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1. First Amendment group sues Texas Governor and others over the state's TikTok ban on official devices  The Associated Press
2. Knight Institute files lawsuit against Texas's TikTok ban  CNN
3. First Amendment org challenges restrictions on TikTok at Texas universities  TechCrunch

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First Amendment group sues Texas Governor and others over the state's TikTok ban on official devices - The Associated Press

1A Remaking America: The First Amendment And LGBTQ Rights More than 20 states across the country have public accommodation laws to prevent businesses from discriminating against customers based on things like race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.

But a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision could put these protections at risk.

Last month, in a 6-to-3 decision, the court ruled in it would be unconstitutional under the First Amendment for Lorie Smith, the plaintiff in 303 Creative v. Elenis, to have to create a message she opposes in this case, a wedding website for a same-sex couple.

The case raises big questions about what counts as creative speech under the First Amendment and also about questions about the fate of anti-discrimination protections across the country.

We unpack the implications of the Supreme Court decision with legal and First Amendment scholars.

This show is part of our Remaking America collaboration with six public radio stations around the country. Remaking America is funded in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Want to support 1A? Give to your local public radio station and subscribe to this podcast. Have questions? Find out how to connect with us by visiting our website.

Television news crews report from outside the U.S. Supreme Court on the last day of its term in Washington, DC. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images hide caption

Television news crews report from outside the U.S. Supreme Court on the last day of its term in Washington, DC.

More than 20 states across the country have public accommodation laws to prevent businesses from discriminating against customers based on things like race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.

But a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision could put these protections at risk.

Lorie Smith, the plaintiff in 303 Creative v. Elenis, wanted to expand her graphic design business in Littleton, Colorado. But she said she would refuse to design a page for a same-sex couple's wedding if asked. She worried that Colorado's Anti-Discrimination Act would force her to do so.

Last month, in a 6-to-3 decision, the court ruled in Smith's favor, saying that it would be unconstitutional under the First Amendment for her to have to create a message she opposes in this case, a wedding website for a same-sex couple.

The case raises big questions about what counts as creative speech under the First Amendment and also about questions about the fate of anti-discrimination protections across the country.

We unpack the implications of the Supreme Court decision with legal and First Amendment scholars. We also hear from the mayor of Louisville, Kentucky. The city has had a fairness ordinance protecting LGBTQ people since 1999.

This show is part of our Remaking America collaboration with six public radio stations around the country. Remaking America is funded in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Like what you hear? Find more of our programs online.

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1A Remaking America: The First Amendment And LGBTQ Rights : 1A - NPR

[A] decision in petitioners favor . . . would permit the First Amendment to supersede laws of general application that are important for our society to function, without advancing First Amendment goals. . . . Allowing 303 Creative to discriminate on the basis of the First Amendments protections would necessarily open the door to conflicts between such expressive interests and other laws of general application, unsettling the law in multiple ways.

Amicus brief filed on behalf of Vincent Blasi, Erwin Chemerinsky, Burt Neuborne, Robert Post, Kermit Roosevelt, Amanda Shanor, Geoffrey R. Stone and Laura Weinrib.

Justice Neil Gorsuchs majority opinion in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis (2023) will live on in infamy in many liberal minds. This 6-3 opinion is one of the latest in a predictable line of conservative rulings designed to upend liberal precedents, this time those concerning LGBTQ rights. For example, consider what Laurence Tribe and Jeffrey B. Abramson said about the matter:

By twisting free speech into a license to discriminate, the [303 Creative] court has now carved out an exception from public accommodations law for businesses that recast their services in ways that highlight their expressive features. But the court offers no workable principle to cabin that exception in any meaningful way. . . . The hostility of a majority of justices to the2015 Supreme Court caseprotecting same-sex marriage is so open that, until they can followJustice Clarence Thomass call to overrule that decision, they are determined to strip same-sex couples of civil rights protections that other lawfully married couples enjoy.

303 Creative also marks yet another liberal breakaway from what was long thought to be one of the mainstays of liberal constitutionalism the free speech principle championed by the liberal likes of Brandeis and Brennan and hailed in the scholarly works of Emerson and Kalven. But those days are ending as more and more liberals view the Roberts Courts jurisprudence as a way, in Justice Elena Kagans dissenting words, of weaponizing the First Amendment.

