Tag: punish

  • VICTORY! Tenn. town buries unconstitutional ordinance used to punish holiday skeleton display

    VICTORY! Tenn. town buries unconstitutional ordinance used to punish holiday skeleton display

    GERMANTOWN, Tenn., April 29, 2025 — After a federal lawsuit, the town of Germantown, Tennessee, has sent to the graveyard an ordinance that was used to fine a resident for using giant skeletons in a Christmas lawn display.

    Alexis Luttrell received a citation and court summons from the Memphis suburb in January for keeping up decorative skeletons after Halloween and repurposing them for Election Day and Christmas. In February, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed a federal lawsuit seeking to have the citation thrown out and Germantown’s unconstitutional holiday ordinance overturned on First Amendment grounds. FIRE also committed to defending Alexis against the charges in municipal court.

    Germantown voluntarily dismissed the municipal charges against Alexis a month later, but FIRE’s federal lawsuit against the ordinance remained pending before the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee. But last night, the Board of Mayor and Aldermen voted to repeal the ordinance entirely, and Germantown agreed to a $24,999 settlement in exchange for dismissing the lawsuit.

    “Not only am I no longer at risk of being fined for my skeletons, the unconstitutional ordinance is now dead and buried,” Alexis said. “Today is a victory for anyone who has ever been censored by a government official and chose to fight back.”

    The ghastly affair began in October 2024, when Alexis purchased a large decorative skeleton and skeleton dog for Halloween. She later kept the skeletons up and dressed them with Election Day signs in November and then Santa-themed attire in December.

    COURTESY PHOTOS OF ALEXIS AND HER SKELETON DISPLAYS

    Perplexingly, this was illegal under Germantown Ordinance 11-33, which required that holiday decorations “shall be removed within a reasonable period of time, not to exceed 30 days.” In Germantown officials’ view, Alexis’s skeletons weren’t “really” Christmas decorations, but an unsanctioned Halloween display. In December, the town sent Alexis a warning that she violated the ordinance, and followed up with a citation and summons when the skeletons were still up in January.

    Germantown’s ordinance wasn’t just an exercise in misguided micromanagement, it violated the Constitution. Under the First Amendment, Americans are free to put up holiday decorations on their property whenever they like, not just in a government-approved period of time. And by demanding the Santa-themed skeletons come down — even if one has a dark sense of humor, or happens to like Tim Burton movies — the city engaged in viewpoint discrimination about what constitutes an “acceptable” Christmas display.

    “Germantown’s leaders deserve a lot of credit for quickly repealing its holiday ordinance after FIRE’s lawsuit,” FIRE Attorney Colin McDonell said. “Instead of digging in and wasting time and taxpayer dollars defending an unconstitutional ordinance, they boned up on the First Amendment and did the right thing.”

    Alexis’ skeletons have remained in her yard and she’s continued to dress them up with different outfits and decorations for new holidays. Since February, they’ve been dressed in Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and Easter garb, and Pride Month and Juneteenth are coming up soon.

    “Alexis and all the residents of Germantown can now celebrate the holidays of their choice on their own property without worrying their creativity will get them fined,” said McDonell. “And that’s how it should be in a free country.”

    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:

    Alex Griswold, Communications Campaign Manager, FIRE: 215-717-3473; media@thefire.org

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  • Should the government punish you for allegedly ‘undermining’ American diplomacy?

    Should the government punish you for allegedly ‘undermining’ American diplomacy?

    American foreign policy is vast, complex, and can change by the hour. The First Amendment protects our right to support, challenge, protest, or question the policy of the United States and every other government around the world.

    But in seeking deportations of some legal residents in the United States, federal officials are claiming to target immigrants for expression that could, in their view, impact American diplomacy — and the implications for free expression are profound.

    This broad justification effectively means any legal immigrant in the United States cannot speak his or her mind about any political issue without risking deportation, lest their words in some way implicate present or future foreign policy matters.

    That’s the thing about broad justifications for censorship: They invite broad application.

    In the case of Badar Khan Suri — an Indian citizen, Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow, and recent deportation target — The New York Times reported last week that “an official familiar with Dr. Suri’s case” asserted that “the State Department justified his deportation by arguing that he engaged in antisemitic activity that would undermine diplomatic efforts to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a cease-fire.” 

    Suri is a fellow at Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. In a statement, the school said Suri “has committed no crime.” His father-in-law, Ahmed Yousef, was “a former adviser to Hamas” over a decade ago and “for his part, has criticized the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.” The ACLU of Virginia, which is serving on Suri’s legal team, asserts that his deportation is “in direct retaliation for his speech in support of Palestinian rights and his family’s ties to Gaza.” 

    And on Friday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted that he “will continue to cancel the visas of those whose presence or activities have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for our country.”

