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Lena Shapiro is a clinical assistant professor of law and the inaugural director of the College of Laws First Amendment Clinic, supported by The Stanton Foundation. Shapiro, an expert in free speech issues, spoke with News Bureau business and law editor Phil Ciciora about the current state of the First Amendment in higher education and popular discourse.

Theres an increasing trend on college campuses of students shouting down speakers they disagree with. How would you characterize the current state of the First Amendment in higher education?

Theres an ongoing battle between those who say they want to advance freedom of speech for everyone versus those who want to drown out voices that they dont agree with. The latter group wants to have it both ways: freedom of speech only for their opinions as well as those whose opinions are the same as theirs.

In other words, freedom of speech for me, but not for thee.

What that does is lower the level of discourse that all people have, which is harmful on a college campus because were supposed to be teaching students how to enhance their debate skills and analytic abilities. And when you say, essentially, I dont want this person here because theyre harmful, I find them offensive or They demean the rights of a number of groups of people you can certainly express those views, but that doesnt mean you can take it a step further, as many want to, and remove that speaker from campus. You cant unilaterally deprive others of that speech. Thats the hecklers veto.

If you are diametrically opposed to what this speaker stands for or has to say, you show up and counter protest. You hold another event, or you sit in the room and challenge the speaker with questions real, substantive questions that you want to debate on.

What you dont want are ad hominem attacks or protests that prevent speech from occurring entirely, which is antithetical to the free exchange of ideas.

What is the danger of the hecklers veto?

The danger is you dont actually change anyone elses mind. And having not changed their mind, you dont change their behavior. Youre also not minimizing the injustice that you believe results from that speakers speech and/or actions and the speaker who you think was perpetuating that injustice just goes on about their day.

Many students, like those at Stanford Law School who showed up to protest Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, want to speak out and advocate on behalf of issues that are deeply personal to millions of Americans. But by exercising the hecklers veto, those individuals didnt actually change any opinions on those issues, certainly not Judge Duncans.

Some believe if they yell loud enough, and if they scare off enough speakers, then it will just rid the world of the injustices that go on. But thats just not how the world works, right? If you want to change hearts and minds, you have to convince them.

The First Amendment is unique in that it allows misinformation and outright lies to flourish under the guise of the free exchange of ideas. Should the government continue to protect the speech of liars, even though they can inflict damage on society?

We saw that issue play out in the various defamation lawsuits against Fox News. And Fox News paid a big price for the misinformation they aired regarding Dominion Voting Systems, so the system does have checks in place to protect against misinformation. Generally, the news media is granted a wide berth to report on issues as they see fit.

If you start to set stricter standards and start to go after what you perceive to be a lie or misinformation on, say, a social media site, youre first going to have define what a lie is. But as we can see from todays environment, nobody can agree on anything so being able to properly define what a lie is will be challenging.

This is why we have the First Amendment. When people see things they perceive as lies, they are allowed to respond accordingly. I noticed a difference in news coverage late in the Trump administration when reporters on broadcasts across a number of different news outlets would report something that President Trump said and then explain why it wasnt true. Thats the way to deal with lies, misinformation and half-truths. If you think somebody is perpetuating an untruth, then bring your evidence forward. It makes us a better and a smarter society to do it that way.

So I dont think we can regulate what we deem or what someone else deems a lie, aside from some rare exceptions. Its just not realistic, and, ultimately, it harms the First Amendment protections that we have in the U.S.

I know people get upset and have a visceral reaction about various issues in the news. But I just dont know that such reactions change hearts and minds.

Its probably better to focus more on why a certain issue or story isnt true, as opposed to accusing the other side of stupidity, mendacity or malice. I am an advocate for always having more speech. Its why we have free speech in the first place.

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How do you handle free speech issues in higher education, popular ... - University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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Savannah Sessions: Support the First Amendment and the freedom ... - Conway Daily Sun

The Texas state Senate, apparently having solved all the problems in the Lone Star State, voted the other day to require every public elementary and secondary school in Texas to display in a conspicuous place in each classroom of the school a durable poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments that meets the requirements of Subsection (b).

Dont get us wrong, we love the Ten Commandments, both the biblical orders to the Hebrews delivered by Moses down from Sinai (twice) and the great Charlton Heston flick.

But the divinely-inspired rules are definitely part of religion, an essential component of Judaism and Christianity; while public schools are definitely not a part of that faith sphere. And the very first words of the First Amendment say: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, and what applies to Congress also applies to the Texas state Senate. Establishing a religion, any religion, is not permitted in public schools. Even in Texas.

Subsection (b) decrees that the A poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments must: include the text of the Ten Commandments as provided by Subsection (c) in a size and typeface that is legible to a person with average vision from anywhere in the classroom in which the poster or framed copy is displayed; and be at least 16 inches wide and 20 inches tall. Perhaps that was the size that Moses had?

Still, lets look carefully at what senators meant in Subsection (c), where the legislation prints the official approved version of the Ten Commandments starting with I AM the LORD thy God, (ignoring the fact that the original is in Hebrew) and follows through to not coveting. But there are 11 listed, since the Jewish, Catholic and Protestant versions are slightly different. Rather than pick one over another, the senators fudged, so its unclear which is commandment two or three and which are combined.

We are not poking fun at the faith communities, who we deeply respect. We are laughing out loud at the politicians trying to unconstitutionally masquerade as faith leaders.

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Holy Moses: The Texas state Senate violates common sense and the First Amendment in mandating public schools display the Ten Commandments - Yahoo News

Marjorie Taylor Greene Can Add First Amendment to Long List of Things She Doesnt Understand

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

A lot of people who have cycled through the United States Congress over time have been divisive, but Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene takes it to a whole new level. Shes had issues with Jewish people, liberals, and now, doesnt really get civics.

