If good intentions created good laws, there would be no need for congressional debate.

I have no doubt the authors of this bill genuinely want to protect children, but the bill they've written promises to be a Pandora's box of unintended consequences.

The Kids Online Safety Act, known as KOSA, would impose an unprecedented duty of care on internet platforms to mitigate certain harms associated with mental health, such as anxiety, depression, and eating disorders.

While proponents of the bill claim that the bill is not designed to regulate content, imposing a duty of care on internet platforms associated with mental health can only lead to one outcome: the stifling of First Amendment–protected speech.

Today's children live in a world far different from the one I grew up in and I'm the first in line to tell kids to go outside and "touch grass."

With the internet, today's children have the world at their fingertips. That can be a good thing—just about any question can be answered by finding a scholarly article or how-to video with a simple search.

While doctors' and therapists' offices close at night and on weekends, support groups are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for people who share similar concerns or have had the same health problems. People can connect, share information, and help each other more easily than ever before. That is the beauty of technological progress.

But the world can also be an ugly place. Like any other tool, the internet can be misused, and parents must be vigilant in protecting their kids online.

It is perhaps understandable that those in the Senate might seek a government solution to protect children from any harms that may result from spending too much time on the internet. But before we impose a drastic, first-of-its-kind legal duty on online platforms, we should ensure that the positive aspects of the internet are preserved. That means we have to ensure that First Amendment rights are protected and that these platforms are provided with clear rules so that they can comply with the law.

Unfortunately, this bill fails to do that in almost every respect.

As currently written, the bill is far too vague, and many of its key provisions are completely undefined.

The bill effectively empowers the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to regulate content that might affect mental health, yet KOSA does not explicitly define the term "mental health disorder." Instead, it references the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders…or "the most current successor edition."

Written that way, not only would someone looking at the law not know what the definition is, but even more concerning, the definition could change without any input from Congress whatsoever.

The scope of one of the most expansive pieces of federal tech legislation could drastically change overnight, and Congress may not even realize it until after it already happened. None of the people's representatives should be comfortable with a definition that effectively delegates Congress's legislative authority to an unaccountable third party.

Second, the bill would impose an unprecedented duty of care on internet platforms to mitigate certain harms, such as anxiety, depression, and eating disorders. But the legislation does not define what is considered harmful to minors, and everyone will have a different belief as to what causes harm, much less how online platforms should go about protecting minors from that harm.

The sponsors of this bill will tell you that they have no desire to regulate content. But the requirement that platforms mitigate undefined harms belies the bill's effect to regulate online content. Imposing a "duty of care" on online platforms to mitigate harms associated with mental health can only lead to one outcome: the stifling of constitutionally protected speech.

For example, if an online service uses infinite scrolling to promote Shakespeare's works, or algebra problems, or the history of the Roman Empire, would any lawmaker consider that harmful?

I doubt it. And that is because website design does not cause harm. It is content, not design, that this bill will regulate.

Last year, Harvard Medical School's magazine published a story entitled "Climate Anxiety; The Existential Threat Posed by Climate Change is Deeply Troubling to Many Young People." That article mentioned that among a "cohort of more than 10,000 people between the ages of 16 and 25, 60 percent described themselves as very worried about the climate and nearly half said the anxiety affects their daily functioning."

The world's most well-known climate activist, Greta Thunberg, famously suffers from climate anxiety. Should platforms stop her from seeing climate-related content because of that?

Under this bill, Greta Thunberg would have been considered a minor and she could have been deprived from engaging online in the debates that made her famous.

Anxiety and eating disorders are two of the undefined harms that this bill expects internet platforms to prevent and mitigate. Are those sites going to allow discussion and debate about the climate? Are they even going to allow discussion about a person's story overcoming an eating disorder? No. Instead, they are going to censor themselves, and users, rather than risk liability.

Would pictures of thin models be tolerated, lest it result in eating disorders for people who see them? What about violent images from war? Should we silence discussions about gun rights because it might cause some people anxiety?

What of online discussion of sexuality? Would pro-gay or anti-gay discussion cause anxiety in teenagers?

What about pro-life messaging? Could pro-life discussions cause anxiety in teenage mothers considering abortion?

In truth, this bill opens the door to nearly limitless content regulation, as people can and will argue that almost any piece of content could contribute to some form of mental health disorder.

In addition, financial concerns may cause online forums to eliminate anxiety-inducing content for all users, regardless of age, if the expense of policing teenage users is prohibitive.

This bill does not merely regulate the internet; it threatens to silence important and diverse discussions that are essential to a free society.

And who is empowered to help make these decisions? That task is entrusted to a newly established speech police. This bill would create a Kids Online Safety Council to help the government decide what constitutes harm to minors and what platforms should have to do to address that harm. These are the types of decisions that should be made by parents and families, not unelected bureaucrats serving as a Censorship Committee.

Those are not the only deficiencies of this bill. The bill seeks to protect minors from beer and gambling ads on certain online platforms, such as Facebook or Hulu. But if those same minors watch the Super Bowl or the PGA tour on TV, they would see those exact same ads.

Does that make any sense? Should we prevent online platforms from showing kids the same content they can and do see on TV every day? Should sports viewership be effectively relegated to the pre-internet age?

And even if it were possible to shield minors from every piece of content that might cause anxiety, depression, or eating disorders, that is still not enough to comply with the KOSA. That is because KOSA requires websites to treat differently individuals that the platform knows or should know are minors.

That means that media platforms who earnestly try to comply with the law could be punished because the government thinks it "should" have known a user was a minor.

This bill, then, does not just apply to minors. A should-have-known standard means that KOSA is an internet-wide regulation, which effectively means that the only way to comply with the law is for platforms to verify ages.

So adults and minors alike better get comfortable with providing a form of ID every time they go online. This knowledge standard destroys the notion of internet privacy.

I've raised several questions about this bill. But no one, not even the sponsors of the legislation, can answer those questions honestly, because they do not know the answer. They do not know how overzealous regulators or state attorneys general will enforce the provisions in this bill. They do not know what rules the FTC may come up with to enforce its provisions.

The inability to answer those questions is the result of several vague provisions of this bill, and once enacted into law, those questions will not be answered by the elected representatives in Congress, they will be answered by bureaucrats who are likely to empower themselves at the expense of our First Amendment rights.