    This justification should set off a warning bell for anyone concerned about protecting freedom of expression in the U.S. There is effectively no limiting principle around speech that would allegedly “undermine diplomatic efforts.” 

    Can legal immigrants in the United States discuss human rights violations in Xinjiang or Hong Kong, even though doing so could theoretically imperil tariff talks or trade negotiations with China? What about criticism of the notion that Canada should become the “51st state”? Can Ukrainian immigrants criticize the actions of President Vladimir Putin while the U.S. is involved in talks between Russia and Ukraine? 

    That’s the thing about broad justifications for censorship: They invite broad application.

    And that’s why, last week, FIRE filed a “friend of the court” brief along with a coalition of civil liberties groups contesting the federal government’s detention of lawful permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil. 

    The brief challenged the administration’s use of a statute empowering the secretary of state to deport a lawful non-citizen resident if the secretary determines their “presence or activities” has a “potentially serious” effect on American foreign policy. 

    As FIRE explains, none of the many immigrants in the U.S., including the million-plus on campus, “will feel safe criticizing the American government of the day — in class, scholarship, or on their own time — if a current or future secretary of state may, whenever he chooses and at his unreviewable discretion, deem them adverse to American foreign policy and have them deported.”

    Noncitizens lawfully in the United States may lose their residency for many reasons, like criminal activity or overstaying beyond the authorized date.

    Exercising the freedoms protected by our First Amendment should not be one of them. 

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  • Why do we punish low-income students for entering education?

    Why do we punish low-income students for entering education?

    Much has been written about the financial challenges many students face in going to university, and the fact that maintenance loans fall quite some way short of covering the cost of living for students.

    Much has also been written about the national trend of mature students numbers coming to university being in decline, with particular implications for certain sectors such as healthcare, where we are struggling to meet workforce need.

    These two areas of concern are quite likely related and linked to what we believe is a fundamentally unfair and regressive policy which impacts people who are in receipt of Universal Credit.

    Under the current Universal Credit (UC) system, for people who are in work, UC is reduced by 55p for every £1 earned as income.

    However, if you are entitled to receive Universal Credit and decide to go to university, for every £1 you receive in maintenance loan funding, your UC entitlement is reduced by £1 – and not by 55p as is the case for earned income.

    Make it make sense

    On the face of it, this seems highly inequitable – why should income derived from a student loan (which will, of course, need to be repaid with interest) be treated more harshly than earned income?

    Another reaction to this approach might be to ask,  “Why wouldn’t students who are eligible to receive UC simply not draw down their maintenance loan at all?”.

    Unfortunately, this option is not open to those students, because the rules around reductions to UC make clear that the pound-for-pound deductions from UC are based upon the maximum maintenance loan for which you are eligible, regardless of whether you actually take the loan.

    It is worth highlighting that, in general, full time university students are not eligible to claim Universal Credit. However, exceptions do apply, such as if you are under 21 and do not have parental support, or if you are responsible for the care of a child (the full list of eligibility criteria can be found here). In other words, students who we know are more likely to need additional support to be successful in higher education.

    The Child Poverty Action Group have dedicated information for students who are entitled to claim UC, to explain the impact of having access to a maintenance loan on their UC payments.

    In their worked example, a single mother of a 3yr old child, living in private rented accommodation, could have UC payments of £1399.60 reduced to £475.71 per month as a result of going into full time higher education and having access to a maintenance loan.

    In other words, this mother would be taking on a personal loan debt of well over £900 per month – on top of the cost of tuition fees – which would otherwise have been paid as UC if she had not decided to access education.

    We believe that this scenario may be without precedent in terms of our UC and wider benefit system, in that we know of no other situation in which someone who is entitled to claim benefits would be told that they need to take out a personal loan to replace their benefits entitlement.

    In a recent ministerial question on this issue, the government explicitly confirmed that:

    …successive Governments have held the principle that the benefit system does not normally support full-time students. Rather, they are supported by the educational maintenance system.

    This principle may have been fine when maintenance support was distributed as a grant rather than a loan, but we would argue that there is something deeply regressive about asking students from backgrounds who are already less likely to access education to forego benefit support to which they would be otherwise fully entitled.

    Breaking down barriers

    The current government has set out an ambitious set of missions to “Build a Better Britain”, which includes a mission to “Break down the barriers to opportunity at every stage”.

    We would argue strongly that the impact of having access to a maintenance loan on UC payments is an unfair and unnecessary barrier to students who wish to access higher education, and may well be a significant factor in why some mature learners are seeing university study as a less attractive option.

    Finding and fixing barriers of this kind – which could be easily addressed by allowing students who are eligible to access UC to continue doing so – would be entirely consistent with this government’s mission.

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