The family values preacher who has also reportedly had multiple bouts of infidelity during her now-dissolved marriage posted the above yesterday on Twitter. For Greene, Fox News recently choosing to dismiss Tucker Carlson is the same as what happens in repressive societies. Of course, it is not (someone should remind her what the Nazis actually did to the Institut fr Sexualwissenschaft), and as one Greene critic points out, she is not really showcasing an understanding of the actual amendment.

Indeed, the text of the actual part of this section of the Bill of Rights says, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. This would thus exclude private entities, and over the years, the United States Supreme Court has been called on to decide just where this applies when the situation is unclear. They decided video games were a form of protected speech in 2011 and, while some agree with Greene due to the increased polarization in America which automatically makes members of one party right, others see the irony within her post.

Greene has not responded or shrieked at any of her critics as of this story being filed. There is still time, and, given how she took a trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to educate herself in the past, she could grow a bit and learn here as well.

Though, we will not hold our breath.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene can add First Amendment to long list of ... - We Got This Covered

Mounting concerns over young peoples mental health have prompted state legislatures across the country to propose a slew of age restrictions to protect minors online. Lawmakers say the rules should help shield young people from online pornography, predators and harmful social media posts.

The current push for age restrictions on certain online content echoes a similar legislative drive three decades ago, when the internet was in its infancy. In 1996, Congress passed a major telecommunications bill that made it illegal to knowingly send or display obscene or indecent material to people under 18.

That law had a longstanding precedent: federal rules dating back to the 1920s that prohibited radio and TV shows from broadcasting obscene language, to prevent a child wandering into a living room from overhearing it.

The anti-pornographyrules in the 1990s had strong bipartisan support. But civil liberties groups thought the prohibitions on online indecency violated the First Amendment and squelched free speech. Among other objections, they said it was too difficult and expensive for websites to verify a visitors age. That could have led sites to simply get rid of anything inappropriate for children, creating a Disneyfied internet.

To protect Americans access to information that could potentially be deemed indecent under the new law like educational material about AIDS the American Civil Liberties Union sued the government, challenging part of the law called the Communications Decency Act.

The A.C.L.U. wanted its name on the lawsuit, said Chris Hansen, a former senior lawyer for the group. But to be a plaintiff, the group needed to be directly threatened by the law and there was nothing on its website that could potentially harm children. So the A.C.L.U. uploaded a Supreme Court ruling concerning a riff by the comedian George Carlin on the seven dirtiest words in the English language, which included a transcript of Mr. Carlins monologue in all its un-bleeped glory.

The A.C.L.U. also posted a quiz asking readers to guess the seven obscenities.

After a federal court in Philadelphia temporarily halted the law, the government appealed, and the case, Reno v. A.C.L.U., named for Bill Clintons attorney general, Janet Reno, was taken up by the Supreme Court. There, the A.C.L.U. argued thatthe laws speech restrictions could curb the internets unique potential and prevent people including minors from having access to all kinds of information.

The A.C.L.U. contended that the internet, where users typed or clicked to get to a web page, was more like a book or newspaper than radio or TV, recalled Ann Beeson, a former assistant legal director for the group. Language in printed material, which individuals freely perused, was more lightly regulated than in broadcast media, where audiences had less control over what they were exposed to.

The justices at the time were not especially familiar with the internet. So court employees arranged a demonstration to show how easy it was to find pornography. Senator Ted Cruz, then a Supreme Court law clerk, later recounted how he, alongside Justice Sandra Day OConnor, had looked at hard-core, explicit image results for a search of a fruit sometimes used as a bawdy euphemism for breasts.

The Supreme Court ultimately sided with the A.C.L.U., finding that the federal restrictions could chill free speech.

The judges said the blanket restrictions were unacceptable because parents would soon be able to use content-filtering software to protect their children, and because age-verification systems at the time, which had typically involved verifying a users credit card, were not yet widely available. (That has changed; today, many current online age-checking systems use credentials like a drivers licenses to verify a users age. One vendor said they were now easily integrated and cost as little as 10 cents per visitor.)

In its ruling, the Supreme Court upheld a longstanding principle in American law that you cant censor speech to adults in the name of protecting minors, Mr. Hansen said. If the A.C.L.U. had lost, the internet would not be what it currently is.

But that was before the current, extremely online era in which critics say powerful social media algorithms have promoted hateful, divisive comments; scaled disinformation; and recommended posts on anorexia and self-harm to young girls.

To try to bolster online safeguards for children, California last year enacted the Age-Appropriate Design Code Act. The legislation would require online services that are likely to be used by young people such as social media and video game platforms to default to the highest privacy settings possible for minors.

It would also require those services to turn off by default features that could pose risks to minors, such as friend finders that might allow adult strangers to contact children.

A tech industry association, NetChoice, has now sued to block the childrens protections from taking effect next year. In a legal complaint filed in December, NetChoice said the restrictions would stifle important resources for users of all ages, echoing arguments made by the A.C.L.U. in the 1990s.

In March, the Congressional Research Service, a public policy institute that serves Congress, also weighed in, urging lawmakers to consider the possible unintended consequences of new online age restrictions such as companies collecting more user data and limiting content.

Even so, lawmakers continue to propose new online age and content rules.

Last week in the Senate, Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, promised his new child online protection bill will help us stop the growing social media health crisis among kids by setting a minimum age.

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Echoes of History in New National Push to Shield Children Online - The New York Times