There are good reasons to think that the courts will strike down this bill. They would have a host of reasons to do so. Vagueness pervades this bill. The most meaningful terms are undefined, making compliance with the bill nearly impossible. Even if we discount the many and obvious First Amendment violations inherent in this bill, the courts will likely find this bill void for vagueness.

But we should not rely on the courts to save America from this poorly drafted bill. The Senate should have rejected KOSA and forced the sponsors to at least provide greater clarity in their bill. The Senate, however, was dedicated to passing a KOSA despite its deficiencies.

KOSA contains too many flaws for any one amendment to fix the legislation entirely. But the Senate should have tackled the most glaring problem with KOSA—that it will silence political, social, and religious speech.

My amendment merely stated that no regulations made under KOSA shall apply to political, social, or religious speech. My amendment was intended to address the legitimate concern that this bill threatens free speech online. If the supporters of this legislation really do want to leave content alone, they would have welcomed and supported my amendment to protect political, social, and religious speech.

But that is not what happened. The sponsors of the bill blocked my amendment from consideration and the Senate was prohibited from taking a vote to protect speech.

That should be a lesson about KOSA. The sponsors did not just silence debate in the Senate. Their bill will silence the American people.

KOSA is a Trojan horse. It purports to protect our children by claiming limitless ability to regulate speech and depriving them of the benefits of the internet, which include engaging with like-minded individuals, expressing themselves freely, as well as participating in debates among others with different opinions.

Opposition to this bill is bipartisan, from advocates on the right to the left.

A pro-life organization, Students for Life Action, commented on KOSA, stating, "Once again, a piece of federal legislation with broad powers and vague definitions threatens pro-life speech…those targeted by a weaponized federal government will almost always include pro-life Americans, defending mothers and their children—born and preborn."

Student for Life Action concluded its statement by stating: "Already the pro-life generation faces discrimination, de-platforming, and short and long term bans on social media on the whims of others. Students for Life Action calls for a No vote on KOSA to prevent viewpoint discrimination from becoming federal policy at the FTC."

The ACLU brought more than 300 high school students to Capitol Hill to urge Congress to vote no on KOSA because, to quote the ACLU, "it would give the government the power to decide what content is dangerous to young people, enabling censorship and endangering access to important resources, like gender identity support, mental health materials, and reproductive healthcare."

Government mandates and censorship will not protect children online. The internet may pose new problems, but there is an age-old solution to this issue. Free minds and parental guidance are the best means to protect our children online.

The post Censoring the Internet Won't Protect Kids appeared first on Reason.com.

The Fourth Amendment guarantees that every person shall be "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." This means government agents cannot enter your home or rifle through your stuff without a warrant, signed by a judge and based on probable cause. That right extends to the digital sphere: The Supreme Court ruled in 2018's Carpenter v. United States that the government must have a warrant to track people's movements through their cellphone data.

But governments are increasingly circumventing these protections by using taxpayer dollars to pay private companies to spy on citizens. Government agencies have found many creative and enterprising ways to skirt the Fourth Amendment.

Cellphones generate reams of information about us even when they're just in our pockets, including revealing our geographical locations—information that is then sold by third-party brokers. In 2017 and 2018, the IRS Criminal Investigation unit (IRS CI) purchased access to a commercial database containing geolocation data from millions of Americans' cellphones. A spokesman said IRS CI only used the data for "significant money-laundering, cyber, drug and organized-crime cases" and 
terminated the contract when it failed to yield any useful leads.

During the same time period, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) paid more than $1 million for access to cellphone geolocation databases in an attempt to detect undocumented immigrants entering the country. The Wall Street Journal reported that ICE had used this information to identify and arrest migrants.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spent $420,000 on location data in order to track "compliance" with "movement restrictions," such as curfews, as well as to "track patterns of those visiting K-12 schools."

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) admitted in a January 2021 memo that it purchases "commercially available geolocation metadata aggregated from smartphones" and that it had searched the database for Americans' movement histories "five times in the past two-and-a-half years." The memo further stipulated that "DIA does not construe the Carpenter decision to require a judicial warrant endorsing purchase or use of commercially
available data for intelligence purposes."

Even in the physical world, governments have contracted out their spying. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) spent millions of dollars paying employees at private companies and government agencies for personal information that would otherwise require a warrant. This included paying an administrator at a private parcel delivery service to search people's packages and send them to the DEA, and paying an Amtrak official for travel reservation information. In the latter case, the DEA already had an agreement in place under which Amtrak Police would provide that information for free, but the agency instead spent $850,000 over two decades paying somebody off.

It seems the only thing more enterprising than a government agent with a warrant is a government agent without one.

The post The Feds Are Skirting the Fourth Amendment by Buying Data appeared first on Reason.com.

Two police officers in Watonga, Oklahoma, are under state investigation after body camera footage showed them slamming a father to the ground while he was taking his son for an early morning walk.

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) confirmed to local news outlets that it's investigating whether the two Watonga officers used excessive force when they violently detained John Sexton on the morning of July 4.

The incident has led to hundreds of calls from outraged citizens to the police department, local news outlets, and the county sheriff, who has publicly called on the officers to be placed on leave.

Sexton was walking with his 6-year-old son, who has autism, around 6 a.m. when he was stopped by two Watonga police officers.

Watch the video below:

Father body slammed and arrəsted for taking "suspicious" early morning walk with his 6 year old son

OK officers arrəsted the man while walking with his son because he did not provide ID upon demand.

Do you think this was excessive? pic.twitter.com/BG1HGPGLpZ

— TaraBull (@TaraBull808) August 3, 2024

"Found it a little bit suspicious, just the walking around," one of the officers said.

"Walking around is a little bit suspicious?" Sexton replied.

"Technically not really," the officer said, "but, I mean, it is pretty early in the morning. Just wondering what was going on."

The other office then asked Sexton for his ID.

"I don't need to show my ID," he responded.

Sexton is correct. Oklahoma is not a "stop and identify" state, where police can demand the name of pedestrians, and even in those states, officers need a reasonable suspicion that the person is involved in a crime.

