Law Commons^™

Trademarks And Censorship In The Time Of Covid-19, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

During the devastating year of 2020, China quickly conquered the novel coronavirus and roared back economically while the United States faced staggering deaths and economic losses. But underneath the divergent experience of the two countries is an untold story of trademark and censorship in the time of COVID-19. This Article observes that while the United States Supreme Court has lifted the ban on trademark registrations for unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination, opening the door for offensive COVID-19 trademark applications, China has transformed trademark law into the law for censorship as Chinese authorities press forward to achieve twin victories over the coronavirus and …

Testimony, Free Speech Under Attack: The Legal Assault On Environmental Activists And The First Amendment, Anita Ramasastry

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Queer And Convincing: Reviewing Freedom Of Religion And Lgbtq+ Protections Post-Fulton V. City Of Philadelphia, Arianna Nord

Washington Law Review

Recent increases in LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination laws have generated new conversations in the free exercise of religion debate. While federal courts have been wrestling with claims brought under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment since the nineteenth century, city and state efforts to codify legal protections for LGBTQ+ individuals in the mid-twentieth century birthed novel challenges. Private individuals who do not condone intimate same-sex relationships and/or gender non-conforming behavior, on religious grounds seek greater legal protection for the ability to refuse to offer goods and services to LGBTQ+ persons. Federal and state courts must determine how to resolve these …

You Are Not A Commodity: A More Efficient Approach To Commercial Privacy Rights, Benjamin T. Pardue

Washington Law Review

United States common law provides four torts for privacy invasion: (1) disclosure of private facts, (2) intrusion upon seclusion, (3) placement of a person in a false light, and (4) appropriation of name or likeness. Appropriation of name or likeness occurs when a defendant commandeers the plaintiff’s recognizability, typically for a commercial benefit. Most states allow plaintiffs who establish liability to recover defendants’ profits as damages from the misappropriation under an “unjust enrichment” theory. By contrast, this Comment argues that such an award provides a windfall to plaintiffs and contributes to suboptimal social outcomes. These include overcompensating plaintiffs and incentivizing …

How Far Will Fara Go? The Foreign Agents Registration Act And The Criminalization Of Global Human Rights Advocacy, Monica Romero

Washington Law Review

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) was enacted and enforced during World War II to protect the American public from foreign propaganda, especially from the Nazi party. Following the war, FARA was scarcely used for over half a century. But in the past five years, there has been a significant uptick in FARA enforcement, particularly against major political personalities. The revival of FARA has led many legislators and scholars to advocate for expansions of FARA’s scope and enforcement mechanisms in the name of national security. But most have failed to acknowledge the risk and likelihood of politicized enforcement. The United …

Federal Architecture And First Amendment Limits, Jessica Rizzo

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

In December of 2020, President Trump issued an executive order on “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture,” a draft of which was leaked to the press in February under the title, “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again.” The order provided for updating the Guiding Principles of the General Services Administration’s Design Excellence Program to promote the use of “classical and traditional architectural styles,” which “have proven their ability to inspire…respect for our system of self-government.” According to the order, there would have been a presumption against the use of such modern architectural styles as Brutalism and Deconstructivism in the construction of new …

Kū Kia‘I Mauna: Protecting Indigenous Religious Rights, Joshua Rosenberg

Washington Law Review

Courts historically side with private interests at the expense of Indigenous religious rights. Continuing this trend, the Hawai‘i State Supreme Court allowed the Thirty- Meter-Telescope to be built atop Maunakea, a mountain sacred to Native Hawaiians. This decision led to a mass protest that was organized by Native Hawaiian rights advocates and community members. However, notwithstanding the mountain’s religious and cultural significance, Indigenous plaintiffs could not prevent construction of the telescope on Maunakea.

Unlike most First Amendment rights, religious Free Exercise Clause claims are not generally subject to strict constitutional scrutiny. Congress has mandated the application of strict scrutiny to …

Reframing Church Property Disputes In Washington State, Theodore G. Lee

Washington Law Review

Real property disputes between units or members of the same church are common in the United States. To resolve such disputes, the Supreme Court has endorsed two doctrines: the hierarchical deference approach and the neutral-principles of law approach. The Court has justified both doctrines on the First Amendment’s Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses, but this justification is problematic. Specifically, under the hierarchical deference approach courts must always give preferential treatment to one religious group over others—effectively endorsing a particular religion. On the other hand, courts can enforce their own interpretations of religious issues under the neutral-principles approach, thereby infringing free …

