First Amendment

During the current session of the U.S. Supreme Court, protesters have interrupted oral arguments multiple times, and they have been arrested for it. The Legal Times' Zoe Tillman reports that some of the protesters are arguing that a prohibiting "a 'harangue or oration' or other 'loud' language at the high court violates the First Amendment." In particular, their lawyer is arguing that the law is overbroad and does not advance any compeling governmental interest.
 

California charities must disclose the names of their major contributors, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled last week. The Los Angeles Times' Maura Dolan reports that the Center for Competitive Politics lost the argument that its First Amendment right to the freedom of association is violated by the reporting requirement.

California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris ordered nonprofits to disclose donors who contributed more than $5,000 in a single year. The disclosures, however, were only to the attorney general's office, not to the public too.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, Wednesday that states can bar judicial candidates from personally asking for campaign contributions, The Associated Press' Mark Sherman and Sam Hananel report. Chief Justice John Roberts, along with the four liberal members of the court, opined that '"judges are not politicians, even when they come to the bench by way of the ballot. A state may assure its people that judges will apply the law without fear or favor — and without having personally asked anyone for money.”'

The dissenting justices would have struck down Florida's ban under the First Amendment.

Even though Roberts was in the majority on the Citizens United decision that liberated corporations and unions from campaign spending limits, the AP reports that "this case could be seen to bring out his role as the leader of the judicial branch, even if he and other appointed federal judges are not affected by the case. Roberts at several points drew a distinction between candidates for judgeships and other offices."

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled last week that a prosecutor must pay attorney fees to The Cincinnati Enquirer for withholding 911 recordings, that newspaper's Kevin Grasha reports. The prosecutor did not have legal authority to withhold the recordings from a murder case, the court ruled, and must pay attorney fees to the newspaper.

The New York Times' Adam Liptak writes that corporations, rather than protesters and civil rights activists, are becoming the main beneficiaries of the First Amendment. Harvard law professor John C. Coates IV has conducted a study finding that "'corporations have begun to displace individuals as the direct beneficiaries of the First Amendment.'" Coates found that First Amendment cases involving businesses have risen before the U.S. Supreme Court, while First Amendment cases involving individuals have fallen.

Now that the Federal Aviation Administration has released proposed rules for integrating small commercial drones into the American airspace, the next regulatory front for drones is privacy, Slate's Margot E. Kaminski reports. The FAA isn't going to set privacy rules for drones; instead, President Barack Obama issued a presidential memorandum giving federal agencies marching orders on only keeping data collected from drones for 180 days and ordering agencies not to "violate the First Amendment or discriminate against people based on ethnicity, race, gender, or national origin" through their use of drones.

State law may provide the protection for privacy from drones, Kaminski reports, but First Amendment challenges are likely to ensue against such regulation. Wisconsin may have the best model for regulating privacy vis-a-vis drones because that state's law hinges "on whether the subject of surveillance has a reasonable expectation of privacy," Kaminski reports.

The Seventh Circuit ruled that the Chicag0 Sun-Times broke the law when it published the heights and weights of Chicago cops who acted as fillers in a police lineup, Kim Janssen reported for that newspaper. The cops' height, weight, eye color, hair color and months and years of their birthdates were private information that was improperly obtained from the officers' drivers licenses in violation of the Driver's Privacy Protection Act, the court ruled.

The lineup involved former Mayor Richard M. Daley's nephew, who threw a deadly punch that killed a man, and who was investigated by the newspaper for allegedly getting preferential treatment from the police.

Reuters' Lawrence Hurley reports that the U.S. Supreme Court appeared to be closely divided over a Florida judge's challenge to a law that bars judicial candidates from soliciting campaign contributions. Notably, the case was heard just about five years after the Supreme Court decided Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who authored the Citizens United opinion, is likely to be the swing vote, Hurley reports. The liberal justices appeared to favor keeping a law that tries to safeguard the judiciary from political influence, while the conservative justices appeared to favor the First Amendment interests tamped down by the law.

The Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press' Tom Isler reports on two lawsuits that have been brought in Missouri and New York to challenge secrecy over the grand juries that ultimately chose not to indict police officers in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. "The two cases illustrate how strong the secrecy protections are for grand juries and how difficult it can be for the public to have any meaningful oversight of the process to guard against potential abuse," Isler notes. He hopes the courts rule in favor of the lawsuits seeking more transparency so the public can have a "a richer picture of the two grand jury investigations that sparked protests worldwide."