First Amendment

The House of Representatives is considering legislation that would create a federal anti-SLAPP law to protect individuals from meritless lawsuits filed to intimidate them into refraining from criticizing a person, company, or project.

There were developments this week in two "true threats" trials against Internet agitators who have been charged with inciting illegal actions on their blogs.

There was a mistrial in the case of Howard C. Turner after a hung jury failed to acquit or convict the Internet broadcaster, who said three Chicago judges "deserved to be killed" for supporting a handgun ban, The New York Times reported.

The Texas Open Meetings Act remains good law after withstanding a constitutional challenge by former city council members who asserted the law violated their rights to exchange e-mail messages discussing city business in secret.

After four years of litigation, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Dallas (5th Cir.) dismissed the case today as moot. Although both Alpine, Texas, councilors' terms had ended, Avinash Rangra remained an active plaintiff in the case. Sixteen judges held Rangra lacked the proper standing to sue.

A federal appellate court rightly decided this week to re-hear a case on the constitutionality of the Texas Open Meetings Act.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans (5th Cir.) took the unusual and laudable step of granting a petition for en banc review, meaning the full court will now consider a case that a three-judge panel of the court previously decided.

The Supreme Court said today it would rehear a case about how the government may regulate corporate and union speech related to elections. The Court will hear new arguments in a special session on Sept. 9.

A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld a regulation barring prisoners on death row in the federal system from meeting with reporters. In doing so, a majority of Seventh Circuit judges set a low bar for determining when an inmate's constitutional rights can be infringed upon, over the objections of several dissenting judges.

An Oakland Tribune photographer who was arrested while taking pictures at an accident scene lost his civil rights case against the City of Oakland and several police officers on Tuesday.

In an opinion that could call into question the constitutionality of open meetings laws everywhere, a federal appellate court held Monday that the Texas Open Meetings law must pass a heightened constitutional test under the First Amendment.

Two troubling reports of interference with student journalism surfaced last week from opposite sides of the country: Two campus police officers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were suspended for dumping hundreds of copies of the student paper, and the editors of a college paper in Portland, Ore. were ordered to yank an entire issue over an article the administration reportedly found "distasteful and sensationalistic."

The U.S. Supreme Court today heard oral arguments in Citizens United v. FEC, a case that may decide whether the Federal Election Commission (FEC) may forbid the distribution of a political documentary in the run-up to a presidential election.