Hacks, Leaks, And Data Dumps: The Right To Publish Illegally Acquired Information Twenty Years After Bartnicki V. Vopper, Erik Ugland, Christina Mazzeo

Washington Law Review

This Article addresses a fluid and increasingly salient category of cases involving the First Amendment right to publish information that was hacked, stolen, or illegally leaked by someone else. Twenty years ago, in Bartnicki v. Vopper, the Supreme Court appeared to give broad constitutional cover to journalists and other publishers in these situations, but Justice Stevens’s inexact opinion for the Court and Justice Breyer’s muddling concurrence left the boundaries unclear. The Bartnicki framework is now implicated in dozens of new cases— from the extradition and prosecution of Julian Assange, to Donald Trump’s threatened suit of The New York Times …

The Liberty Impact Of Gender, Kingsly Alec Mcconnell

Washington Law Review

Can the federal government unilaterally change your gender? In October of 2018, the New York Times revealed that the Trump Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services was considering a new federal definition of “gender.” The policy would redefine gender as a “biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth.” This policy places transsex people at a substantial risk of deprivation of property and speech rights, as gender implicates both property and expression. It also impedes the exercise of substantive due process rights and privileges and immunities. For example, inaccurate gender designations can hinder a transsex parent’s ability to raise …

Censorship, Free Speech & Facebook: Applying The First Amendment To Social Media Platforms Via The Public Function Exception, Matthew P. Hooker

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

Society has a love-hate relationship with social media. Thanks to social media platforms, the world is more connected than ever before. But with the ever-growing dominance of social media there have come a mass of challenges. What is okay to post? What isn't? And who or what should be regulating those standards? Platforms are now constantly criticized for their content regulation policies, sometimes because they are viewed as too harsh and other times because they are characterized as too lax. And naturally, the First Amendment quickly enters the conversation. Should social media platforms be subject to the First Amendment? Can—or …

Transformative Variations: The Uses And Abuses Of The Transformative Use Doctrine In Right Of Publicity Law, Matthew D. Bunker, Emily Erickson

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

In 2001, the California Supreme Court embarked upon a novel experiment in its right of publicity jurisprudence. The court imported a single element from copyright's fair use analysis. That element—transformative use—has since become an enormously important defense for publicity defendants. Unfortunately, the transformative use doctrine is notoriously protean, and has resulted in significant confusion in publicity law that almost certainly chills protected speech. Many courts seem to lack a clear idea of what a sophisticated transformative use analysis should even look like. This article unpacks these issues and proposes improvements to this difficult legal area.

Regulating Bot Speech, Madeline Lamo, Ryan Calo

Articles

We live in a world of artificial speakers with real impact. So-called “bots” foment political strife, skew online discourse, and manipulate the marketplace. Concerns over bot speech have led prominent figures in the world of technology to call for regulations in response to the unique threats bots pose. Recently, legislators have begun to heed these calls, drafting laws that would require online bots to clearly indicate that they are not human.

This work is the first to consider how efforts to regulate bots might run afoul of the First Amendment. At first blush, requiring a bot to self-disclose raises little …

Threading The First Amendment Needle: Anonymous Speech, Online Harassment, And Washington's Cyberstalking Statute, Sarah E. Smith

Washington Law Review

This Comment examines the constitutionality of Washington’s cyberstalking statute, RCW 9.61.260, and its treatment of anonymous online speech. While the statute was drafted to ensure that women are free from domestic and gender-based violence, the statute as currently written and enforced infringes on the constitutionally protected right to free speech. There has only been one action, Moriwaki v. Rynearson, enforcing the provision of the statute related to anonymous speech. The court ultimately overturned the stalking protection order, which the plaintiff brought to halt political speech, on First Amendment grounds. While the Moriwaki court concluded that the stalking protection order …

Exposing Secret Searches: A First Amendment Right Of Access To Electronic Surveillance Orders, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Washington Law Review

Although, as a rule, court proceedings and judicial records are presumptively open to the public, electronic surveillance documents are exceptions. Like ordinary search warrants, surveillance applications are considered ex parte. But court orders frequently remain sealed indefinitely, even when there is no basis for continued secrecy. Indeed, secrecy—in the form of gag orders, local judicial rules, and even clerical filing and docketing practices—is built into the laws that regulate electronic surveillance. This Article argues that this widespread secrecy violates the First Amendment right of access to court proceedings and documents. The history of search and seizure shows that, far from …

