City Apologizes for Barring Local Charlottesville Resident from Commenting During Public Meeting
On September 18th, the city of Charlottesville, Virginia issued a formal apology after a local resident was blocked from commenting during a City Council meeting on Zoom. On May 18th, Charlottesville resident Tanesha Hudson criticized the way Council members were dealing with City Manager Tarron Richardson, who she alleges they were plotting to fire.
Federal Judge Temporarily Halts Trump’s WeChat and TikTok Ban
On Sunday, September 20th, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against President Donald Trump’s executive order that banned WeChat and TikTok from operating in the U.S. Trump signed the executive order on August 6th, citing national security concerns that the Chinese-owned messaging app and the video app were collecting data on Americans.
Panel on How to Safely and Legally Record the Police
Halima Kazem-Stojanovic, an investigative reporter and Justice Studies professor at San Jose State University and the coordinator of the Human Rights Journalism program at SJSU’s Human Rights Institute, hosted a virtual panel on the right to record police in public.
Federal Judges Rules That Pennsylvania Shutdown Orders Violate First Amendment
On September 14th, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled that Governor Tom Wolf’s COVID-19-related orders that forced some businesses to close and prohibited large public gatherings are unconstitutional.
Reporter Tackled and Arrested by LA County Sheriff’s Deputies While Covering a Protest
Josie Huang, a reporter with NPR affiliate KPCC, was tackled and arrested while covering a protest on Saturday, September 12th. Huang had been attending a press conference about the shooting of two Sheriff’s deputies in Compton earlier that day.
Federal Judge Rules that Palin’s Defamation Suit Against New York Times Can Proceed to Trial
On August 28th, a federal judge ruled that a defamation suit brought by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin against The New York Times can proceed to trial.
Fighting words refer to direct, face-to-face, personal insults that would likely lead the recipient to respond with violence. The U.S. Supreme Court developed the fighting-words doctrine in Chaplinsky v. New […]
ACLU Sues City of Minneapolis For Injuries to Demonstrators During George Floyd Protests
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Minnesota, along with law firm Fish & Richardson, has filed a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of four protesters against the City of Minneapolis, the Minneapolis Police Chief, the head of the police officer’s union, and others.