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This article first appeared on the Cato Institute site.

The New York Police Departments Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) reported that over a three-year period NYPD officers threatened, blocked, and otherwise tried to prevent individuals from recording them in public in the performance of their duties.

Almost 100 of the 346 allegations made between 2014 and 2016 were substantiated by the board, not counting the many cases that may not have been reported.

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To be fair, there are many thousands of contacts between police and individuals that happen in New York City. Although there is no way to know how many of those interactions are recorded, its fair to assume that many of them have been as cell-phone recording capabilities have become ubiquitous.

However, there is clearly a segment of officersperhaps very small, but nevertheless realwho feel that they may violate the First Amendment rights of people who record them.

To alleviate this, the CCRB suggested that a new entry should be included in the Patrol Manual to reassert the publics right to record police interactions. That insertion is fine, but more could and should be done because it is extremely unlikely that every officer who disrupted lawful, public recording was ignorant of the right to do so. Any officer who already knew the law was committing misconduct.

Police keep guard outside of Trump Tower on May 10, 2017 in New York City. Spencer Platt/Getty

Police officers should be held accountable for their actions. Unfortunately, New York State law prohibits the Department or the CCRB from releasing the names of officers who have complaints lodged against them, whether or not they are sustained, or what the outcomes of any disciplinary actions taken were short of termination.

As I testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in 2015:

According to an investigation of New York Citys Civilian Complaint Review Board records, about 40 percent of the 35,000 NYPD officers have never received a civilian complaint, but roughly 1,000 officers have more than 10 complaints on file. One officer has over 50 complaints but retains his position.

Institutionally, the NYPD knows these 1,000 officers are repeat offenders several times over. Multiple complaints against a single officer over a period of months or years implies the officer must, at times, operate too close to the line of impropriety.

Those 1,000 officers represent fewer than three percent of NYPD officers but can damage the reputation of the rest of the department. Clearly, some portion of these 1,000 officers are abusing their authority, and the NYPD is unwilling or unable to remove these officers from duty.

And because the public cant know their names and records, we cannot measure how effectively the NYPD addressed these incidents with any given officer. (internal citations omitted)

The lack of transparency is not limited to New York, by any means, but the NYPDs institutional dedication to data collection at least gives us a glimpse of what is going on.

Getting the right to record in the Patrol Manual is a good start, but the State of New York should repeal the anonymity granted to misbehaving officers. Such laws punish the best officers by making them indistinguishable from those who intentionallyand sometimes repeatedlyviolate the rights of the people they are supposed to serve.

Jonathan Blanks is a Research Associate in Catos Project on Criminal Justice and Managing Editor of PoliceMisconduct.net.

Blanks writes: For a robust First Amendment analysis of the right to record, read this opinion by 2014 B. Kenneth Simon Lecturer Judge Diane Sykes . You can read my 2015 USCCR testimony on police transparency and the use of force here . Finally, you can check out the 2014 panel we hosted on recording the police here.

Read more from the original source:
Yes, It's Legal to Record Cops. It's In the First Amendment - Newsweek

This week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips, the man who refused to create a specialty wedding cake for a same-sex couple in Colorado in 2012. The stories that are dominating the coverage distort the publics understanding of the case and its serious implications.

For one thing, no matter how many times people repeat it, the case isnt about discrimination or challenging gay marriage. But when the news first broke, USA Today tweeted, The Supreme Court has agreed to reopen the national debate over same-sex marriage. The headline (like the story) on the website was worse; it read, Supreme Court will hear religious liberty challenge to gay weddings. Others similarly framed the case. (And dont worry, religious liberty is almost always solidly ensconced inside quotation marks to indicate that social conservatives are just using it as a faade.)

There is an impulse to frame every issue as a clash between the tolerant and the closed-minded. But the Masterpiece case doesnt challenge, undermine, or relitigate same-sex marriage in America. Gay marriage wasnt even legal in Colorado when this incident occurred.

Therefore, the Associated Presss headline, Supreme Court to Decide If Baker Can Refuse Gay Couple Wedding Cake, and the accompanying story are also wrong. As is the New York Times headline Justices to Hear Case on Bakers Refusal to Serve Gay Couple, which was later changed to the even worse headline Justices to Hear Case on Religious Objections to Same-Sex Marriage.

