Prior Restraints

Restricting the sale, disclosure and use of prescription drug data for marketing purposes runs headlong into the First Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that a legislator’s act of casting a legislative vote is not protected personal speech for First Amendment purposes. The Court’s opinion reverses a decision by the Nevada Supreme Court, which had held that a state recusal law infringed on the free speech rights of local legislators.

Legal experts are warning that a Tennessee bill signed into law earlier this month could subject news organizations to criminal prosecutions if they publish crime scene photographs, biting political cartoons or anything else that might upset people.

The law’s sponsor said the concerns about criminalizing free speech are overblown, as the law is an effort to update the state’s harassment statute to punish perpetrators who target their victims using electronic communications.

Three Florida doctors and three physician trade groups sued the governor and other state officials in federal court on Monday in an effort to overturn, on First Amendment grounds, the state’s new law restricting doctors' discussions about gun ownership with patients.

In the final oral argument of the term, the U.S. Supreme Court considered today whether recusal rules interfere with First Amendment rights legislators may have in their legislative votes. Some of the justices' questions in Nevada Commission on Ethics v.

Florida preacher Terry Jones, who recently gained notoriety for burning a Quran, is challenging a Dearborn, Mich., jury verdict and court order that prevented him from staging a protest outside a mosque because he was likely to breach the peace.

A Dallas judge found earlier this week that a plaintiff who tried to silence a blogger through a temporary injunction in a defamation suit did not meet the burden for the injunction.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco (9th Cir.) reaffirmed a sweeping protection of speech earlier this week, denying a petition to rehear a case involving a law that makes lying about receiving military honors a crime.