More than 20 states, including New York and California, have anti-discrimination laws like Colorados. By creating a free speech carve-out from these laws, the courts ruling threatens to obliterate a vital tool in efforts to protect the L.G.B.T.Q. community at a time when it faces hatred and violence.

Aaron Tang, The New York Times (July 1)

See also: Ben Clements, The Roberts Court twisted the First Amendment into a tool of discrimination, The Hill (July 8).

For a supportive take on Justice Gorsuchs opinion, see: Darpana Sheth, Myth-busting reactions to the Supreme Courts decision in 303 Creative v. Elenis, FIRE (July 7).

See also: John Eastman and Anthony T. Caso, amicus brief filed in support of petitioners

If one had to pinpoint a time when the left began to lose faith in First Amendment free speech absolutism (or near absolutism), it might have been with the Nazis marching in Skokie cases (Village of Skokie v. National Socialist Party (Ill., 1978) and Collin v. Smith (7th Cir., 1978). That controversy certainly divided the ACLUs membership. See: When the Nazis Came to Skokie, Philippa Strum (1999).

If one had to pinpoint a time when the right began to gain faith in the First Amendment, it might have been with the commercial speech cases, especially ones such as 44 Liquormart v. Rhode Island (1996) (see e.g. Thomas, J., concurring). (Contrast C. Edwin Baker, The First Amendment and Commercial Speech, Indiana Law Journal (2009).) There were also cases such as Harris v. Quinn (2014) and Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (2018) in which the First Amendment was used to disempower labor unions.

The left took its leave when the free speech principle trumped the anti-discrimination principle, and when libertarian values redefined the political power dynamic. By the same token, the right openly embraced the free speech principle when it served the interests of laissez-faire capitalism.

The equality principle of free speech (once championed in Police Dept. of the City of Chicago v. Mosley (1972)), has fallen on difficult times when one considers some of the First Amendment gay rights cases the Court has handed down: e.g., Boy Scouts of America v. Dale (2000), Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018), and more recently 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis (2023) and Klein v. Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (2022). For many liberals, the First Amendment is a device by which conservative jurists can dismantle the Courts landmark LGBTQ rulings.

On the other side of the ideological divide and to conservatives delight the libertarian tenet of the First Amendment has done quite well when one considers certain commercial speech cases (e.g., Thompson v. Western States Medical Center (2002); and Sorrell v. IMS Health, Inc. (2011)) and virtually all the campaign finance cases (e.g., Citizens United v. FEC (2010); and McCutcheon v. FEC (2014). Here too, such rulings have been met with liberal outrage.

More, of course, needs to be said on the liberal abandonment and the conservative endorsement of 303 Creative-like rulings (both on the expression and religion sides), but that is the stuff of forthcoming posts so stay tuned! rklc

Related

That was the title of Susanna Granieris post over at First Amendment Watch. Here are a few excerpts:

A federal judge in Louisiana granted a preliminary injunction July 4 blocking the Biden administration and key government agencies from communicating with major social media platforms about user content the sites host a ruling which could result in major First Amendment implications.

Theorder, written by Judge Terry A. Doughty a Donald Trump appointee upends the governments efforts to curtail troublesome speech online. The mis- and disinformation on major platforms grew exponentially during the 2016 presidential election and the coronavirus pandemic, which led the government to regularly communicate its concerns with major social media platforms that hosted the speech of millions of Americans.

[ . . . ]

Judge Doughtys ruling raised concern among some First Amendment scholars. The opinion includes facts that raise serious constitutional questions,tweetedJameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.But his order would insulate social media [companies] from criticism, not just coercion. He should narrow the order, or the appeals court should do it for him, he wrote.

[ . . . ]

Lyrissa Lidsky, First Amendment lawyer and professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, said it appears the government may have gone beyond jawboning to implicit coercion of social media companies as a way to censor disfavored content.

Some of that content may be disinformation, but the danger is that some of it is simply content the government doesnt like or finds embarrassing, she said. The litigation is important as a tool to uncover the extent to which the government is pressuring, and perhaps coercing, censorship by the social media companies that provide millions of us with access to the digital public square. However, Lidsky added, Judge Doughtys gag order on government actors may reach too far in response to the threat.

This from Eric Boehm over at Reason:

Whether [any] systemic pressure campaign amounts to a violation of Americans' free speech rights is something courts still have to decide. It's not a straightforward issue, as government officials also have a free speech right to communicate with moderators at social media companies. When and how that communication becomes an attempt at chilling free speechbacked by an implicit threat of state action if the social media companies don't complyare complex questions, and Tuesday's injunction is far from the final say in the matter.