A person with only passing interest in this case might be led to believe that Phillips is fighting to hang a No Gays Allowed sign in his shop. In truth, he never refused to serve a gay couple. He didnt even really refuse to sell David Mullins and Charlie Craig a wedding cake. They could have bought without incident. Everything in his shop was available to gays and straights and anyone else who walked in his door. What Phillips did was refuse to use his skills to design and bake a unique cake for a gay wedding. Phillips didnt query about anyones sexual orientation. It was the Colorado Civil Rights Commission that took it upon itself to peer into Phillipss soul, indict him, and destroy his business over a thought crime.

Like many other bakers, florists, photographers, and musicians and millions of other Christians Phillips holds genuine longstanding religious convictions. If Mullins and Craig had demanded that Phillips create an erotic-themed cake, the baker would have similarly refused for religious reasons, just as he had with other customers. If a couple had asked him to design a specialty cake that read Congrats on the abortion, Jenny! Im certain he would have refused them as well, even though abortions are legal. Its not the people; its the message.

In its tortured decision, the Colorado Court of Appeals admitted as much, contending that while Phillips didnt overtly discriminate against the couple, the act of same-sex marriage is closely correlated to Craigs and Mullinss sexual orientation, so it could divine his real intentions.

In other words, the threshold for denying religious liberty and free expression is the presence of advocacy or a political opinion that conflates with faith. The court has effectively tasked itself with determining when religion is allowed to matter to you. Or, in other words, if SCOTUS upholds the lower-court ruling, it will empower unelected civil-rights commissions which are typically stacked with hard-left authoritarians to decide when your religious actions are appropriate.

How could any honest person believe this was the Constitutions intent? There was a time, Im told, when the state wouldnt substantially burden religious exercise and would use the least restrictive means to further compelling interests. Today, the state can substantially burden a Christian because hes hurt the wrong persons feelings.

Judging from the e-mails and social-media reactions Ive gotten regarding this case, people are instinctively antagonistic not only because of the players involved but also because they dont understand the facts. In this era of identity politics, some have been programmed to reflexively side with the person making accusations of status-based discrimination, all in an effort to empower the state to coerce a minority of people to see the world their way.

Well, not all people. In 2014, a Christian activist named William Jack went to a Colorado bakery and requested two cakes in the shape of a Bible, one to be decorated with the Bible verses God hates sin. Psalm 45:7 and Homosexuality is a detestable sin. Leviticus 18:22, and the other cake to be decorated with another passage. The bakery refused. Even though Christians are a protected group, the Colorado Civil Rights Division threw out the case. The American Civil Liberties Union called the passages obscenities. I guess the Bible doesnt correlate closely enough with a Christians identity.

Or perhaps weve finally established a state religion in this country: one run on the dogma of social justice.

READ MORE: Three Thoughts on the Masterpiece CakeshopCert Grant The Supreme Courts Religious-Freedom Message: There Are No Second-Class Citizens Legal Radicals Dont Want the Separation of Church and State

David Harsanyi is a senior editor of the Federalist and the author of The People Have Spoken (and They Are Wrong): The Case against Democracy. 2017 Creators.com

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This Is a Fight for the First Amendment, Not against Gay Marriage - National Review

justgrimes/FlickrSeattle homeowners are tired of being forced to contribute tax dollars to candidates they do not support, some of whom campaign to further restrict their property rights.

A Pacific Legal Foundation lawsuit challenges Seattle's Democracy Voucher program, which has so far dispensed $233,175 in special tax contributions to fund vouchers of up to $100 for city voters to contribute to their favorite local political candidates.

"When you are forced to give a certain amount of money to someone who then uses it to contribute it to a candidate," Ethan Blevins, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, says, "that's compelled speech in violation of the First Amendment."

Blevins is representing Mark Elster, a Seattle homeowner and self-described "robust supporter of free markets," who objects to being made to underwrite any part of a campaign for candidates, none of whom warrant his support.

So far, the voucher program isn't quite as democratic as envisioned by its progressive sponsors. More than half of the total amount of contributions has gone to Jon Grant, a candidate for an open city council seat and someone who could charitably be described as left-of-center.

A former head of the Washington Tenants Union, Grant has endorsed a range of left-wing housing policies including rent control, mandating affordable housing units in new developments, caps on move-in fees, and giving collective bargaining privileges to tenants.

His opponent, Teresa Mosqueda, and the incumbent candidate for city attorney, Pete Holmes, are the only other candidates who have met the eligibility requirements for the vouchers.

Grant is a strong proponent of Democracy Vouchers, having received 93 percent of all his campaign donations from the program. Prior to the program, "only 1.5 percent of Seattleites donated to a local campaign. This lawsuit clearly demonstrates that the Pacific Legal Foundation is only interested in protecting the interests of the 1%," Grant wrote in a blogpost on his campaign website.