Nevertheless, police around the country continue to abuse their authority and arrest people for asserting their rights. In 2022 for example, a pair of Florida sheriff's deputies were demoted for arresting a legally blind man who lawfully refused to give his ID.

The Watonga offices appear similarly ignorant. One threatens to arrest and jail Sexton for failing to identify himself, "because I've identified that you've been walking around here at 5:30 in the morning."

"Yeah, we do that," Sexton replied.

"No, you're not. Give me your ID," the officer demanded.

Sexton said he left his ID at his house and repeated, correctly, that Oklahoma doesn't require him to identify himself.

One of the officers then tried to detain Sexton, who pulled away and attempted to record the incident with his cellphone. The officer then grabbed Sexton and swung him to the ground while Sexton's young son started wailing.

Sexton was briefly detained before being released without being charged. He has since filed a complaint with the Watonga Police Department, and the release of body camera footage of the incident has outraged residents.

Blaine County Sheriff Travis Daugherty told local news outlet KOCO News that his office received over 200 calls about the incident. Daugherty also said one of the officers involved was a former deputy in his office but had been demoted and eventually left to join the Watonga Police Department.

"The deputies that were underneath him, they had lost faith in him as their leader. Yeah, and so I demoted him back later," Daugherty said.

Lack of central databases of police disciplinary records and poor background checks lead to problem officers bouncing from department to department, leaving a trail of complaints and lawsuits in their wake.

Daugherty also sent a letter to residents pushing for the officers to be placed on leave until the investigation is complete.

"This is not a matter of me deciding if they are guilty or not; this is for the citizens to know that somebody is listening, and I hope to bring peace of mind and put citizens at ease to know that Watonga is doing everything they can to ensure the safety of the Blaine County Citizens," Daugherty wrote in the letter. "I feel the best course of action now is to remove these officers from the equation until the District Attorney's Office and city leaders decide what the best outcome will be."

In a July 29 press release, the City of Watonga said it was aware of Sexton's complaint and that the chief of police had requested the OSBI to investigate. It declined to comment until the completion of that investigation.

"As part of our commitment to integrity, we take any allegations seriously and are committed to transparency and accountability in our operations," the press release states. "Until the investigation is complete, and while following state law related to personnel matters, we will refrain from providing additional comments to preserve the integrity of the process."

Meanwhile, Sexton told local news outlets that his son was heavily traumatized by the event.

"He's been a cop for Halloween for the last two years," Sexton told KOCO News. "That's what he's been wanting to be when he grows up. That's what he says, and now he's scared of them."

The post Oklahoma Cops Under Investigation for Slamming Innocent Dad to the Ground for 'Suspicious' Walk With Son appeared first on Reason.com.

In Spartanburg County, South Carolina, on Interstate 85, police officers stop vehicles for traveling in the left lane while not actively passing, touching the white fog line, or following too closely. This annual crackdown is called Operation Rolling Thunder, and the police demand perfection.

Any infraction, no matter how minor, can lead to a roadside interrogation and warrantless search. However, a 21-month fight for transparency shows participating agencies play loose with South Carolina's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which requires the government to perform its business in an "open and public manner."

Motorists must follow state laws with exactness. But the people in charge of enforcement give themselves a pass.

Deny, Deny, Deny

The drawn-out FOIA dispute started on October 11, 2022, less than one week after a five-day blitz that produced nearly $1 million in cash seizures. Our public-interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, requested access to incident reports for all 144 vehicle searches that occurred during the joint operation involving 11 agencies: The Cherokee, Florence, Greenville, and Spartanburg County sheriff's offices; the Duncan, Gaffney, and Wellford police departments; the South Carolina Highway Patrol, Law Enforcement Division, and State Transport Police; and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Our intent was simple. We wanted to check for constitutional violations, which can multiply in the rush to pull over and search as many vehicles as possible within a set time frame. South Carolina agencies have conducted the operation every year since 2006, yet no one has ever done a systematic audit.

Rather than comply with its FOIA obligation, Spartanburg County denied our request without citing any provision in the law. We tried again and then recruited the help of South Carolina resident and attorney Adrianne Turner, who filed a third request in 2023.

It took a lawsuit to finally pry the records loose. Turner filed the special action with outside representation.

Key Findings

The incident reports, released in batches from March through July 2024, show why Spartanburg County was eager to prevent anyone from obtaining them.

• Over 72 percent of vehicle searches during Operation Rolling Thunder in 2022 produced nothing illegal. Officers routinely treated innocent drivers like criminals.
• Carrying any amount of cash is legal, but officers treated currency as contraband. The records describe no single case in which officers found a large amount of cash and did not seize it. All money was presumed dirty.
• Officers pressured property owners to sign roadside abandonment forms, giving up claims to their cash on the spot.
• South Carolina residents mostly got a pass. Officers focused on vehicles with out-of-state plates, rental cars, and commercial buses. Over 83 percent of the criminal suspects identified during warrantless searches lived out of state. Nearly half were from Georgia.
• Black travelers were especially vulnerable. Nearly 74 percent of the suspects identified and 75 percent of the people arrested were black. This is more than triple the South Carolina black population of 25 percent.

Working in the Shadows

While these records shine a light on police conduct, still more secrets remain.

By policy, the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office and partner agencies do not create incident reports for every search. They only document their "wins" when they find cash or contraband. They do not document their "losses" when they come up empty.

Thanks to this policy, Spartanburg County has no records for 102 of the 144 searches that occurred during Operation Rolling Thunder in 2022. Nowhere do officers describe how they gained probable cause to enter the vehicles where nothing was found. The police open and close investigations and then act like the searches never happened.

This leaves government watchdogs in the dark—by design. They cannot inspect public records that do not exist. Victims cannot cite them in litigation. And police supervisors cannot review them when evaluating job performance.

Even if body camera video exists, there is no paper trail. This lack of recordkeeping undercuts the intent of FOIA. Agencies dodge accountability by simply not summarizing their embarrassing or potentially unconstitutional conduct.

The rigged system is rife with abuse. Available records show that officers routinely order drivers to exit their vehicles and sit in the front seat of a patrol car. If people show signs of "labored breathing," "nervousness," or being "visibly shaken," the police count this toward probable cause.

