Mediaboss Marketing

State Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington Washington D.C. West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming Puerto Rico US Virgin Islands Armed Forces Americas Armed Forces Pacific Armed Forces Europe Northern Mariana Islands Marshall Islands American Samoa Federated States of Micronesia Guam Palau Alberta, Canada British Columbia, Canada Manitoba, Canada New Brunswick, Canada Newfoundland, Canada Nova Scotia, Canada Northwest Territories, Canada Nunavut, Canada Ontario, Canada Prince Edward Island, Canada Quebec, Canada Saskatchewan, Canada Yukon Territory, Canada

Zip Code

Country United States of America US Virgin Islands United States Minor Outlying Islands Canada Mexico, United Mexican States Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Cuba, Republic of Dominican Republic Haiti, Republic of Jamaica Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe

Originally posted here:
Six West Virginia Schools Notified of First Amendment Violations in Student Handbooks - WV News

Share To Your Social Network

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has filed a brief with 23 other states urging the court to deny Special Prosecutor Jack Smiths request for an unconstitutional gag order on President Donald Trump. The gag order is claimed to violate the First Amendment by restricting President Trumps ability to speak freely during the election season and denying Americans the right to hear open debate from presidential candidates. The order would also prevent Trump from criticizing the raid on his Mar-a-Lago home.

Missouri has long been a champion of free speech. A gag order on President Trump violates not only his First Amendment right to speak but Americans right to hear from a presidential candidate in the height of election season, said Attorney General Bailey. I will always use every tool at my disposal to defend our right to free speech, the bedrock of our great nation.

This brief is the latest in a series of actions Attorney General Bailey has taken to combat the legal challenges against President Trump:

Joining Missouri in filing the brief are the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

The full amicus brief can be readhere.

Post Views: 30

Share To Your Social Network

Read this article:
Missouri AG joins 23 states to defend Trump's First Amendment rights - kttn

Attorneys for the plaintiffs challenging an Alabama law restricting absentee voter assistance argued in a Monday filing that they were likely to succeed because the assistance is covered under the First Amendment.

The Monday filing was in response to the states arguments that a preliminary injunction against the law should not be granted.

In the 31-page filing, attorneys for the plaintiffs wrote that they are substantially likely to succeed on the merits of their speech and association claims. They wrote that assistance is covered under the First Amendment and that the states testimonies were not convincing. They said that the bill would fail under First Amendment scrutiny.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX

SUBSCRIBE

A message was left with representatives for some of the plaintiffs, including the ACLU of Alabama. A message was also left for the Attorney Generals office.

The Alabama Legislature this spring passed a law that criminalized some forms of absentee ballot application assistance. Civil rights groups, including the ACLU of Alabama, filed a lawsuit in April, saying the law amounts to voter suppression.

The state argued in its response that absentee ballot application assistance did not amount to speech.

In their filing on Monday, plaintiffs argued the new law is unconstitutionally vague and unconstitutionally overbroad.

Defendants arguments only underscore SB 1s fatal deficiencies: in both their motion to dismiss and opposition brief here, the filing said. Defendants can only attempt to explain the scope and meaning of SB 1 by inferring words and meaning that do not exist anywhere in the statute or conjuring their own definitions from thin air.

The lawyers wrote they are likely to succeed on a claim over Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act Section 208. According to the Department of Justice website, the section deals with voters who need assistance due to blindness, disability or an inability to read or write and allows them to be assisted by someone of their choice, with some exceptions such as an employer. They wrote that the section deals with assistance for blind, disabled, and low-literacy voters, as well as their claim under Help America Vote Act (HAVA).

They also wrote that plaintiffs will suffer harm without relief, the balance of equities and public interest require a preliminary injunction and is necessary for complete relief under Article III.

Read this article:
Voting assistance covered by First Amendment, say plaintiffs in absentee ballot case Alabama Reflector - Alabama Reflector

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

Six West Virginia schools were notified Thursday that policies in their student handbooks may violate students First Amendment rights by requiring them to participate in certain activities like standing for flag-raising ceremonies and the Pledge of Allegiance and removing hats for the national anthem, among other things.

The notice which was sent as a letter to the schools came from the West Virginia arm of the American Civil Liberties Union on the 81st anniversary of the landmark legal case West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. In 1949, The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in that case that students cannot be forced or compelled to salute a flag or recite the Pledge in schools. Policies that direct otherwise, according to the case, are a clear violation of the students freedom of speech.

The Constitution affords protection for Americans to freely express our beliefs and ideas. That protection expands beyond written and spoken word; it extends to symbolic speech as well, ACLU-WV Legal Director Aubrey Sparks wrote in the letter. One powerful way that people can express themselves is by choosing to remain silent when everyone else is agreeing, or remaining sitting when everyone else stands. Barnette codified that right. Students still have that right in schools today.

Staff from the ACLU, according to a news release, reviewed student handbooks for all schools in the state to ensure their policies were compliant with the rulings in Barnette.

