First Amendment

Ethics Quiz: FREEDOM

/ Jack Marshall / 74 Comments

Libs of TikTok…you know, that account that progressives call racist and homophobic and transphobic even though it only re-posts damning evidence of woke lunacy from TikTok and other platforms?…posted an email exchange between Arbor Creek Elementary Principal Melissa Snell and an (unnamed) individual in which Snell indicated that “Freedom” T-shirts were banned in her school.  “I just want to make sure that you have told your staff to not wear those ‘Freedom’ shirts to school anymore. Thank you.” Jonathan Turley confirmed that there is such a ban, though it may be temporary. Superintendent Brent Yeager confirmed the emails that Libs of TikTok had postedbut suggested that it was temporary as Snell “reviewed district practices.”

Turley says there is nothing to review.”I fail to see why Snell had to suspend the wearing of such shirts pending review. “This is clearly a content-based limitation on speech,” he writes.

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Stop Making Me Defend the Supreme Court!

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

Almost a year ago, Ethics Alarms discussed the case of Liam Morrison (above), a seventh grader who was told that his “There are only two genders” T-shirt was inappropriate as school attire. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit upheld a District Court decision from 2023 that the Nichols Middle School in Middleborough, Massachusetts didn’t violate Liam’s First Amendment rights by telling him to change his shirt.

Chief Justice David Barron, writing for the Court, concluded that “the question here is not whether the t-shirts should have been barred. The question is who should decide whether to bar them – educators or federal judges.” He continued, “We cannot say that in this instance the Constitution assigns the sensitive (and potentially consequential) judgment about what would make ‘an environment conducive to learning’ at NMS to use rather than to the educators closest to the scene.”

I wrote, in a post agreeing with the decision both ethically and legally,

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‘Don’t Be Shy, Just Say What You Really Think, Counsel!’

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

New York lawyer Rahul Dev Manchanda was disbarred in 2024 by the Appellate Division’s First Judicial Department of the New York Supreme Court. The primary charge was that he persisted in using racist and anti-Semitic language in his disciplinary complaints against other lawyers and judges. “Words fail to capture the severity and extent” of the lawyer’s bigotry, the appeals court wrote in its order.

Among other offenses, Manchanda was found to have,

  • Filed documents with “unacceptably bigoted language” in state and federal courts and “a panoply” of agencies.

  • “Used intolerably vile and foul language and divulged privileged information” when responding to clients’ online complaints.

  • “Used racist, antisemitic, homophobic and misogynistic statements while holding himself out as a well-trained and extremely experienced lawyer” in New York City.

  • “Repeatedly made meritless, frivolous and vexatious arguments well beyond the point at which he should have known better.” His “targets for such filings have grown to include this very disciplinary proceeding and collateral attacks that he has launched on it in state and federal courts.”

No weenie he, the lawyer is striking back. Manchanda has now sued the Attorney Grievance Committee for New York’s First Judicial Department, seeking $20 million in damages, which he claims he would have made in his practice over the next 20 years.

Yeeeeah.….

The suit alleges that the lawyer was disbarred because he is “a Republican, conservative, Christian values lawyer” who is Indian-American, and that the discipline he has been subjected to was “a simple, draconian, defamatory, slanderous, libelous death sentence, simply for exercising protected speech” against “activist extreme feminist and lesbian judges, racist law clerks, LGBTQ+ and biased court administrators, who routinely would lose his motions, sabotage his filings” and “arbitrarily and capriciously threaten him with contempt or arrest.” Manchanda has been persecuted, his suit claims, because his actions targeted agencies in which “the vast majority of New York City government employees” are “predominantly leftist, communist, Democrat, … of African American descent, with predominantly Jewish supervisors, as well as LGBTQ+ activists and extremists.”

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Non-Citizen Speech Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“Reason” (of course) has an article up headlined “Immigrants and Radicals Have the Same Free Speech Rights as Everyone Else.” That may be correct, but it’s not at all certain, and I’m not sure it’s ethically necessary either. (Shame on “Reason” for following the Left’s deliberate conflating of immigrants with illegal immigrants.)

Marco Rubio and the Trump Administration are asserting that foreign students, other aliens here legally but temporarily and illegal immigrants do not have the same rights of free speech as American citizens. This week, a federal judge in Massachusetts allowed a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s deportation proceedings involving non-citizen anti-Israel college protesters and activists to go forward on the grounds that the government is targeting protected speech and therefore chilling the free speech rights of foreign university students and faculty. American Association of University Professors v. Rubio was brought by the American Association of University Professors, that organization’s Harvard and New York University chapters, and the Middle East Studies Association alleging the “chilling” of non-citizen members’ activities by federal policy.  The plaintiffs allege that members of their organization “have, variously, taken down social media posts and previously published writing and scholarship, stopped assigning material about Palestine in class, withdrawn from a conference presentation, ceased traveling abroad for conferences, ceased engaging in political protest and assembly in which they previously participated, ceased teaching a course they previously taught, and foregone opportunities to write and speak at public events,” because they fear deportation.

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The Ethics of Deporting Mahmoud Khalil For Pro-Terrorist Advocacy, II.