This from Leah Litman and Laurence H. Tribe in Restricting the Government from Speaking to Tech Companies Will Spread Disinformation and Harm Democracy for Just Security (July 5):

While there are, in theory, interesting questions about when and how the government can try to jawbone private entities to remove speech from their platforms, this decision doesnt grapple with any of them . . .

Invoking the First Amendment, a single district court judge effectively issued a prior restraint on large swaths of speech, cutting short an essential dialogue between the government and social media companies about online speech and potentially lethal misinformation. Compounding that error, the district court crafted its injunction to apply to myriad high-ranking officials in the Biden administration, raising grave separation of powers concerns. And equally troubling is how the courts order, which prevents the government from even speaking with tech companies about their content moderation policies, deals a huge blow to vital government efforts to harden U.S. democracy against threats of misinformation.

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Of all the distortions and paranoia that Tucker Carlson promoted on his since-canceled Fox News program, one looms large: a conspiracy theory that an Arizona man working as a covert government agent incited the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol to sabotage and discredit former President Donald J. Trump and his political movement.

Whats known about the man a two-time Trump voter namedRay Epps is that he took part in demonstrations in Washington that day and the night before . . .

Federal prosecutors have not charged Mr. Epps with a crime, focusing instead on the more than1,000 other demonstratorswho acted violently or were trespassing in the Capitol. The Justice Departments sprawling investigation into the attack remains open, however, and Mr. Epps could still be indicted.

Yet for more than 18 months, Mr. Carlson insisted that the lack of charges against Mr. Epps could mean only one thing: that he was being protected because he was a secret government agent. There was no rational explanation, Mr. Carlson told his audience, why this mysterious figure who helped stage-manage the insurrection had not been charged. He repeated Mr. Eppss name over and over in nearly 20 episodes imprinting it on the minds of his viewers.

[ . . . ]

Now lawyers representing Mr. Epps and his wife are proceeding with plans to sue Fox News for defamation. We informed Fox in March that if they did not issue a formal on-air apology that we would pursue all available avenues to protect the Eppses rights, said Michael Teter, a lawyer for Mr. Epps who sent the network acease-and-desistletter asking for an on-air apology and a retraction.

[S]tatements impugning the integrity of a judge may not be punished unless they are capable of being proved true or false; statements of opinion are protected by the First Amendment unless they imply a false assertion of fact.

Judge Alex Kozinski (1995)

This case [involving criticism of a judge] presents a textbook example of an opinion that is protected by the First Amendment . . .

Attorney Alex Kozinski, 2023, brief on behalf of Petitioner Pavone

The case is In the Matter of Benjamin Laurence Pavone (Cal., #S-279851). It is a bar discipline case that tests the limits of how far a lawyer can go in criticizing a judge. Petitioner, Benjamin Pavone, is being represented by retired Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski.

The issues raised in the case are:

Note: The Ninth Circuit Yagman majority opinion the Petitioner relies upon was authored by then-Judge Alex Kozinski. (Some of those who signed an amicus brief filed by American Jewish Congress-Pacific Southwest Region and Article 19 in support of the petitioner were: Ben Margolis, Erwin Chemerinsky, Susan R. Estrich, Barry A. Fisher, Catherine L. Fisk, Stanley Fleishman, Fred Okrand, Robert M. Ornstein, and Eugene Volokh.)

Here are a few excerpts from Kozinskis First Amendment arguments to the state high court:

First things first. The language just recounted from Petitioners opening and reply briefs is bad writing and poor advocacy. No one long in the business of persuading appellate courts believes youre likely to get very far hurling rotten vegetables at the decision-maker or the decision-maker's colleagues. Petitioners writing was not a persuasive legal argument calculated to obtain the fees he believed he deserved. Indeed, it may be the worst advocacy among the thousands of briefs counsel has read over the years.

But Petitioner was not charged with incompetence and he hurt only himself: As any reasonable person would have expected, the Court of Appeal rejected Petitioners argument and affirmed the denial of fees and costs, whereas a more temperate brief may have prevailed.

