Tag: halt

  • VICTORY: FIRE lawsuit leads California to halt law penalizing reporters, advocates, and victims who discuss publicly known information about sealed arrest records

    VICTORY: FIRE lawsuit leads California to halt law penalizing reporters, advocates, and victims who discuss publicly known information about sealed arrest records

    SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 19, 2024 — A federal court, acting on a stipulation agreed to by the California attorney general and San Francisco city attorney, today halted enforcement of a California law that officials deployed to suppress journalism about a controversial tech CEO’s sealed arrest records. 

    Under the law, any person — including journalists, advocates, witnesses, and victims of crimes — faced a civil penalty of up to $2,500 for sharing public information. The court order results from a First Amendment lawsuit filed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression in November, which led the California attorney general and San Francisco city attorney to agree not to enforce the law while the lawsuit is pending.

    “The press and public have a constitutional right to discuss what’s publicly known,” said FIRE attorney Adam Steinbaugh. “Government officials can’t punish the press and public when officials fail to safeguard information. That responsibility starts and ends with the government.”

    In October 2023, journalist Jack Poulson published articles about a controversial tech CEO’s arrest, sharing a copy of the arrest report sent to him by an unidentified source. The San Francisco Police Department had previously made that report public, even though the executive had successfully petitioned a state court to seal the record. 

    Almost a year after Poulson published the report, the city attorney of San Francisco — working with the tech executive — sent three letters to Poulson and his webhost, Substack, demanding they remove articles and the sealed report. Those letters threatened enforcement of California’s anti-dissemination statute, Penal Code § 851.92(c). The law imposes a civil penalty of up to $2,500 on any person (except the government officials charged with maintaining the secrecy of sealed records) who shares a sealed arrest report or any information “relating to” the report — even if the information is already publicly available.

    Concerned by the implications of the statute, FIRE sued the San Francisco city attorney and the California attorney general on behalf of the Bay Area-based First Amendment Coalition, its Director of Advocacy Ginny LaRoe, and legal commentator Eugene Volokh. Each regularly comments on censorship campaigns precisely like the one the tech CEO and city attorney launched against Paulson and Substack. But the anti-dissemination statute prohibited them from covering the CEO story, even though the information has been publicly available for over a year.

    Today, the court entered a preliminary injunction agreed to by both California and the city attorney that prohibits them from enforcing the law with respect to publicly available information. 

    The preliminary injunction protects not only FAC and Volokh, but anyone — including journalists like Poulson — who publishes information made available to the public. 

    “Discussing and sharing lawfully obtained information about arrests is not a crime — it’s a core First Amendment right,” said FIRE Staff Attorney Zach Silver. “The rich and powerful shouldn’t have the luxury of deploying the government to put their skeletons back in the closet. By standing up for their own rights, the First Amendment Coalition and Eugene Volokh have helped to protect others from facing legal action under California’s anti-dissemination law.”

    The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought — the most essential qualities of liberty. FIRE educates Americans about the importance of these inalienable rights, promotes a culture of respect for these rights, and provides the means to preserve them.

    CONTACT:

    Jack Whitten, Communications Campaign Specialist, FIRE: 215-717-3473; media@thefire.org

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  • Supreme Court must halt unprecedented TikTok ban to allow review, FIRE argues in new brief to high court

    Supreme Court must halt unprecedented TikTok ban to allow review, FIRE argues in new brief to high court

    Today, FIRE filed an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief in support of TikTok’s emergency application for an injunction pending review of a law that would force it to shut down absent divestiture of Chinese ownership. The Summary of Argument from the brief, on which FIRE is joined by the Institute for Justice and Reason Foundation, explains the law’s grave threat to free speech. 

    The nationwide ban on TikTok is the first time in history our government has proposed — or a court approved — prohibiting an entire medium of communications. The law imposes a prior restraint, and restricts speech based on both its content and viewpoint. As such, if not unconstitutional per se, it should be subject to the highest level of First Amendment scrutiny. Given the grave consequences, both for free speech doctrine and for the 170 million Americans who use TikTok to communicate with one another, this Court should at least hit the “pause button” before allowing such a drastic policy to go into effect.

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit correctly recognized the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, (“the Act”) as a direct regulation of speech. Exercising original and exclusive jurisdiction over TikTok’s constitutional challenge, the court held the Act “implicates the First Amendment and is subject to heightened scrutiny,” and assumed but did not decide strict scrutiny was warranted. . However, the court held the Act “clears this high bar,” granting deference to the government’s characterization of alleged national security concerns to conclude the Act was “carefully crafted to deal only with control by a foreign adversary, and it was part of a broader effort to counter a well-substantiated national security threat posed by the [People’s Republic of China].”

    Although the appellate panel was correct that the Act should be subject to the highest level of First Amendment scrutiny, it failed to actually hold the government to its burden of proof, and deferred too readily to unsupported assertions of a national security threat.

    Congress has not met the heavy constitutional burden the First Amendment demands when regulating speech, let alone banning an entire expressive platform. No published legislative findings or other official public records attempt to explain or substantiate why the Act’s severe encroachment on millions of Americans’ right to speak and to receive information is necessary to address a real and serious problem. Nor was there any showing the ban would effectively address the asserted risks.

    The proffered evidence of the law’s purpose reveals illegitimate intent to suppress disfavored speech and generalized concerns about data privacy and national security. These concerns fall far short of satisfying strict scrutiny, and the court’s extreme deference to governmental conjecture is unwarranted, misguided, and dangerous. Nor is the Act narrowly tailored to any compelling or substantial government interest, as the First Amendment requires.

    Constitutional intrusions of this unprecedented magnitude demand this Court’s full consideration before they take effect. This Court should grant Petitioners’ emergency application for an injunction pending review.

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