Law Commons^™

Democracy Harms And The First Amendment, Deborah Pearlstein

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The First Amendment tolerates—has long tolerated—the regulation of certain kinds of false speech. Indeed, regulable lies are not limited to traditionally less-protected categories of speech like defamation and commercial deception. They include an array of other established speech regulations, administered by government institutions every day, from criminal laws barring perjury and other lies to government officials, to disciplinary measures by elected bodies sanctioning members for false or otherwise objectionable speech. Yet while it is easy to identify the kinds of lies that existing doctrinal categories make regulable for the personal, physical, or reputational harms they inflict on individuals¸ it has …

“A Force Created”: The U.S. Chamber Of Commerce And The Politics Of Corporate Immunity, Myriam E. Gilles

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No abstract provided.

Intragovernmental Speech And Sanction, Katherine A. Shaw

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This Essay, prepared as part of a symposium on Professor Helen Norton’s The Government’s Speech and the Constitution, asks what role, if any, we should understand the Constitution to play in mediating disputes over speech between and among government entities. Focusing on the examples of impeachment and censure, the piece considers scenarios in which one arm of government takes action in response to the speech of another arm or entity of government, exploring what role the Constitution should play in shaping or constraining those responses.

Commercial Speech Protection As Consumer Protection, Felix T. Wu

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The Supreme Court has long said that “the extension of First Amendment protection to commercial speech is justified principally by the value to consumers of the information such speech provides.” In other words, consumers—the recipients or listeners of commercial speech—are the ones the doctrine is meant to protect. In previous work, I explored the implications of taking this view seriously in three contexts: compelled speech, speech among commercial entities, and unwanted marketing. In each of those contexts, adopting a listener-oriented approach leads to the conclusion that many forms of commercial speech regulation should receive far less First Amendment scrutiny than …

Applying The First Amendment To The Internal Revenue Code: Minnesota Voters Alliance And The Tax Law’S Regulation Of Nonprofit Organizations’ Political Speech, Edward A. Zelinsky

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On its face, Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky is about which T-shirts, hats and buttons voters can wear at the polls. However, the U.S. Supreme Court’s First Amendment analysis in Minnesota Voters Alliance extends beyond apparel at polling places. That decision impacts the ongoing debate about the Johnson Amendment, the now controversial provision of the Internal Revenue Code which forbids Section 501(c)(3) organizations from intervening in political campaigns. Minnesota Voters Alliance also affects the proper construction of Section 501(c)(3)’s ban on lobbying by tax-exempt entities as well as other provisions of the tax law taxing and precluding campaign intervention by …

Taking Data, Michael C. Pollack

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Technological development has created new forms of information, altered expectations of privacy, and given law enforcement more tools to examine that information and intrude on that privacy. One crucial facet of these changes involves internet service providers (ISPs): as people expose more of their lives to their ISPs—all the websites they visit, people they communicate with, emails they send, files they store, and more—law enforcement efforts to access that data become more and more common. But scholars and policymakers alike recognize that the existing statutory frameworks governing those efforts are based on obsolete technology and strike balances that are difficult …

Churches' Lobbying And Campaigning: A Proposed Statutory Safe Harbor For Internal Church Communications, Edward A. Zelinsky

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President Trump, reiterating the position he took during the presidential campaign, has recently reaffirmed his pledge to “get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment,” the provision of the Internal Revenue Code which prohibits tax-exempt institutions from participating in political campaigns. The Code also bars tax-exempt institutions, including churches, from substantial lobbying activities.

Rather than the blanket repeal of the Johnson Amendment proposed by President Trump, I argue for a statutory safe harbor for the internal communications of churches. This limited safe harbor would protect in-house church discussions from both Section 501(c)(3)’s ban on substantial lobbying and from that …

The Commercial Difference, Felix T. Wu

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When it comes to the First Amendment, commerciality does, and should, matter. This Article develops the view that the key distinguishing characteristic of corporate or commercial speech is that the interest at stake is “derivative,” in the sense that we care about the speech interest for reasons other than caring about the rights of the entity directly asserting a claim under the First Amendment. To say that the interest is derivative is not to say that it is unimportant, and one could find corporate and commercial speech interests to be both derivative and strong enough to apply heightened scrutiny to …

The Aftermath Of Hobby Lobby: Hsas And Hras As The Least Restrictive Means, Edward A. Zelinsky

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In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., the United States Supreme Court held that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) does not require closely-held corporations’ employer-sponsored medical plans to provide forms of contraception that shareholders of such corporations object to on religious grounds. The question now raised is how the President, Congress, and the departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Treasury and Labor, ought to respond to the Hobby Lobby decision.

Putting State Courts In The Constitutional Driver's Seat: State Taxpayer Standing After Cuno And Winn, Edward A. Zelinsky

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This article explores the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno and Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn. In Cuno and Winn, the Court held that state taxpayers lacked standing in the federal courts. Because the states have more liberal taxpayer standing rules than do the federal courts, Cuno and Winn will not terminate taxpayers’ constitutional challenges to state taxes and expenditures, but will instead channel such challenges from the federal courts (where taxpayers do not have standing) to the state courts (where they do). Moreover, municipal taxpayer standing in the federal courts, which …

Do Religious Tax Exemptions Entangle In Violation Of The Establishment Clause? The Constitutionality Of The Parsonage Allowance Exclusion And The Religious Exemptions Of The Individual Health Care Mandate And The Fica And Self-Employment Taxes, Edward A. Zelinsky

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In Freedom From Religion Foundation v. Geithner, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) argues that Code Section 107 and the income tax exclusion that section grants to “minister[s] of the gospel” for parsonage allowances violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. This case has important implications for a new federal law mandating that individuals maintain “minimum essential” health care coverage for themselves and their dependents. That mandate contains two religious exemptions. One of these exemptions incorporates a pre-existing religious exemption from the federal self-employment tax. These sectarian exemptions raise the same First Amendment issues as does the Code’s exclusion …

Collateral Censorship And The Limits Of Intermediary Immunity, Felix T. Wu

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The law often limits the liability of an intermediary for the speech it carries. And rightly so, because imposing liability on intermediaries can induce them to filter out questionable content and this “collateral censorship” risks suppressing much lawful, even highly beneficial, speech. The “collateral censorship” rationale has its limits, though, and correspondingly, so should the applicability of intermediary immunity. The worry with collateral censorship is not just that intermediaries censor, but that they censor more than an original speaker would in the face of potential liability. Increased censorship, in turn, is the product of applying liability targeted at original speakers …

Government Liability For Unconstitutional Land Use Regulation, Stewart E. Sterk

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No abstract provided.