The question presented by this petition is whether casting doubt on the intellectual

integrity of a judicial officer, after disclosing the facts on which those doubts are based, may be the subject of disciplinary sanctions. The Ninth Circuit long ago held that, as a matter of First Amendment law, such conduct could not be grounds for discipline. (Standing Comm. on Discipline of U.S. Dist. Ct. for Cent. Dist. of California v. Yagman (9th Cir. 1995)).

Uvalde school district officials banned Adam Martinez from school property and school board meetings for two years.

Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

The Uvalde school district has lifted its ban on a concerned parent after the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression stood up for his right to speak out at school board meetings.

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School DistrictbannedAdam Martinez, a father of two students, from district property for two years for questioning the qualifications of a recently hired school district police officer. In May, FIRE sent aletterthreatening to sue if the district did not lift the unconstitutional ban. Yesterday, the school districtconfirmedit is lifting the ban and Martinez is allowed on school property once again.

All Ive ever wanted was to speak my mind and be a voice for my community, said Martinez. Im thankful to FIRE for taking my case, and look forward to holding our local leaders accountable.

FIRE was ready and willing to sue to protect Mr. Martinezs First Amendment rights, said FIRE attorney Conor Fitzpatrick. Thankfully, the Uvalde school district backed down and lifted its unconstitutional ban.

The case of New York Times v. Sullivan set a vital standard in libel law. Could the clash between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems dismantle itand at what cost?

The libel lawsuit filed in March 2021 by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News, over the networks coverage of claims that the company had rigged the 2020 election, was settled this spring, but the case may soon become an artifact of a vanished era. In pretrial skirmishing, the two sides agreed on this much: the law of libel is governed by the Supreme Courts 1964 decision inNew York Timesv.Sullivan. In the last legal arguments before the jury was to be seated, Rodney A. Smolla, one of the lawyers for Dominion, calledSullivan the landmark decision that is the genesis for all of our modern First Amendment principles involving defamation law. Erin E. Murphy, a lawyer for Fox, likewise said that the principle governing the case starts inSullivan. But the emboldened conservative majority on the Supreme Court, having dispatchedRoev.Wadeto the dustbin of overruled precedents, may now targetSullivanfor the same treatment. Such a change would have fundamental consequences for both those who speak and those who are spoken about.

Its a fitting time, then, to take a fresh look atSullivan how it came about and what it means today. InActual Malice: Civil Rights and Freedom of the Press inNew York Timesv.Sullivan,Samantha Barbas, a professor at the University of Buffalo School of Law, tells the improbable story of the advertisement that gave rise to the case and the decision that Justice William J. Brennan ultimately wrote. Its a tale that has been told before notably in books by Anthony Lewis and Aimee Edmondson but Barbas has a distinctive and relevant argument.

Related

Thanks to the First Amendment, Americans enjoy a rare privilege: the constitutional right to lie. And although controversial, they should continue to enjoy this right.

When commentators and politicians discuss misinformation, they often repeat five words: "fire in a crowded theater." Though governments can, if they choose, attempt to ban harmful lies, propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation, how effective will their efforts really be? Can they punish someone for yelling "fire" in a crowded theater and would those lies then have any less impact? How do governments around the world respond to the spread of misinformation, and when should the US government protect the free speech of liars?

InLiar in a Crowded Theater, law professor Jeff Kosseff addresses the pervasiveness of lies, the legal protections they enjoy, the harm they cause, and how to combat them. From the COVID-19 pandemic to the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections and the January 6, 2021, insurrection on the Capitol building, Kosseff argues that even though lies can inflict huge damage, US law should continue to protect them.Liar in a Crowded Theaterexplores both the history of protected falsehoods and where to go from here.

Drawing on years of research and thousands of pages of court documents in dozens of cases from Alexander Hamilton's enduring defense of free speech to Eminem's victory in a lawsuit claiming that he stretched the truth in a 1999 song Kosseff illustrates not only why courts are reluctant to be the arbiters of truth but also why they're uniquely unsuited to that role. Rather than resorting to regulating speech and fining or jailing speakers, he proposes solutions that focus on minimizing the harms of misinformation. If we want to seriously address concerns about misinformation and other false speech, we must finally exit the crowded theater.

Last Constitution Day, we traced the origins of free speech in the United States from colonial America to the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791. In this episode, we jump forward to the antebellum period, where abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, John Quincy Adams, William Lloyd Garrison, and Angelina Grimk? clashed with pro-slavery advocates over the monumental issue of slavery.