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Shortly after posting a discussion of conservative legal scholar Illya Somin’s article at Reason declaring the Trump administration’s effort to deport Mahmoud Khalil “unjust and unconstitutional,” I became aware of the article at City Journal in which conservative legal scholar Ilya Shapiro defends the policy as legal and constitutional. It is clear from the essay that he also believes the policy is appropriate and ethical.

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The Ethics of Deporting Mahmoud Khalil For Pro-Terrorist Advocacy, I.

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

ICE arrested Palestinian activist and former Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil with the intent of deporting him in accordance with the announced Trump policy of deporting non-citizens who engage in pro-“terrorist” speech related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Predictably, the Axis is all-in supporting Khalil, who sure appears to be a bad human hill to die on. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez condemned ICE’s detainment of Mahmoud Khalil, calling it a “tyrannical” move, “Violating rule of law, actually,” she wrote. That AOC defends him alone makes me inclined to want to get rid of the guy, but that would be irrational. Judge Jesse Furman of the Southern District of New York issued an order today halting Khalil’s processing and scheduled a hearing on the case for later this week. Ah yes, the Southern District of New York!

In a confusing essay at The Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin writes that deporting non-citizens for the content of their speech is a First Amendment violation and “a slippery slope,” then, in the fifth paragraph, acknowledges that 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(3), bars “Any alien who … endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization.” I’d say endorsing and supporting Hamas qualifies under that law, wouldn’t you? So Somin says, “Such laws, too, should be ruled unconstitutional.” But until and unless it is, the Trump administration has the law on its side.

The question remains, is such a restriction on the free speech of non-citizens ethical? Somin:

“The First Amendment’s protection for freedom of speech, like most constitutional rights, is not limited to US citizens. The text of the First Amendment is worded as a general limitation on government power, not a form of special protection for a particular group of people, such as US citizens or permanent residents. The Supreme Court held as much in a 1945 case, where they ruled that “Freedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country.”

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Of Signs, Flags and Art…

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Two controversies raise issues of ethical line-drawing in state and local laws.

1. Sign or Art? Leavitt’s Country Bakery in Conway, a community of more than 10,000 people in New Hampshire, erected a colorful mural over the store in 2022. It was the creation of local high school art students showing sunbeams shining down on a mountain range made of sprinkle-covered chocolate and strawberry doughnuts, a blueberry muffin, a cinnamon roll and other pastries. The muralwas popular with everyone but the local zoning board, which ruled that the painting was not art but advertising. This meant it was a sign, and at about 90 square feet, four times bigger than the local sign ordinance allows. Lawyers for Conway insist that “restricting the size of signs serves the significant government interest of preserving the town’s aesthetics, promoting safety, and ensuring equal enforcement.” The store’s owner sued the town in federal court in 2023, saying his freedom of speech rights were being violated. He’s seeking a symbolic single dollar in damages.

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Two Executive Orders, One Extra-Constitutional, the Other Unconstitutional (and Unethical Too)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Let’s talk about the “un”-EO first. Federal District Court judge, John C. Coughenour, temporarily blocked President Trump’s executive order to end automatic citizenship for babies born on American soil, the so called “anchor baby” phenomenon. Three days after Trump issued his executive order, the judge sided with the first four states that sued, saying, “This is a blatantly unconstitutional order.” 22 states, along with activist groups and expectant mothers, have now filed lawsuits to halt order on the grounds that it violates the 14th Amendment. Courts have always interpreted the amendment’s section stating that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States” as applying to (almost) every baby born in the United States.

“Frankly,” Judge Coughenour added, “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.” Well, lawyers don’t usually state propositions, even Hail Mary theories like this one equivocally. I think Trump’s lawyers told him that the order would almost certainly be found unconstitutional, and maybe they told him that it is unconstitutional. I am pretty certain it is, and that nothing short of a Constitutional amendment can change the law.

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Ethics Dunce: Edmond Public Schools (Oklahoma)

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Caleb Horst, a senior at Edmond North High School in Oklahoma, was suddenly ordered by by his school to stop flying an American flag on his pickup even though he had been “flying it for quite a while.” This provoked a flag-flying protest at the school by students who supported Horst (How could the school not see that coming?) as well as objections from parents. Then State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters issued a statement on Twitter/X stating, “No school in Oklahoma should tell students they can’t wave an American flag.”

“We’ve had Americans die for that flag, die for students to have the right to carry the flag, to wave the flag, to be proud of that American flag,” Walters wrote. “My department right now is working on guidelines that we will be issuing to districts to ensure that no student is ever targeted for having an American flag and also that our schools will promote patriotism.” 

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From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: Gov. Walz Doesn’t Believe in the First Amendment

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

There is no context that can make that clip anything but vivid evidence of the totalitarian mindset of Harris’s VP pick and the Democratic Party.

Many, many Democrats have made equivalent statements, recently and years ago. So have many of their media allies, though the only one I can think of right now is Chris Cuomo, and to be fair, he’s an idiot.

There is no genuine controversy, not doubt, no question: “hate speech” and “misinformation” are protected under the Bill of Rights. For a Vice-Presidential candidate to think otherwise is disqualifying. Heck, it is disqualifying for a governor, even of a state as ethically addled as Minnesota. It’s disqualifying for a mail carrier. A third grade teacher.

Ironically, Walz’s statement itself is misinformation (Did you know Donald Trump lies all the time?). By his own deluded and anti-American values, Walz shouldn’t be allowed to make it.