Officers overlook that anxiety is normal when trapped in a police cruiser without permission to leave. Even people who value their Fourth Amendment right to be "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" can break under pressure and consent to a search.

If travelers refuse, officers can bring K9 units to the scene for open-air sniffs. Having no drugs in the vehicle does not always help. False positives occurred during Operation Rolling Thunder, but the lack of recordkeeping makes a complete audit impossible.

Intimidation, harassment, and misjudgment are easily hidden. The police tell travelers: "If you have nothing to hide, you should let us search." But when the roles are reversed and the public asks questions, agencies suddenly want to remain silent.

The post Operation Rolling Thunder: The Shocking Truth Behind Spartanburg's Traffic Stops appeared first on Reason.com.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States means that any president can now use their official powers to commit crimes under the assumption they are now presumptively immune. A future president could turn the armed forces against their opponents, turn government agencies against their critics, or reenact some of America’s worst mistakes.

No president ever – from the founding of the country to now – has ever had this sort of power and protection. Until now. How much do you know about the history of rejecting Kings?

Take our quick quiz below and see if you can get a perfect score.

Click to see Quiz

This piece was published before Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential election and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to represent the Democratic Party. No significant facts have been changed or added.

Donald Trump’s four years in office were marked by gross abuses of executive power, including efforts to trample protest and dissent — key freedoms at the heart of our participatory democracy.

He deployed federal agents and surveillance to silence Black Lives Matter protesters or anyone he deemed to oppose his policies, threatened to use his power as president to punish his political enemies, and attacked journalists who criticized him. If elected to a second term, we expect the Trump administration to double down on attempts to further limit our First Amendment rights and use the power of the federal government to attack political rivals, stifle dissent, and undermine checks and balances on presidential power.

For more than 100 years, the ACLU has defended our most fundamental rights and freedoms — including our right to express ourselves free from government interference. We won’t stop now. If Trump is reelected, we’re prepared to use the courts, Congress, state and local power, and our organizing muscle to challenge unlawful attempts to surveil Americans, suppress speech, and undermine democracy. Learn more in our breakdown:

The Facts: In 2020, the Trump administration threatened to use force to quell protests, and actually did deploy federal agents and National Guard troops who arrested and used excessive force against protestors and journalists. If Trump secures a second term, this abuse of power is likely to recur and even escalate. Trump has already indicated that his administration would consider invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy the military to America’s cities — potentially targeting those with large BIPOC and immigrant communities — to suppress the right to protest. Trump has also indicated that his administration would attack online free expression by forcing media companies and online platforms to carry conservatives’ preferred speech.

As president, with federal law enforcement agencies under his control, Trump could carry out attacks on advocacy organizations and individuals he opposes. Indeed, on the campaign trail, Trump has praised violent crackdowns on campus protests, aligning with his previous attacks on academic freedom. In particular, he has threatened to deport student protestors who are not U.S. citizens, merging his attacks on free speech with his attacks on immigration. We also expect Trump to use his authority to further target media members and the freedom of the press to suppress negative stories about him or his administration.

Furthermore, Project 2025 has made clear that a second Trump administration intends to dismantle the already insufficient guardrails that prevent the president from abusing the executive branch’s power. The Supreme Court already removed one such guardrail in Trump v. United States, ruling that the president cannot be criminally prosecuted for “official acts,” including using the Justice Department for his personal and political bidding. Trump can use a politicized Justice Department and the vast array of federal agencies to attack voters, protestors, journalists, abortion care providers and patients, his political opponents and any others he perceives as “enemies.” Even now, Trump allies in Congress are trying to use their investigative tools to chill free speech, including targeting civil society organizations and activists engaged in protected advocacy, such as opposing the war in Gaza or supporting LGBTQ rights.

The dangers of the federal government targeting its opponents and vulnerable populations are multiplied by mass surveillance mechanisms that the ACLU has long fought to constrain. A second Trump administration could leverage surveillance programs such as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which authorizes the collection of communications between U.S. persons and people outside the United States, and which Congress has dangerously expanded to allow the government to search Americans’ private communications and information without a warrant and without notice.

Why It Matters: By punishing political enemies and stifling protest and dissent, a second Trump administration would break many of the checks and balances on the executive branch, and undermine the foundations of a functioning democracy.  A second Trump administration will also pose a threat to our historic American tradition of robust, open political competition marked by spirited dissent and the foundational notion that the people have the final say.

How We Got Here: Early in his presidency, Trump sent National Guard troops to stop Black Lives Matter protesters in Washington, D.C., threatened to deploy the military more broadly to quell protests in other U.S. cities, and sent federal law enforcement agents around the country to break up protests by force, including arresting protestors and journalists.

Trump has also already shown how he will target his perceived enemies, whether they be political rivals, media members, or everyday citizens. He's promised prosecution or harm towards President Biden and Biden administration officials, poll workers, former military generals, former officials in his own administration who fell out of favor, protesters, journalists, migrant or immigrant communities, and many others.

Additionally, when it comes to surveilling Americans, there is already a history of law enforcement and intelligence agencies’ abuse of surveillance programs that give the government the right to collect private information from American citizens. It is all too easy to foresee a second Trump administration using these overbroad and dangerous spying powers to surveil and discriminate against political opponents and people and communities already in its crosshairs. Protesters, communities of color, immigrants, and people seeking abortions or gender-affirming care all face even greater risks to their privacy and rights.

Our Roadmap: The ACLU will always rise to defend protesters, journalists, and others who are subjected to abusive criminal prosecutions or other punitive actions from the government. To combat a second Trump administration’s intention to trample historical checks and balances, and the apparent willingness of many within and outside of government to help, we will work with allies to urge the American people to exercise their First Amendment rights — like the right to protest — so that Trump’s excesses are met with the direct power of the people. And, if a second Trump administration does misuse executive authority, the ACLU will go to court to stop efforts to breach Americans’ privacy, discriminate based on race or ethnicity, or retaliate against dissenters or seek to silence them.

Should a Trump administration again deploy the military and federal agents to quell peaceful protests and interfere with journalists reporting on protests, the ACLU and its affiliates network will be on the ground fighting to protect our rights. As we did during Trump’s first presidency, we will bring lawsuits on behalf of protesters and the media addressing any speech or due process-related violations as outlined in the First and Fourth Amendments.