Journalist and author Damon Root, FIRE Senior Fellow Jacob Mchangama, and Washington and Lee University professor Lucas Morel join the show this week to explore how free speech and the free press became the essential tools in the abolitionists' campaign for freedom.

Cases decided

Review granted

Cert granted and case remanded

Pending petitions

State action

Qualified immunity

Immunity under Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act

Liability Anti-Terrorism Act

Section 230 immunity

Review denied

Previous FAN

FAN 385.1: Stephen Rohde, Devil's Advocate: Why is a prominent ethics professor defending John Eastman on First Amendment grounds?

This article is part ofFirst Amendment News, an editorially independent publication edited by Ronald K. L. Collins and hosted by FIRE as part of our mission to educate the public about First Amendment issues. The opinions expressed are those of the articles author(s) and may not reflect the opinions of FIRE or of Mr. Collins.

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Abandoned love: The left's move away from the right's First Amendment First Amendment News 386 - Foundation for Individual Rights in Education

Over the past few years, officials from a number of federal agencies have met regularly with senior executives from the major social platforms to talk about foreign troll armies, the fight against disinformation, and other areas of mutual interest. Last week, such discussions suddenly became illegal as a result of an injunction imposed by Terry Doughty, a federal judge in Louisiana, who ruled that they likely constitute an attempt by the government to coerce the social platforms and as such a violation of the First Amendment. Doughty ordered officials across large parts of the US government to (at least temporarily) stop talking to tech companies about content moderation and removal. He also prohibited officials from collaborating, coordinating, partnering, switchboarding, and/or jointly working with certain academics who focus on social media.

In his 155-page, 45,000-word decision, Doughty, who was appointed by Donald Trump in 2017, wrote that the lawsuit that led to his decisionwhich was filed last year by the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouriaddressed no lesser stakes than the most massive attack against free speech in United States history [sic]. The attorneys general, Doughty said, had presented evidence of a massive effort by the White House to suppress speech based on its content. He went on to list the types of speech that the government had allegedly coerced the platforms into blocking, including the story about Hunter Bidens laptop, the lab-leak theory of the origins of COVID-19, the efficacy of masks and lockdowns, the efficacy of COVID vaccines, the 2020 election, the security of voting by mail, parody content, and negative posts about the economy and President Biden.

A Biden administration official said after the ruling that in talking to the platforms, the government has merely been involved in efforts to promote responsible actions to protect public health, safety, and security, and that it never coerced anyone. Either way, the ruling quickly had an effect on such talks: last Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that the State Department had canceled a meeting with Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, in which they had planned to discuss foreign influence campaigns. The next day, the Justice Department asked for Doughtys injunction to be stayed, arguing that it was both sweeping in scope and vague in its terms. The government also characterized the injunction as internally contradictory: it prohibits officials from speaking publicly about social media posts, but at the same time assures the government that its officials are free to exercise their own right to free speech.

This week, however, Doughty refused to stay the injunction, which, in his words, only prohibits something the Defendants have no legal right to docontacting social media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner, the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech. Within hours, the White House took its case instead to a federal appeals court, arguing that there was no evidence that it had made threats against social media companies and that the injunction would unduly restrict public statements. May federal officials respond to a false story on influential social-media accounts with a public statement refuting the story? the governments appeal asked. No plausible interpretation of the First Amendment would prevent the government from taking such actions, but the injunction could be read to do so.

The allegation at the heart of the lawsuitthat the government has colluded with social media companies to censor speechis not new; indeed, it predates the Biden administration. Conservatives first raised concerns even before Trump was elected president; in 2020, Trump signed an executive order that directed the Federal Communications Commission to rethink Section 230, the law that protects internet services from legal liability for the content that users post on their networks. (As the Post noted, that order came in the same week Twitter applied fact-checking labels to two of Trumps tweets.) The attorneys general for Louisiana and Missouri argued in the case before Doughty that in 2017, officials began a systemic and systematic campaign to control speech on social media by putting pressure on the social platforms. Several individualsjoined the lawsuit, including Jim Hoft, the owner and operator of the conservative site Gateway Pundit, who said that he had been censored online because of his comments about vaccines and mail-in ballots.