Snake Oil Speech, Jane R. Bambauer

Washington Law Review

Snake oil is dangerous only by way of the claims that are made about its healing powers. It is a speech problem, and its remedy involves speech restrictions. But First Amendment doctrine has struggled to find equilibrium in the balance between free speech and the reduction of junk science. Regulation requires the government to take an authoritative position about which factual claims are “true” and “false,” which is anathema to open inquiry. As a result, free speech jurisprudence overprotects factual claims made in public discourse out of respect for any remote possibility that the scientific consensus might be wrong but …

Privacy, Press, And The Right To Be Forgotten In The United States, Amy Gajda

Washington Law Review

When the European Court of Justice in effect accepted a Right to Be Forgotten in 2014, ruling that a man had a right to privacy in his past economic troubles, many suggested that a similar right would be neither welcomed nor constitutional in the United States given the Right’s impact on First Amendment-related freedoms. Even so, a number of state and federal courts have recently used language that embraces in a normative sense the appropriateness of such a Right. These court decisions protect an individual’s personal history in a press-relevant way: they balance individual privacy rights against the public value …

“And Yet It Moves”—The First Amendment And Certainty, Ronald K.L. Collins

Articles

Surprisingly few, if any, works on the First Amendment have explored the relation between free speech and certainty. The same holds true for decisional law. While this relationship is inherent in much free speech theory and doctrine, its treatment has nonetheless been rather opaque. In what follows, the author teases out— philosophically, textually, and operationally—the significance of that relationship and what it means for our First Amendment jurisprudence. In the process, he examines how the First Amendment operates to counter claims of certainty and likewise how it is employed to demand a degree of certainty from those who wish to …

The State Department Can Gun Down 3-D Printed Firearms, Derk Westermeyer

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

In 1976, Congress enacted the Arms Export Control Act (“AECA”), giving the President broad power to control imports and exports of defense articles. At the time, defense articles included any “technical data” relating to weapons, such as the manufacturing blueprints of a firearm. Generally, this technical data was only in the hands of weapon manufacturers. After forty years of technological advances, however, this “technical data” can now be accessed by anyone in the world in a matter of seconds. Thanks to 3-D printing, a person can use this data to personally manufacture a fully functional plastic weapon within a few …

Reply Brief. Crouse V. Caldwell, 138 S.Ct. 470 (2017) (No. 17-242), Eric Schnapper, Steven H. Goldblatt, Shon Hopwood, Marybeth Mullaney, Jennifer Munter Stark

Court Briefs

QUESTIONS PRESENTED (1) When disputes of fact arise regarding whether speech by a public employee is protected by the First Amendment, should those factual issues be resolved by a trier of fact (the rule in the Second, Third, Sixth, Eighth and Tenth Circuits), or by the court as a matter of constitutional law (the rule in the Fourth Circuit)? (2) When a government employee engages in speech on a subject of public concern, and a court applying Pickering balances the First Amendment interest against any contrary interests of the employer, should the extent of that First Amendment interest be “lessened” …

Petition For A Writ Of Certiorari, Crouse V. Caldwell, 138 S.Ct. 470 (2017) (No. 17-242), Eric Schnapper, Steven H. Goldblatt, Shon Hopwood, Marybeth Mullaney, Jennifer Munter Stark

Court Briefs

QUESTIONS PRESENTED (1) When disputes of fact arise regarding whether speech by a public employee is protected by the First Amendment, should those factual issues be resolved by a trier of fact (the rule in the Second, Third, Sixth, Eighth and Tenth Circuits), or by the court as a matter of constitutional law (the rule in the Fourth Circuit)? (2) When a government employee engages in speech on a subject of public concern, and a court applying Pickering balances the First Amendment interest against any contrary interests of the employer, should the extent of that First Amendment interest be “lessened” …

Revenge Porn And Narrowing The Cda: Litigating A Web-Based Tort In Washington, Jessy R. Nations

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

Effective September 2015, the Washington State Legislature passed two statutes which created both civil and criminal liability against individuals who distribute "intimate images" of others without their consent. These statutes were created to combat the modern phenomenon colloquially known as "revenge porn." Revenge porn is the non-consensual distribution of nude or sexually explicit photographs or videos, created with the intent to humiliate or harass the person these images depict. In addition to causing emotional damage to the victim, revenge porn can also produce broader consequences such as loss of employment and stalking. Traditionally, litigating these kinds of offenses has been …

Jail (E)Mail: Free Speech Implications Of Granting Inmates Access To Electronic Messaging Services, Brennen J. Johnson

