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California judge buries censorship order in the fine print

Freedom of the Press
2 years 9 months ago
Jimmy Emerson, DVM

A judge in California granted a motion, filed by a middle school teacher accused of sexual abuse, seeking to prohibit journalists from contacting people who submitted letters of support on his behalf. The letters were publicly filed with the court. No media outlet was accused of illegality of any kind.

Restricting future speech (as opposed to punishing unlawful speech after-the-fact) is a prior restraint, long considered the “quintessential First Amendment violation.” Nonetheless, prior restraints often fly under the radar where, as here, judges include them in innocuous seeming “confidentiality orders.” Many media outlets do not have the resources to fight these orders, so their obvious unconstitutionality becomes academic and journalists comply rather than risk arrest.

The California judge entered the order without notifying journalists, even though the public defender’s motion that prompted the order requested that “further unwanted contact by the press be ceased.” Instead, the order included an instruction to the parties to “advise those individuals to whom disclosure of the contact information has been made” of the order. It is elementary that a court cannot tell non-parties what to do, especially without notice or a hearing, but the apparent intention was to intimidate the press into compliance despite the order’s invalidity under the First Amendment.

The public defender sent the order to several journalists, at least some of whom alerted FPF’s U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, publicized the ordeal on Twitter and got lawyers. Fortunately, those journalists are refusing to comply. Lawyers for the Bay Area News Group responded to the public defender by explaining that the Supreme Court has “without exception invalidated prior restraints” and is “particularly hostile to prior restraints that prohibit the press from reporting information disclosed in court proceedings or government records.”

The case is illustrative of the harms that occur when careless judges act as “rubber stamps” for government attorneys. It appears the order the judge entered was actually prepared by the public defender’s office. The motion, presumably to avoid raising a red flag, buried its request to restrain the press in its last substantive sentence. It is entirely possible that the judge did not even realize the Constitutional ramifications of his order because he perceived the request for a confidentiality order as routine. But thoughtless or inadvertent censorship nonetheless remains censorship.

Much attention is focused on the few high profile cases that reach the nation’s highest courts, but the legal system depends on the competence and diligence of everyday trial court judges to safeguard the Constitution. The Supreme Court recognizes that, during pre-trial criminal proceedings, “the absence of a jury, long recognized as an inestimable safeguard against the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor and against the compliant, biased or eccentric judge, makes the importance of public access…even more significant.” But Supreme Court pronouncements are of limited value if trial judges do not understand and adhere to First Amendment principles.

We commend the Bay Area News Group and its attorneys, Jassy Vick Carolan, for not caving after receiving an unlawful order. We hope any other journalists who received the order will similarly disregard it. But the risk remains — especially for those without access to lawyers — that they may not and that the quality of reporting will suffer.

More work is clearly needed to ensure that judges in the Bay Area and nationwide understand the protections that the First Amendment affords to journalists and that government requests to impinge on those protections are anything but routine.

Seth Stern

Surprise! Apple never planned to kick Twitter out of the App Store

Kevin Drum 🕸
2 years 9 months ago
Over the past day I've read at least a dozen pieces explaining how stupid it would be for Apple to toss Twitter out of the App Store. But was Apple ever thinking of doing this? Elon Musk visited Cupertino to find out: Good conversation. Among other things, we resolved the misunderstanding about Twitter potentially being ...continue reading "Surprise! Apple never planned to kick Twitter out of the App Store"
Kevin Drum

Aldergeddon: New 13th Ward

Great State of STL 🕸
2 years 9 months ago
The new St. Louis City 13th Ward includes parts of current 2nd, 22nd, 27th Wards, and other Wards, and is the result of Census Redistricting and Ward Reduction. 2023 Running Filed- Current 2nd Ward Alder Lisa MiddlebrookNeighborhood: North PointeResidence Tax Abated: NoOccupation: manager of Hope Home Healthy Care LLCParty Office: former 2nd Ward Democratic CommitteewomanGenealogy: … Continue reading Aldergeddon: New 13th Ward →
mceselski

Home

Explore STL
2 years 9 months ago

Home is a mixed media project of past and present images, paying homage to artist Phillip Hamer’s loved ones.   Hamer dedicates this project to his family, the humans who

The post Home appeared first on Explore St. Louis.

