National Free Speech News & Commentary

The Editorial Board
Wall Street Journal

Excerpt: The diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracy has injected progressive politics into many corners of the private economy, but its role in medicine is especially pernicious. Now a lawsuit is challenging whether California can force doctors who teach continuing medical education courses to also teach racial politics.

Laura Beltz
Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression

Excerpt: Kiosks and bulletin boards, where students share everything from band tryout notices to political statements, are a classic part of a college campus. Even in the age of social media, posting materials where fellow students will likely see them, on the way to class or their dorm, is a critical avenue for expression.

But the University of South Dakota put a roadblock smack-dab in the middle of that avenue with its heavy-handed Poster and Advertising Policy.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: State governments often pick willing researchers to testify in lawsuits, buttressing their arguments. Outside of litigation, governments also often share data with professors, helping the scholars conduct research and the governments solve problems.

But what happens when researchers who work with a government, outside the courtroom, also testify in a case against that government? In California, the state Department of Education tried to stop one’s testimony and prevent another’s.

Emma Camp
Reason Magazine

Excerpt: In the summer of 2020, Morgan Bettinger was a rising senior at the University of Virginia when a fellow student publicly accused her of telling a group of Black Lives Matter protesters that they would make "good speed bumps."

But a second investigation, this time from the school's civil rights office, ultimately cleared Bettinger of wrongdoing and concluded that there was insufficient evidence that Bettinger ever said that protesters would make "good speed bumps." Now Bettinger has filed a lawsuit, arguing that her speech was not a threat and was facially protected by the First Amendment—and therefore, the University of Virginia, as a public institution, had no grounds to punish her.

Washington Examiner Editorial
Washington Examiner

Excerpt: The more documents that Big Tech companies are forced to cough up through litigation and oversight, the clearer it becomes that there was in fact a coordinated campaign between social media platforms and the government to suppress speech that is inconvenient for those in power.

This censorship runs counter to our nation’s founding principles. Congress and litigants should keep up the pressure on social media companies to reveal what they did, and safeguards need to be put in place to make sure this never happens again.

Annabelle Timsit
Washington Post

Excerpt: A federal judge in Arkansas temporarily blocked a state law that would have made it a crime for librarians and booksellers to give minors materials deemed “harmful” to them — a move celebrated by free-speech advocates, who had decried the law as a violation of individual liberties.

Section 1 would have made it a criminal offense to knowingly provide a minor with any material deemed “harmful” — a term defined by state law as containing nudity or sexual content, appealing to a “prurient interest in sex,” lacking “serious literary, scientific, medical, artistic, or political value for minors” or deemed “inappropriate for minors” under current community standards.