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

The First Amendment protects not only our right to share ideas, but also to some extent, our right to choose the specific method by which we share them. Generally speaking, these protections apply to inmates’ rights to communicate with those outside of prison. However, the protection of those rights must be balanced with the penological interests of prisons and jails. Electronic messaging has now become a standard form of communication within most American homes and businesses. Accordingly, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has implemented the TRULINCS program, a program which allows inmates to communicate with those outside of prison through …

Real-Time Sports Data And The First Amendment, Ryan M. Rodenberg, John T. Holden, Asa D. Brown

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

Technological advancements have created an emergent challenge for organizations attempting to monetize real-time information. Real-time data as a commodity is especially relevant in the sports industry. Sports leagues increasingly seek to control the dissemination of real-time data in conjunction with lucrative distribution agreements. We analyze the legal status of real-time sports data under both intellectual property law and the First Amendment, with our case-by-case analysis extending to spectators, gamblers, journalists, and non-gambling entrepreneurs. Although we conclude that the First Amendment protections are broad across all four categories, particularly when the underlying sporting event takes place on public land, we find …

Much Ado About Something: The First Amendment And Mandatory Labeling Of Genetically Engineered Foods, Stephen Tan, Brian Epley

Washington Law Review

This Article evaluates the free speech implications of laws requiring that GE foods be labeled and concludes that such regulations would meet all First Amendment requirements for compelled commercial speech. Part I traces the history of food labeling in the United States, the advent of genetic engineering, and the application of that technology in agriculture and the food industry. Part II evaluates the scope of commercial free speech and the appropriate test to be applied in determining whether a GE food labeling law would violate the First Amendment. Part III examines the impacts of an agricultural and food system increasingly …

Much Ado About Something: The First Amendment And Mandatory Labeling Of Genetically Engineered Foods, Stephen Tan, Brian Epley

Washington Law Review

This Article evaluates the free speech implications of laws requiring that GE foods be labeled and concludes that such regulations would meet all First Amendment requirements for compelled commercial speech. Part I traces the history of food labeling in the United States, the advent of genetic engineering, and the application of that technology in agriculture and the food industry. Part II evaluates the scope of commercial free speech and the appropriate test to be applied in determining whether a GE food labeling law would violate the First Amendment. Part III examines the impacts of an agricultural and food system increasingly …

A First Amendment Defense To The Federal Cyberstalking Statute In The Age Of Twitter, Christopher Young

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

Real-time information technology facilitates more efficient channels of communication. As communication becomes nearly instantaneous and further reaching, it seems probable that more expression will fall within the scope of cyberharassment and cyberstalking laws. Attorneys who represent clients indicted on such criminal charges need to familiarize themselves with possible defenses. This Article suggests invoking the overbreadth doctrine to exonerate a client who is charged with violating the federal cyberstalking statute.

A Tale Of Two Greenmoss Builders, Robert M. O'Neil

Washington Law Review

If ever a pending Supreme Court case deserved the merciful disposition of “improvidently granted,” it would seem to be Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. v. Greenmoss Builders, Inc. Many factors seem to warrant such interment for an elusive and wholly unsatisfying controversy. Arguably, by any objective standard, this case should never have gone beyond a routine and little noted denial of certioriari. Against this unhappy background, let me offer several countervailing and compelling factors that seem to warrant an alternative disposition.

The Landmark That Wasn't: A First Amendment Play In Five Acts, Lee Levine, Stephen Wermiel

Washington Law Review

What follows is an original case study of our First Amendment law of free expression and how it is created by the Supreme Court. Drawing heavily on heretofore unpublished internal papers from the chambers of Justice William Brennan and other Justices, this Article reveals how the 1964 landmark decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan was once in serious jeopardy of being overruled. In the course of this discussion, and in their examination of the evolution of the Court’s decision in Dun & Bradstreet v. Greenmoss Builders (1985), the authors describe and analyze: (1) how and to what extent …

Dun And Bradstreet Revisited—A Comment On Levine And Wermiel, Scott L. Nelson

Washington Law Review

Lee Levine and Stephen Wermiel’s account of the internal history of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. v. Greenmoss Builders, Inc. convincingly demonstrates the utility of the papers of retired Justices in facilitating a painstaking reconstruction of the Court’s deliberations. As someone who clerked for Justice Byron White in the October 1984 and 1985 Terms and was thus present during the second of the two years in which the Court considered Dun & Bradstreet, I will not comment on the accuracy of the particular details the Article reports or add any inside information about the Court’s …