Importantly, we will urge state and local leaders who value civil liberties to lead efforts to resist abuses of federal executive power and limit the reach of the federal government’s power within their jurisdictions. For instance, states can limit — or eliminate — cooperation agreements between state and local law enforcement and federal law enforcement to minimize the grounds federal authorities can intervene in protests. They can also prevent voluntary data sharing that could be used for federal surveillance purposes or to support politically motivated investigations and prosecutions.

The ACLU also works with a bipartisan coalition of civil libertarians on Capitol Hill who recognize the danger of overly broad executive power. To protect our free press, we’re already working to urge Congress to enact the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act (PRESS Act), which would prevent the federal government from compelling journalists to reveal their sources and work product. We’re also calling on our elected leaders to install stronger guardrails against political influence over the Justice Department. Lastly, we’re pushing policymakers to limit government surveillance and protect Americans’ private communications from unlawful collection by passing the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act.

What Our Experts Say: “Donald Trump has made no secret of his disregard for the rule of law and his intent to corrupt the immense powers of the federal government to target his opponents and break the institutions that could pose checks and balances to presidential power. In a second term, unleashed and feeling invulnerable from legal and political repercussions, he would pose an unprecedented challenge to our constitutional values. But the ACLU is ready.” — Mike Zamore, national director of policy and government affairs

“The ACLU has always worked to stop the executive branch from abusing its power at the expense of individual freedom and vulnerable communities. The Trump presidency, with its false declarations of national emergencies in service of discrimination and total disregard for the rule of law, demonstrated what we’ve always known – that relying on unwritten norms for presidential behavior is grossly insufficient. If there is a second Trump administration, we are prepared to defend people it attacks, including protestors, dissenters, and journalists.” — Cecillia Wang, deputy legal director of the ACLU

What You Can Do Today: The ACLU has long advocated for robust legislation that safeguards against all kinds of government overreach, including the unlawful warrantless surveillance of our private communications. Show your support by calling your representative to support the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act now.

The Supreme Court’s 2023-24 term will be remembered for one case above all: Trump v. United States, in which the court granted former President Donald Trump immunity from criminal liability for attempts to use his office to obstruct the peaceful transition of power after he lost the 2020 election.

At the ACLU, we submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in the case urging the justices to affirm that no person – including presidents – are above the law. And yet, the court’s six Republican-appointed justices abandoned the Constitution and its original meaning, voting instead to manufacture an immunity that effectively turns presidents into kings.

The justices’ ostensible justification for providing such immunity is baseless. They surmised that without knowing that they can commit crimes with impunity, presidents will be deterred from energetically doing their job. Yet, until this decision, every president faced the risk of prosecution if they committed crimes and there is no evidence that American presidents have been shy about exercising their authority. The court’s decision underscores the absolute necessity for organizations like ours to pursue constitutional checks on presidents while in office—and for voters to vote like their rights depend on it to hold presidents accountable.

While the presidential immunity case has rightfully dominated the public’s attention, the Supreme Court’s most recent term also involved many other important decisions. It issued important decisions protecting First Amendment rights, turned back a challenge to medication abortion, and addressed Second Amendment rights in a challenge to a law banning possession of guns by persons subject to domestic violence protective orders. The court also dealt several blows to our rights, denying constitutional protections for homeless people punished for sleeping in public, for Black voters subject to discrimination in South Carolina, and for an American citizen whose noncitizen husband was denied a visa without explanation.

A review of the term’s civil rights and civil liberties decisions offers a mixed picture, but make no mistake: This is a court ready to create brand new constitutional protection for former President Trump, while turning away the claims of the powerless.

In a pair of much-watched cases involving reproductive health, the court preserved access to abortion without addressing the merits of the disputes. In one case, FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, doctors who opposed abortion sued to challenge FDA rules that eased access to medication abortion, the most common form of abortion. The lower courts ruled against the FDA, but the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the challenge, ruling that the doctors lacked “standing” to challenge the FDA rules because they were not personally harmed by these rules. While this is a win for medication-abortion access, the fight is far from over. Politicians have vowed to continue efforts to restrict access to abortion nationwide.

The second abortion case, Moyle v. United States, asked whether a federal law requiring emergency rooms to provide stabilizing treatment to all patients experiencing an emergency required those hospitals to provide abortions where that is the necessary treatment — even if state law forbids abortions under those circumstances. The case originated in Idaho, where state law prohibits abortion except where necessary to save the life of the mother. After a federal district court properly ruled that the federal law overrides the state ban in emergency situations, the Supreme Court intervened prematurely and paused the lower court’s ruling until it could weigh in. But after hearing arguments, the court ultimately dismissed the case, thereby resurrecting the lower court ruling protecting access to abortion in emergencies. For now, the case will continue in the lower courts.

This term the court focused on civil liberties involving the First Amendment. In National Rifle Association v. Vullo, the ACLU represented the NRA in a case arguing that New York’s top financial regulator had violated the NRA’s First Amendment when she targeted it for its political views and sought to compel banks and insurance companies to blacklist the group. The court ruled unanimously in our favor. While the ACLU often disagrees with what the NRA advocates, we defended their rights before the Supreme Court because of the First Amendment principle at stake. Had we lost this case, governors in red states would have been free to employ similar tactics against immigrants’ rights groups, gay rights groups, or the ACLU itself. The case establishes that, while government officials are free to express their views, they may not use their official authority to coerce others to punish a group for its political ideas.

The court also issued important decisions protecting free speech online. While the Internet is far from new, decades after its advent the nation is still grappling with how to approach our speech rights online. In two cases challenging Texas and Florida laws that regulated the terms by which large social media platforms moderate the content they display, the court declared, as the ACLU argued in a friend-of-the-court brief, that social media platforms, like newspapers and bookstores, have a First Amendment right to choose how to curate the content they display, sell, or publish. In another pair of online speech cases, the court ruled that where government officials speak in their official government capacity on their personal online profiles, citizens blocked from those profiles can sue to challenge their exclusion.