Rachel Huffman

A Billionaire Got the Chicago Mayor’s Support to Lease Public Land. Then He Wrote Her Campaign a $25,000 Check.

ProPublica
2 years 9 months ago

by Mick Dumke

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

Update, Nov. 30, 2022: This story has been updated to include a statement from a Joe Mansueto spokesperson, who reached out after the story was published.

For months, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has pushed a controversial plan to turn over public housing land to a professional soccer team owned by an influential billionaire.

In mid-November, that billionaire owner of the Chicago Fire Football Club, Joe Mansueto, donated $25,000 to the mayor’s reelection campaign.

And now, a member of the City Council is asking the city government’s top watchdog and ethics officials to investigate whether the contribution violates prohibitions on pay-to-play politics.

“I believe this represents a gross & familiar abuse of power and, at a minimum, a potential violation of the City of Chicago’s Governmental Ethics Ordinance,” Alderman Raymond Lopez wrote in a letter to Deborah Witzburg, the city’s inspector general, and Steve Berlin, executive director of the city’s Board of Ethics. Lopez cited sections of the ordinance that prohibit gifts and political contributions meant to influence official decisions.

Mansueto, though an ally, had never given to Lightfoot’s political fund before his Nov. 17 contribution, according to election disclosure records. (Mansueto’s family foundation has donated to a number of cultural and nonprofit entities, including ProPublica.)

On Wednesday, Lightfoot’s campaign spokesperson praised Mansueto and fended off the criticism.

“Mr. Mansueto has been a socially responsible leader in Chicago’s business community, investing in our neighborhoods and supporting a range of philanthropic initiatives. We are proud to have his support for our grassroots campaign,” spokesperson Christina Freundlich wrote in a statement.

She added: “Government decision-making is firewalled from political campaign activities, and our team executes a rigorous vetting process on every contribution to ensure we have complied with all campaign finance rules and laws.”

A spokesperson for Mansueto did not address the campaign contribution but stressed that the business leader is committed to the city. “Joe believes in investing in historically disinvested parts of Chicago, a vision he shares with Mayor Lightfoot as a way to lift up the city as a whole,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement

Mansueto made the donation the same week Lightfoot released the first ads in her bid for reelection against 10 challengers in February. And it came as officials work to finalize a deal that would let Mansueto’s team take over 23 acres of valuable land that have long been set aside to house low-income families.

At Lightfoot’s behest, the Chicago Housing Authority agreed to lease the site to the Fire so the team can build a new training facility. But the Lightfoot administration and the CHA have kept many of the key details secret. The CHA did not conduct a formal bidding process, and it has refused to release a copy of the proposed agreement or show how it determined the value of the land.

Lopez is one of Lightfoot’s leading council critics, but in September he sided with her and voted in favor of a zoning change the Fire needed to build the new practice facility. He said in an interview that he still supports the Fire’s project but wrote the letter with “disdain” for the mayor’s decision to accept the campaign donation.

“I look forward to the independent investigation by the IG,” he said.

On Wednesday, as Lopez sent his letter, CHA residents and housing advocates protested the land deal outside the headquarters of Morningstar, the investment research firm that Mansueto founded and serves as executive director.

by Mick Dumke

EFF Asks Court To Rein In Orange County, CA’s DNA Dragnet

TechDirt 🕸
2 years 9 months ago
DNA collection at the time of arrest may make sense in certain cases. If it’s a violent crime — rape, murder, home invasion, etc. — it probably is smart to take some sort of a sample which may help place the suspect at the scene of the crime. Not that DNA evidence is infallible. It’s […]
Tim Cushing