to be unworthy of First Amendment protections.

Googles actions in formulating rankings for its search engine and in determining whether certain websites are contrary to Googles guidelines and thereby subject to removal are the same as decisions by a newspaper editor regarding which content to publish, which article belongs on the front page, and which article is unworthy of publication. The First Amendment protects these decisions, whether they are fair or unfair, or motivated by profit or altruism.

The case is now dismissed with prejudice which bars e-ventures from complaining about Google's delisting efforts in federal court. e-ventures has gone this far already in hopes of seeing its terms-violating content reinstated, so it will likely attempt to appeal this decision. But it really shouldn't. It's unlikely another set of judges will help it clear the First Amendment hurdle. Not only that, but this area of law should be well-settled by now, as Goldman points out:

Of course Google can de-index sites it thinks are spam. Its hard to believe were still litigating that issue in 2017; these issues were explored in suits like SearchKing and KinderStart from over a decade ago.

The plaintiff was given a long leash by the court, which should have tossed last year. Even with the extra time and the court doings its Section 230 circumvention work for it, e-ventures still couldn't prevail.

Read more:
Court Says Google Has A First Amendment Right To Delist Competitor's 'Spammy' Content - Techdirt

As surely as the robins of spring and the swallows of Capistrano, the nay-saying critics who regularly cry racism, xenophobia or Islamophobia, to name a few of their favorite charges, come out to condemn the actions and the motivations of those they disagree with. The latest of course, is the so-called Muslim ban which temporarily suspends travelers to the U.S. from seven predominately Muslim countries.

Never mind that the 85 percent of Muslims who don't live in those countries are not affected, including those in Saudi Arabia where, according to some sources, it's because of Trump's business connections there. As these seven countries were also singled out by President Obama we should logically conclude that his exemption of Saudi Arabia was also based on his personal interests, business or otherwise.

As to the claim that this executive order is unconstitutional, I have yet to see an explanation of just which part of our constitution is being violated. Do the critics really believe that our First Amendment is universal to the whole world in its application, rather than, as spelled out in the constitution's preamble, a contract among the citizens of the United States for themselves and their posterity? Only those arrogant enough to believe that the United States should rule and govern the whole world should try to bestow our constitutional rights on that world.

See the rest here:
Letter to the editor: First Amendment only applies to Americans - The Bakersfield Californian