The term’s only voting rights case saw the six Republican-appointed justices band together to overturn a unanimous lower court decision finding that South Carolina had engaged in racial gerrymandering. In this case, in which the ACLU was counsel, along with the Legal Defense Fund and Arnold & Porter, the court sided with Republican legislators, disregarded its own precedent, and made racial gerrymandering challenges much more difficult going forward.

After a lengthy trial, a three-judge court unanimously found that South Carolina had impermissibly used race to draw the lines between two adjoining districts, to the detriment of Black voters. The mapmakers had moved more than 100,00 more voters than necessary to equalize populations across the districts. They had disproportionately relocated heavily Black neighborhoods, and the mapmakers had programmed their computers to display the racial impact of every line drawing choice. In the end, they ensured that the Black voting population did not rise above 17 percent, a ratio they considered crucial to cement a Republican advantage. The trial court found that the South Carolina legislature used race for partisan purposes when drawing their map, which the Supreme Court has long ruled is unconstitutional discrimination. In an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, however, the court ruled that politics and race are both potential explanations for a legislature’s redistricting, and that reviewing courts must assume “good faith” even where trial courts have found that the legislators relied on race.

In an important immigration case, the court ruled that U.S. citizens have no constitutional right to object to the denial of a visa to their noncitizen spouses—even if the denial means they will be unable to live together in this country. In Dept of State v. Munoz, Luis Asencio-Cordero, a long-time partner of a U.S. citizen, sought to become a permanent resident through marriage. Under our byzantine immigration law, he had to leave the country and obtain a visa to re-enter as an immigrant. When he did so, a State Department consular officer denied his visa without any factual explanation. His partner, Sandra Muñoz, sued, saying that in light of the burden on her marriage, she had a right to know the basis for the denial so that they could respond.

This was not an unreasonable or unprecedented claim. The court had previously held, that where the denial of a visa infringes on U.S. citizens’ constitutional rights, the government’s visa denial must at least be based on a “facially legitimate and bona fide” reason. Muñoz argued that a citizen’s right to live with her spouse in her home country ought to be grounds for protection. But in another 6-3 ruling, the court ruled that she had no right whatsoever.

By the same 6-3 vote, the court ruled that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishments” does not bar punishing homeless people for sleeping in public, even when they have nowhere else to go. In Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reasoned that punishing someone without a home for sleeping outside was “cruel and unusual” because it punished them for the status of being homeless. Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for his conservative colleagues, rejected that claim and concluded that the Grants Pass law punishes the conduct of sleeping in public, not the status of being homeless. But to be homeless is to have nowhere to sleep. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent, “Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime.”

Even as this term ends, the court has already agreed to hear two important cases next term in which the ACLU is counsel. The first, United States v. Skrmetti, is a constitutional challenge to Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Tennessee is one of many states that have in recent years intruded upon the medical autonomy of parents, children, and their doctors by banning gender-affirming care, expressly because it is designed to depart from, rather than conform to, the individual’s sex assigned at birth. The ACLU has challenged these laws, arguing that they violate equal protection by discriminating on the basis of sex and gender identity. They also intrude on the rights of parents to decide what is best for their children. In the second case, Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, the court has agreed to hear whether the First Amendment bars Texas from requiring adults to submit digital identification to obtain access to websites containing constitutionally protected sexual speech.

Today’s Supreme Court is a challenging forum. That’s why the ACLU has launched our State Supreme Court Initiative to advance and protect civil rights and civil liberties under state constitutions, which can be more protective than the U.S. Constitution. But as this term illustrates, we can still win important victories in the federal courts — including the Supreme Court. One thing should remain clear: the ACLU will never stop fighting, in every forum available, for your rights and liberties, and for a more just America.

The Supreme Court’s decision to grant presidents immunity from prosecution for criminal acts committed while in office not only gives Donald Trump a free pass for his past crimes, but sets a dangerous precedent for all future presidents.

Before Trump, no one had even argued that presidents are absolutely immune from criminal liability after they leave office. Indeed, every president – including Trump himself – assumed the opposite. In his impeachment trial Trump’s lawyers argued against impeachment by conceding that an acquittal would not be the end of potential accountability, because he could be criminally prosecuted after he left office. That concession was in line with all prior presidents’ acceptance that the United States is a place where all citizens, including the president, are equal under the law.

No more. In Trump v. United States, the court’s Republican-appointed justices — including the three Trump appointees — announced a brand new constitutional immunity from criminal liability for presidents’ “official acts,” or anything a president may do using the powers of the office. The court’s decision ensures that future presidents — including Trump himself should he win reelection in November — will know that they can escape criminal accountability for blatantly criminal acts, no matter how corrupt. Even acts that strike at the heart of our democracy, like resisting the peaceful transition of power, could not be prosecuted.

The court tried to cast its opinion as restrained, emphasizing that it rejected former President Trump’s most extreme claim: that presidents can only be prosecuted for crimes for which they had already been impeached. But as Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out in a powerful dissent, there is nothing measured about the opinion or its consequences. The court grants absolute immunity against criminal prosecution for any of a president’s “core” executive acts, which the court went on to define as including any use of the Justice Department—an ostensibly and traditionally independent agency–for criminal investigation. And it grants “presumptive” immunity for any acts within the “outer perimeter of his official responsibility.” While the latter immunity is in theory rebuttable, the court set such a high standard for rebutting it that it may be effectively absolute as well.

The court did hold that a president can be prosecuted for unofficial, purely private acts, a proposition even Trump did not dispute. But the court’s conception of official acts is strikingly broad. Worse, the court also held that official acts cannot even be used as evidence to support a crime committed in the president’s personal capacity, making it even more difficult for prosecutors to indict a president even for purely private criminal acts. The court purports to leave much of the work of hashing out the details in Trump’s case to lower courts. But the standards it announced will make holding any president criminally accountable extraordinarily difficult.

The immediate consequence of the decision is that it sends the current federal prosecution of former President Trump for interfering in the 2020 election into disarray. True, that prosecution is not yet dead. Formally, the Supreme Court only conclusively disqualified one set of allegations — those involving Trump’s communications to the Department of Justice — from the indictment. But as a practical matter, the fact-laden inquiry in which the district court must now engage, and any appeals thereto, will take many months if not years to resolve — all before any trial can commence. In addition, President Trump has already moved to wipe out his criminal conviction in New York State.