Schools that received the letters due to having policies in violation of the law are: Calhoun Middle/High School, Riverside High School in Kanawha County, Summers County Comprehensive High School, Richwood High School in Nicholas County, Sissonville Middle School in Kanawha County and John Adams Middle School, also in Kanawha County.

The policies in the student handbook vary school by school.

Riverside High, for example, directs that students must rise and remove hats during the national anthem and flag ceremonies held during extracurricular activities.

At Sissonville and John Adams middle schools, the handbooks state that students must stand for the Pledge of Allegiance during class. If they dont recite the Pledge, they must remain silent.

The letters sent Thursday urge leaders at the listed schools to review their policies with consideration of the Barnette ruling and amend them if needed to ensure that they meet constitutional obligations.

Schools are often the first places that students learn about their civic obligations, their constitutional rights, and the importance of being brave enough to engage in speech thats not always popular, Sparks wrote in the letter. The First Amendment exists to safeguard the diversity of thought and expression, which are essential components of a thriving democratic society. Protecting free speech in public schools is paramount, something that was determined by the Supreme Court in West Virginia v. Barnette eighty-one years ago.

West Virginia Watch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com. Follow West Virginia Watch on Facebook and X.

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

View original post here:
ACLU Urges Six WV Schools to Review Student Policies Violating First Amendment - The 74

Over the past three years, state legislatures have introduced and passed hundreds of laws restricting speech on race and racism in public schools. Broadly classified as Anti-CRT laws, these bills aim to ban lessons derived from the tenets of critical race theory, which posits that race is a social construct embedded in legal systems and policies, creating systemic inequalities that should be evaluated to correct past and present racial injustices. The laws impose broad and often vague prohibitions on speech, mostly without reference to critical race theory.

In her paper (E)racing Speech in School, Francesca Procaccini, Assistant Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School, offers a First Amendment analysis of Anti-CRT laws. She finds that while the First Amendment may not protect teachers or parents opposed to such laws, it will often protect students rights to receive the information that Anti-CRT laws seek to chill.

The deeper and more provocative insight of these conclusions is that they rest on the same sound constitutional reasoning: that the First Amendment works to protect democratic governance and good citizenship, Procaccini writes.

Limits on Free Speech for Teachers

To protect democratic governance, the First Amendment permits reasonable regulations on speech of public-school teachers when speaking in their capacity as government employees. Without the authority to dictate what teachers teach, the task of public education would be inconsistent, arbitrary, and idiosyncratic, not to mention void of meaningful democratic oversight and accountability, she writes.

In the two-pronged test used to govern the free speech rights of teachers, courts must weigh whether the teacher is speaking as a citizen on a matter of public concern, and if so, is there no reasonable justification for treating that teachers speech rights differently from other citizens. In the case of teaching critical race theory (or not) as part of a schools designated curriculum, it is clear teachers dont satisfy either prong, she writes.

Limits on Free Speech for Parents

Generally, parents do not have a right under the free speech clause of the First Amendment to determine what their children hear or learn, writes Procaccini.

This lack of protection serves two purposes: 1) it ensures that no single parents has the power to veto school assessments or curricula, and 2) it enhances a childs protection to develop beyond the confines of their parents views and teachings, which is integral to the First Amendments protection of individual enlightenment, the paper explains. While the Supreme Court has not explicitly defined childrens speech rights as such, Procaccini points out that it has relied on children as future citizens to reject parental speech rights.

Students First Amendment Rights

The right to receive information is inherent in the First Amendments protection of political participation and democratic self-government, the paper argues. It is at its most salient when the government attempts to withhold or manipulate the free flow of information between citizens and where there is informational dependence between the speaker and listener.

In situations where a power asymmetry exists between the speaker and listener, the right to receive information is extremely important for democratic decision-making. This holds true in the teacher-student relationship. When the information at hand involves an education that is sensitive to issues of structural racism in our society, the paper states, it can factor into how children make informed choices. The Supreme Court has explicitly made this connection in Ambach v. Norwick.

Procaccini argues that this right to receive information in public school educations means the state may not prohibit the teaching and classroom discussion of information that is integral to learning to participate as an informed citizen in a pluralistic democracy, with exceptions for legitimate pedagogical concerns like age, demography, and resources. She uses this argument to craft the anti-orthodoxy rule, which holds that laws that prohibit all classroom instruction of age-appropriate critical race theory topics in public schools violate students First Amendment right to receive information.

Ensuring against the imposition of a state-sponsored political orthodoxy is integral to protecting the ability of citizens to meaningfully participate in democratic self-governance, the paper concludes. it is integral to their having the baseline knowledge, information, and communicative avenues to make informed political, economic, and social choices that shape our communities.

(E)Racing Speech in School is published in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.

View original post here:
Do Anti-CRT Laws Violate the First Amendment? - Vanderbilt Law