First Amendment Commons^™

Don't Pull The Trigger On New York's Concealed Carry Improvement Act: Addressing First And Second Amendment Concerns, Morgan Band

Fordham Law Review

Despite the increasing prevalence of mass shootings in the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen struck down a 100-year-old New York statute that had restricted access to concealed carry permits. The statute had required applicants to demonstrate a “proper cause” for needing a concealed carry permit. But even if an applicant made the necessary showing, licensing officials retained discretion under the statute to decline to issue a permit. In striking down the statute, the Court distinguished between “may-issue” jurisdictions, such as New York, which give licensing officials discretion in …

License & (Gender) Registration, Please: A First Amendment Argument Against Compelled Driver's License Gender Markers, Lexi Meyer

Fordham Law Review

For as long as the United States has issued drivers’ licenses, licenses have indicated the holder’s gender in one form or another. Because drivers’ licenses are issued at the state level, states retain the authority to regulate the procedures for amending them. In some states, regulations include requirements that a transgender person undergo gender confirmation surgery before they can amend the gender marker on their driver’s license. Because many transgender people neither desire nor can afford gender confirmation surgery, these laws effectively preclude such people from obtaining gender-accurate identification. In doing so, these laws implicate multiple constitutional rights.

Lower courts …

Nft For Eternity, Hadar Y. Jabotinsky, Michal Lavi

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are unique tokens stored on a digital ledger – the blockchain. They are meant to represent unique, non-interchangeable digital assets, as there is only one token with that exact data. Moreover, the information attached to the token cannot be altered as on a regular database. While copies of these digital items are available to all, NFTs are tracked on blockchains to provide the owner with proof of ownership. This possibility of buying and owning digital assets can be attractive to many individuals.

NFTs are presently at the stage of early adoption and their uses are expanding. In …

Video Games And The First Amendment, Eli Pales

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

The video game industry is massive, with an annual revenue of $180 billion worldwide; $60 billion of that in America alone. For context, the industry’s size is greater than that of the movie, book, and music industries combined. Yet, despite this market dominance, the video game industry is relatively new. Only in the 2011 decision of Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association did the Supreme Court extend First Amendment protection to games. Still, the Court failed to define the scope of the game medium. As understood by an average person, a video game could be something as simple as Pac-Man or …

Foreword: New Supreme Court Cases: Duquesne Law Faculty Explains, Wilson Huhn

Law Faculty Publications

On September 30, 2022, several members of the faculty of the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University presented a Continuing Legal Education program, New Supreme Court Cases: Duquesne Law Faculty Explains, reviewing these developments. Duquesne Law Review graciously invited the faculty panel to contribute their analysis of these cases from the Supreme Court's 2021- 2022 term for inclusion in this symposium issue of the Law Review.

How Law Schools Can Fight For Fearless Speech, Mary Anne Franks

Articles

No abstract provided.

Note: Artistic Relevance In Artificial Intelligence? “Roger” That!, Kelly Heilman

Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies

In an era of technological revolution, artificial intelligence is shocking the legal field with its increasing popularity, power, and potential. The limits of property, personhood, and creativity are in question by both the public and the courts, leaving significant ambiguities in the law. Legal standards regarding the regulation of advanced technologies have raised unique and critical substantive questions for intellectual property rights, particularly that of trademarks, where the traditional purpose is source identification between consumers and goods.

Since the 1989 holding in Rogers v. Grimaldi, the use of trademarks for creative purposes, as a matter of First Amendment jurisprudence, …

Mandating Repair Scores, Aaron Perzanowski

Articles

Restrictions on the repair of consumer goods have generated no shortage of policy proposals. This Article considers the empirical and legal case for one particular intervention—requiring firms to calculate and disclose their products’ scores on a uniform reparability index. These repair scores would provide consumers with salient information at or before the point of sale, enabling them to compare products on the basis of the ease and cost of repair. There is considerable empirical research, including assessments of France’s implementation of a similar requirement in recent years, suggesting that repair scores would both inform and empower consumers. Despite likely First …

Citizen Enforcement Laws Threaten Democracy, David A. Carrillo, Stephen M. Duvernay

Fordham Law Voting Rights and Democracy Forum

No abstract provided.

Public School Teachers Who Refuse To Use Preferred Names And Pronouns: A Brief Exploration Of The First Amendment Limitations In K-12 Classrooms, Suzanne Eckes

ConLawNOW

This article focuses on whether a teacher has a First Amendment right under both the free speech and free exercise clauses of the U.S. Constitution when refusing to use a student’s preferred name or pronoun in a public school classroom. The article begins by briefly summarizing a recent case from Kansas and then examines prior precedent involving teachers’ classroom speech and teachers’ rights to freely exercise their religious rights in public schools. It then briefly highlights how these issues have been addressed in previous pronoun cases and concludes with a discussion of related constitutional issues.