As Justice Robert Jackson warned in his dissent in the notorious Korematsu case upholding the federal government’s internment of Japanese Americans, the court’s opinion sits like a loaded weapon for future presidents, who can now avoid criminal liability for all manner of criminal ends so long as they do so through arguably “official” authorities.

As Justice Sotomayor wrote in her dissent:

The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.

If former President Trump manages to win November’s election, it does not take much imagination to see just what kinds of retribution, or worse, the court has now greenlighted him to pursue against his political enemies.

But it’s important to remember that while this decision removes the possibility of criminal accountability, other forms of accountability remain. As long as this misguided decision remains the law, we must fight presidential abuses of power in other ways. In particular, we must resist encroachments on our rights and liberties, criminal or otherwise, before they happen — through civil lawsuits, the ballot box, and in the halls of power across the country. During the Trump administration, we filed more than 400 legal actions to defend constitutional rights and liberties from his administration’s unprecedented assaults — and often succeeded in halting illegal acts.

If he is elected again, we will be ready to do the same. Already our teams have drafted our response to the civil liberties and civil rights abuses outlined in Trump’s transition project, and we promise to challenge any acts – official or not – that violate the Constitution.

The threat of criminal prosecution is an important incentive to keep presidents from breaking the law. It’s largely gone now thanks to the Supreme Court. But it is only one form of accountability and constraint — one that, we should remember, had never been resorted to in the past. As they always have done, the courts can still enjoin illegal presidential behavior. Congress has important powers of oversight, the purse, and lawmaking that can check even a rogue president. And perhaps most important, by voting like our rights depend on it, we can all help ensure that future presidents will leave the court’s loaded gun in its holster.

More than half of Americans believe the First Amendment can go too far in the rights it guarantees, according to a new survey from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a First Amendment–focused nonprofit.

The survey, released on Thursday, asked 1,000 American adults a range of questions about the First Amendment, free speech, and the security of those rights. Fifty-three percent of respondents agreed with the statement "The First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees" to at least some degree, with 28 percent reporting that it "mostly" or "completely" describes their thoughts.

Americans were further divided along partisan lines. Over 60 percent of Democrats thought the First Amendment could go too far, compared to 52 percent of Republicans.

"Evidently, one out of every two Americans wishes they had fewer civil liberties," Sean Stevens, FIRE's chief research adviser, said on Thursday. "Many of them reject the right to assemble, to have a free press, and to petition the government. This is a dictator's fantasy."

Further, 1 in 5 respondents said they were "somewhat" or "very" worried about losing their job if someone complains about something they said. Eighty-three percent reported self-censoring in the past month, with 23 percent doing so "fairly" or "very" often.

Just 22 percent of respondents said they believed the right to free speech was "very" or "completely" secure. But despite these concerns, over a third said they trusted the government "somewhat," "very much," or "completely" to make fair decisions about what speech is deemed "intimidating," "threatening," "harassing," and "indecent," among other labels.

In all, almost 7 out of every 10 respondents agreed that America is going in the wrong direction when it comes to free speech—though it's not clear whether respondents think our culture and government are becoming too tolerant, or not tolerant enough, of controversial speech.

This latest survey indicates that many Americans are concerned about the security of free speech rights, yet also eager to censor speech they personally find distasteful.

"Americans have little tolerance for certain forms of protected speech and a lot of tolerance for unprotected conduct, when it should be the other way around," Stevens said. "This poll reveals that the state of free speech in America is dire."

The post More Than Half of Americans Think the First Amendment Provides Too Many Rights appeared first on Reason.com.

Democrats in Congress have reintroduced a bill that would revive the ability to sue federal law enforcement officers for constitutional violations like excessive force, following a series of Supreme Court decisions that have made it practically impossible to do so.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D–R.I.) and Reps. Hank Johnson (D–Ga.) and Jamie Raskin (D–Md.) reintroduced the Bivens Act in the Senate and House, respectively, this week. The legislation would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1871—a federal statute that allows people to sue the government for civil rights violations—to include federal officials acting under the color of law, as well as state and local officials.

"Public officials at all levels of government, including law enforcement, should have a clear, fair standard of accountability when they break the law," Whitehouse said in a press release. "Our Bivens Act would end the confusing judicial precedent that for too long has prevented victims from holding federal officials accountable and securing compensation for constitutional violations."

In 1971, the Supreme Court ruled in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics that federal agents may be sued when they violate someone's rights. But subsequent Supreme Court rulings over the years have steadily narrowed the scope of so-called Bivens claims to the point where it's a dead letter.

In the most recent case, Egbert v. Boule, the Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that a bed-and-breakfast owner could not sue a Border Patrol agent who had allegedly assaulted him and then retaliated after he complained. Reason's Damon Root summarized the case: 

At issue were the actions of a border patrol agent who sought to question one of the guests at a Washington state bed-and-breakfast about the guest's immigration status. When owner Robert Boule told the agent, Erik Egbert, to leave his property, Egbert allegedly assaulted Boule. Then, when Boule complained about the alleged assault to the agent's superiors, Egbert allegedly retaliated by asking the IRS to investigate Boule, who was audited.

The Court ruled 6–3 that Boule could not bring a claim against Egbert for excessive force or First Amendment retaliation. 

That same term, the Court declined to hear petitions involving cases where a St. Paul police officer invented a fake sex-trafficking ring and jailed a teenage girl for two years on trumped-up charges and where a Department of Homeland Security agent allegedly tried to kill a man because of an argument involving his son.

As Reason's Billy Binion wrote at the time, "A federal badge will now serve as an impenetrable shield against civil liability for violating the same laws agents are charged with upholding."

That's not just the opinion of some whacky libertarians either. Federal Judge Don Willett complained in a 2021 opinion that the Supreme Court has gutted Bivens to the extent that "if you wear a federal badge, you can inflict excessive force on someone with little fear of liability."

The Bivens Act is supported by numerous civil rights and watchdog groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Drug Policy Alliance, and the Project on Government Oversight.

The post New Bill Would Revive the Right To Sue Federal Cops for Constitutional Violations appeared first on Reason.com.