A good deal of his field outreach has been directed at getting homeless people to sign up for the vouchers, and then give that money to him, a practice his campaign manager assures Seattle Weekly is not "exploiting the homeless."

Grant has called the Foundation lawsuit "anti-democratic" and "desperate."

The voucher program, Blevins said, has allowed Grant to do something remarkable. He has "pretty much drawn all his campaign money from a constituency that is inherently opposed to his positions," Blevins said.

Few of the 410,000 registered voters in Seattle can make use of the Democracy Voucher program, even if there were candidates they wanted to support. The tax dollars that fund the vouchers is first come first serve, and not nearly enough is collected each year to ensure that each Seattleite gets a chance to participate.

The funding is capped at $3 million a year, meaning 30,000 or 7 percent of eligible Seattle voters are allowed to make campaign contributions in an election year. As the Seattle Times noted when it editorialized against the 2015 ballot initiative that created Democracy Vouchers, "the proposal counts on people not participating."

In this first election since the program launched, it remains to be seen whether Grant's manipulation of it will be followed by other candidates. The City Council designed the program for a review after 10 years.

Blevins hopes the court recognizing the vouchers for the constitutional abominations they are will end the program years before a review.

"When you are forced to become an unwilling vessel for a message you disagree with," Blevins says, "that violates human dignity and it certainly violates the First Amendment."

The rest is here:
Lawsuit Calls Seattle's "Democracy Vouchers" Compelled Speech ... - Reason (blog)

A federal judge has refused to dismiss a $100,000 lawsuitfiled by apolitical candidatewho claims his free speech rights were violated during the 2013 election campaign.

David J. Mongielo, who has a long history of run-ins with the town government, ran for Lockport town supervisor as a Conservative in 2013. He lost to the Republican incumbent, Marc R. Smith, who is now the town's economic development director.

During the race, Mongielo self-published a free newspaper that accused Smith of "ballot manipulation."

The paper also carried an advertisement for a fundraising event to benefit the South Lockport Fire Company, of which Mongielo was then a member.

But not for long.

According to the lawsuit, the fire company's then-president, Peter Smith - no relation to Marc Smith - suspended Mongielo on Election Day 2013 after Marc Smith threatened to cut the fire company's aid from the town. Mongielo immediately resigned from the fire company and has never been reinstated.

The town did not reduce its funding for the fire company.

His lawsuit contends his resignation was forced and resulted from retaliation for Mongielo's exercise of freedom of speech.

"He was suspended. That's the retaliation," said James M. Ostrowski, who's Mongielo's attorney. "Whether they carry out a threat doesn't matter."

Mongielo filed suit in U.S. District Courtlast November, three years after the allegedincident,against Marc Smith, Peter Smith and the South Lockport Fire Co., seeking $100,000 plus punitive damages.

U.S.District Judge Michael A. Telescarejected the defendants' effort to have the case dismissed in a May 16 ruling.

The case may turn on a text message Peter Smith sent to Mongielo on Election Day 2013.

According to the lawsuit,the textsaid, "I hate to do this but I feel I need to suspend u until Friday when we have a special ex meeting. I ts over the articles/ad in the community news. Judt got off phone with marc smith and his council is all over this. If we dont act Im afraid the situstion will only worsen. So for now please stay away per your suspension. We will discuss it further on Friday."

Peter Smith's lawyer, Eric M. Gernant, acknowledged in his written answer to Mongielo's complaint that Peter Smith sent a text to Mongielo, but denied that Smith told Mongielo that the supervisor had threatened the fire company's town funding.

Daniel T. Cavarello, attorney for Marc Smith, denied in a court filing thatthe then-supervisorthreatened South Lockport's funding.He argued that Smithcouldn't have taken unilateral action against the fire company, and at any rate, the fire company had a binding contract with the town to receive its annual stipend.

"The legal relationship between the Fire Company, Marc Smith, and the Town Board may ultimately foreclose (Mongielo's) claim against Marc Smith," the judge noted.

Link:
Judge refuses to dismiss Lockport candidate's First Amendment lawsuit - Buffalo News

Miami Herald

Do we still believe in free speech? Only until we disagree Miami Herald I do think the First Amendment tradition is under siege, said Jeffrey Rosen, president of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Pamela Geller, a firebrand commentator and founder of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, added, Freedom ... and more »

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Do we still believe in free speech? Only until we disagree - Miami Herald