TikTalk / All bark? / Faith and fear

TikTalk. First Amendment advocates are saying that a ban on TikTok may violate the U.S. Constitution and set a dangerous precedent for artistic expression. 
■ Fox News may avoid going to trial and settle the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit, contend free-speech experts.
■ The Fox network’s reliance on First Amendment protections is “the height of hypocrisy,” opined Margaret Sullivan in The Guardian.
■ Attacks on First Amendment freedoms are growing across the country at a “deeply troubling” rate, media experts warn.

■ Is media reliance on anonymous sources indirectly responsible for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ push to make suing journalists for defamation easier?

 

Training day. Mandatory training on freedom of speech for Stanford law students and the official leave of an associate dean will be enforced following the disruption of a campus speech.
■ Artistic-expression arguments have created hurdles that are slowing Tennessee anti-LGBTQ+ legislative measures.
■ Tennessee’s drag-performance law discriminates based on viewpoint, a violation of the First Amendment, a Harvard law professor asserted in a Media News Group commentary.

■ The West Texas A&M University president who canceled a campus drag show has been hit with an unlawful-censorship lawsuit, FIRE reported.

 
All bark? The U.S. Supreme Court humored itself while debating the merits of Jack Daniel’s efforts to stop a dog chew toy that parodies its whiskey brand.
■ A bipartisan group of U.S. senators work to push bill that would allow live broadcasts of Supreme Court proceedings.
■ A Colorado proposal would reduce the costs of obtaining public records for news outlets.
■ A former federal judge appointed to an Ashley Biden stolen-diary probe has rejected Project Veritas’ free-speech defense claims.
 
Speak volumes. Will continued attacks on free speech cancel the country’s cultural commitment to public dialogue?
■ A trial over the 2016 Twitter troll that intended to suppress votes for Hillary Clinton may test the limits of online speech.
■ A federal judge sided with publishers, handing the Internet Archive its first fair-use loss in the fight over digital book preservation.
■ Potential felony charges hang over a Michigan library director if she does not take a controversial LGBTQ+ novel off the shelves.
■ Grammy-winning musician Melissa Etheridge offered some personal takes on free speech and artistic expression in a YouTube video interview hosted by FIRE.
 
Faith and fear. Those who “engage in religious patriotism” struggle to adjust to an increasingly non-religious country, reasoned longtime Knoxville lawyer Loy Waldrop in a Tennessee Lookout commentary.
■ A federal judge has ruled that Alabama laws against panhandling are unconstitutional.
■ The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court angered some elected officials when it ruled that people have the right to be rude at public meetings.
■ It was a big whoopsie for Whoopi Goldberg as “The View” co-host got facts wrong about lying and the First Amendment, PolitiFact reported.