Silencing Students: How Courts Have Failed To Protect Professional Students’ First Amendment Speech Rights, Shanelle Doher

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Over the past two decades, social media has dramatically changed the way people communicate. With the increased popularity of virtual communication, online speech has, in many ways, blurred the boundaries for where and when speech begins and ends. The distinction between on campus and off campus student speech has become particularly murky given the normalization of virtual learning environments as a result of the COVID 19 pandemic. In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the Supreme Court clarified that students retain their First Amendment rights on campus but that schools may sanction speech that materially and substantially …

A Continued Sign Of The Court's Unwillingness To Overrule Smith, Gader Wren

Nevada Law Journal Forum

Since its inception, the Supreme Court’s holding in Employment Division v. Smith has been attacked for diluting Free Exercise rights. In recent years, petitioners have asked the Court to reconsider Smith’s soundness. However, de-spite these challenges to Smith’s legitimacy, it has remained the law of the land.

On February 22, 2022, the Court granted certiorari on 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. Although Petitioner asked the Court to overrule Smith, the Court granted certiorari to answer only a single question: “[w]hether applying a public-accommodation law to compel an artist to speak or stay silent violates the Free Speech Clause of the …

The Big Chill: Are Public Participation Rights Being Slapp-Ed?, Rachel E. Deming

Pace Environmental Law Review

This article focuses on the Petition Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and addresses a confounding situation caused by Supreme Court precedents that give greater protection to persons who engage in illegal business practices than to citizens who petition their governments. This dichotomy is especially detrimental to environmental protection.

The crux of the conflict lies in which standard courts should use to determine whether the petitioning activity is protected: the subjective Free Speech standard grafted onto Petition Clause activities or the objective standard initially developed by the Supreme Court for petition activities in antitrust cases. The result …

Using Bruen To Overturn New York Times V. Sullivan, Michael L. Smith, Alexander S. Hiland

Pepperdine Law Review

While New York Times Co. v. Sullivan is a foundational, well-regarded First Amendment case, Justice Clarence Thomas has repeatedly called on the Court to revisit it. Sullivan, Thomas claims, is policy masquerading as constitutional law, and it makes almost no effort to ground itself in the original meaning of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Thomas argues that at the time of the founding, libelous statements were routinely subject to criminal prosecution—including libel of public figures and public officials. This Essay connects Justice Thomas’s calls to revisit Sullivan to his recent opinion for the Court in New York State Rifle & …

Rectifying An Empty Gesture: Why Placement On Paid Administrative Leave Should Constitute "Adverse Employment Action" For The Purposes Of A First Amendment Retaliation Claim, Andrew White

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Freedom Of Algorithmic Expression, Inyoung Cheong

University of Cincinnati Law Review

Can content moderation on social media be considered a form of speech? If so, would government regulation of content moderation violate the First Amendment? These are the main arguments of social media companies after Florida and Texas legislators attempted to restrict social media platforms’ authority to de-platform objectionable content.

This article examines whether social media companies’ arguments have valid legal grounds. To this end, the article proposes three elements to determine that algorithms classify as “speech:” (1) the algorithms are designed to communicate messages; (2) the relevant messages reflect cognitive or emotive ideas beyond mere operational matters; and (3) they …

Beyond The Watchdog: Using Law To Build Trust In The Press, Erin C. Carroll

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Declining trust in the American press has been longstanding and corrosive—both to our information environment and to democracy. It is tempting to think that if journalists could just repeatedly and brilliantly play their key role—that of watchdog—it might be redemptive. But doubling down on the watchdog function holds risks in our polarized climate. Research shows that some conservatives recoil from watchdog journalism, finding it too cynical and politicized.

This essay argues that a different journalistic function—one that has received far less attention and adulation from judges and legal scholars—should be encouraged and amplified. This is the press’s role as a …

The Censorship Constraint And Rulemaker State Action: Are Section 230'S Immunity Provisions Unconstitutional Content-Based Regulations?, Scot A. Reader

West Virginia Law Review

Even casual watchers of T.V. crime dramas understand the Fourth Amendment’s exclusionary rule. Under this rule, evidence obtained by the police in a search of a criminal suspect’s premises that exceeds the scope of a judicial warrant is almost always inadmissible in the suspect’s criminal trial. The rule is designed to deter unreasonable governmental intrusion into private affairs and applies without regard for the suspect’s guilt or innocence. This Article proposes that the First Amendment includes an analogous rule against governmental censorship. Under this rule, content-based speech regulations exceed the legislature’s speech rulemaking warrant and are almost always invalid. This …

Battlegrounds For Banned Books: The First Amendment And Public School Libraries, Jensen Rehn

Notre Dame Law Review

Embedded in each conversation about banning books are arguments that use legal terminology. A brief conversation about banned books with a librarian will likely lead to a discussion of the “Library Bill of Rights” published by the ALA. No one is bound by the ALA’s Bill of Rights, which lacks a method of enforcement. Thus, the question remains: what is the legal landscape of banning books? Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has not provided a clear precedent about banning books from public school libraries. In fact, the Supreme Court has only taken cases about libraries on three occasions, each of which …

The Limits Of Church Autonomy, Lael Weinberger

Notre Dame Law Review

American courts apply “church autonomy doctrine” to protect the self-governance of religious institutions, based on both of the First Amendment’s religion clauses. Church autonomy’s defenders have sometimes described the doctrine as establishing distinct spheres of sovereignty for church and state. But critics have argued that church autonomy puts religious institutions above the law. They contend that church autonomy doctrine lacks limiting principles and worry that the “sphere sovereignty” theory of church and state leaves no room for accountability for wrongdoing in religious institutions. The courts, for their part, have recognized that church autonomy must have limits but have struggled to …