In legal parlance, what the government is accused of doing is known as jawboning, or trying to exert undue influence through the use of rhetoric. In a post for Lawfare in 2021, Genevieve Lakier, a free speech expert at the University of Chicago, wrote that scholars have long expressed alarm at the tendency of government officials to use informal means, rather than democratically enacted laws, to pressure the social media companies to remove speech. Doughtys ruling nonetheless met with a scathing reaction among many commentators and internet experts. Daphne Keller, the director of platform regulation at Stanfords Cyber Policy Center, argued on Twitter that the ruling contained a classic logical error: the judge wants to have his cake and eat it too, Keller wrote, by blocking the government from contacting social media companies to discuss certain kinds of lawful speech while condoning their doing so in other situations (including those involving national security threats). Nieman Labs Joshua Benton wrote on Twitter that Federal Judge Terry A. Doughty of the Western District of Louisiana is a hack.

As critical as many legal analysts were of the decision, others argued that Doughty and the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri have a point. Jeff Kosseff, an associate professor of cyber law at the US Naval Academy and author of a book about Section 230, wrote on Twitter that while he doesnt agree with the scope of the injunction in the case, its impossible to read the opinion and not be angry about a lot of the governments actions, including threats to change or repeal Section 230 unless the platforms behaved in a certain way. Threatening to repeal or limit a vital technology protectioneither because the platforms moderate too much or too littleis a huge problem, Kosseff wrote.

Mike Masnick, a writer at Techdirt, agreed with Kosseff that some of the governments behavior crossed a line. For example, Masnick wrote, officials in the White House sending emails with statements like wondering if we can get moving on the process of having [a tweet] removed ASAP was definitely inappropriate. However, Masnick also argued that Doughty sees censorship where there is none. The lawsuit before him claims that the government violated the First Amendment by having Twitter block a New York Post story about Hunter Bidens laptop, an incident that remains a key Trumpist talking point, as Masnick put it. Twitter did stop the story from spreading, Masnick said, but there is absolutely no evidence that the government forced or pressured it to do so.

In the past, some conservatives have threatened legislation that would alter or suspend Section 230 as grist in their battle with the platforms, which they have claimeddespite a conspicuous lack of evidencecensor right-wing content. The lawsuit from Louisiana and Missouri is a new front in the same battle. Whether it is ultimately successful remains to be seen, but Masnick noted that the appeals court that is set to hear the Biden administrations appeal is the same one that, last year, found in favor of a Texas law restricting the platforms right to moderate contenta ruling that one legal expert characterized as the most angrily incoherent First Amendment decision I think Ive ever read. This particular battle is still far from over.

Other notable stories:

ICYMI: Mathew Ingram on a week of Threads

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The government talking to the platforms is a First Amendment minefield. A judge just blew it up. - Columbia Journalism Review

By Olivia Adams | on July 14, 2023

On Thursday, July 13, Columbia police, along with Spring Hill police, arrested Daniel Walls, 38, and a 17-year-old juvenile on charges related to the posting of bias-based rhetoric flyers on historically Black churches and at least one business in Columbia.

Flyers were placed on Mt. Calvary Missionary Baptist Church, Bethel A.M.E. and Faith United Missionary Baptist churches last week that included language warning mixed-race couples, communists and homosexuals that the Klan is back again and here to stay, and those people should make amends or stay away.

Walls was arrested and charged with four counts of Civil Rights intimidation and one count each of vandalism and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

In a statement to Main Street Maury, Wells apologized for his actions, stating he did not post the flyers as an act of hatred, but only as recruitment of like-minded individuals.

Im truly sorry for the actions and flyers; it was not done out of hatred for any skin color or targeting anyone, he said. It was just for recruiting purposes only. I wasnt aware the congregations were all black, but everyone gets them no matter their race. How are we supposed to know who lives or goes where?

Wells claims he was simply distributing the preprinted materials as a recruitment pitch and chose churches because he is also a Christian.

Im no terrorist or racist, I have black friends that will vouch for me, he said. I did not create those flyers, I just distributed them for my organization as I thought the First Amendment gave us the right to do.

I stand for what I believe in. Im a Christian, but just have different views than others on things as we all do and I thought we had that right, but I guess not so much. I apologize to the churches, the public and anyone else who my actions may have offended. I didnt have any intention to harm anyone in any way shape or form.

Walls said he does not have an attorney, as he cannot afford one at this moment. His previous employer Peek Pools and Spa in Spring Hill has terminated him. He was released from custody on July 13, after posting bail on a more than $4 million bond, and is set to appear in court Aug. 14.

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Suspect in KKK flyers case claims First Amendment allows distribution - Main Street Media of Tennessee