In less than six months, Joe Biden and Donald Trump will once again face off for the presidency. While a presidential rematch is relatively rare — this marks the first time since 1956 — the outcome of this particular rematch will have an outsized impact on our civil rights and civil liberties. Beyond any one issue being on the ballot this November — freedom is on the ballot in no uncertain terms.

While the ACLU does not endorse or oppose candidates for elected office, we know that a potential second Trump administration and a potential second Biden administration will be drastically different when it comes to our civil rights and civil liberties. A second Trump administration will be disastrous for our most fundamental rights and freedoms, while a second Biden administration will bring a mix of challenges and opportunities that largely leaves these rights and freedoms intact. At the ACLU, we’re prepared for either scenario. Our legal, policy, and advocacy experts have identified the constitutional challenges that each candidate will bring, and the concrete actions the ACLU will take in response.

Starting next week, we will share our findings in a series of 13 memos — seven memos on a potential second Trump administration and six on a potential second Biden administration — to be released through August. The memos will address a range of issues, including immigrants’ rights, abortion access, LGBTQ justice, racial equity, police reform, and more.

To move the national discourse beyond agonizing over potential challenges to analyzing potential solutions, our memo series outlines not only the threats to our freedoms, but also includes comprehensive, substantive, and actionable solutions the ACLU will use to block the punches — egregious attempts to ignore the Constitution — or lessen the blows.

I believe in the strength of our commitment because I’ve seen what our organization is capable of accomplishing when our freedom is on the line. In 2016, the ACLU was the only national organization to issue a comprehensive plan for the policies of a potential Clinton administration, but also those of a potential Trump administration. That plan laid the groundwork for us to file 434 legal actions against the Trump administration, including the first lawsuit to halt the Trump Muslim ban within hours of its enactment.

Our detailed analysis of Trump’s policies foreshadowed a constitutional crisis that, nearly a decade later, continues to impact our nation as a whole. Today, our analysis once again prepares us to continue that fight, over the course of the next administration and beyond, just like we did in 2016.

Right now, Trump maintains a lead in most polls. While much can change between now and November, we must be prepared for the possibility that Trump may return to the White House. We know that a second Trump administration will be significantly more aggressive and effective in executing its plans to fundamentally erode our democracy, take away our freedoms, and violate our Constitution.

If Trump wins, we stand ready to meet his administration head on — in the courts, in Congress, at the state and local level, on the street, and at the ballot box. Already, we’ve taken note of the extremist rhetoric he’s used on the campaign trail, including promises to:

• Erase protections for LGBTQ people across the entire federal government and mandate discrimination, including banning transgender people from serving in the armed forces.
• Pursue retrogressive immigration policies — including reinterpreting the 14th Amendment to apply only to people who are born in the United States and have at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident — that harm communities of color.
• Restrict refugee resettlement and asylum and end deportation protections for DACA recipients and those with Temporary Protected Status.
• Appoint justices who will carry out the Trump administration’s intentions to use antiquated laws to ban abortion or limit access to contraception.
• Eliminate race-conscious instruction in schools and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training in the workplace.
• Undermine press freedoms by regularly attacking media organizations he dislikes, and invoke the Insurrection Act to intimidate opponents and shut down dissent.
• Renew efforts to make it harder for Americans to vote and to spread false, debunked theories to undermine confidence in the integrity of our voting system.
• Promote unconstitutional and brutal state policing and federal law enforcement practices, dehumanize people in our criminal legal system, and accelerate mass incarceration.

Four years after Trump was elected, our nation was reeling from relentless attacks on fundamental rights and freedoms. When President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took office, the ACLU released a wish list that called on the Biden administration to do two things: reverse Trump-era policies, and protect and extend our freedoms as part of a vision for our country that included justice, fairness, and equality for all.

Since then, the Biden administration has made progress toward this vision by expanding voting rights and abortion protections, as well as advocating for equal access for transgender individuals and for students’ right to receive an inclusive education. We remain concerned, however, that the administration has not fulfilled its critical civil rights and civil liberties responsibilities across a range of issues, including:

• Fully banning racial and other profiling. The Biden administration has permitted profiling for national and homeland security purposes, and at the border. These contexts can be pretexts for law enforcement to target Muslims, communities of color, and immigrants.
• Ending suspicionless surveillance of Americans under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The Biden administration instead pressured Congress to dramatically expand Section 702, resulting in legislation that creates new ways for the government to spy on us without a warrant.
• Restoring the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to its full strength. While restoring the Voting Rights Act requires congressional action that has been blocked, the Biden administration has yet to fully implement its executive order promoting access to voting.
• Ending the federal death penalty – a commitment Biden campaigned on in 2020 – and fully implementing the reforms promised in his executive order on policing.

The ACLU is determined to hold a future Biden administration accountable for, among other things, protecting the right to abortion and contraception, preserving our asylum system and providing a path to citizenship, safeguarding the right to vote for all Americans, and bringing necessary reforms to our criminal legal system. The ACLU’s commitment to this work remains unchanged now, and for years to come.

In less than six months, our nation will send one of these candidates back to the White House. But this election is not just about who will be president — it’s about our freedom, our future, and the trajectory of our democracy. Rest assured, however, that no matter who wins, the ACLU will be ready to use all of the tools at our disposal — litigation, legislation, advocacy, and grassroots mobilization – to ensure that our nation lives up to the promise of the Constitution.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry last week signed a law that criminalizes approaching police officers within 25 feet, provided that the officer tells any would-be approachers to stand back, effectively creating a legal force field that law enforcement can activate at their discretion.

"No person shall knowingly or intentionally approach within twenty-five feet of a peace officer who is lawfully engaged in the execution of his official duties after the peace officer has ordered the person to stop approaching or to retreat," the law states. Offenders could receive a $500 fine and be jailed for up to 60 days.

The bill was authored by state Reps. Bryan Fontenot (R–Thibodaux), Michael T. Johnson (R–Pineville), and Roger Wilder (R–Denham Springs). Fontenot argued that the legislation would give law enforcement officials "peace of mind" as they carry out their duties. That's the same argument Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made to justify signing Senate Bill 184 in April, which criminalizes approaching within 25 feet of a first responder with the intent to threaten, harass, or interfere with the official.

But some opponents of these laws believe they are overly broad and unnecessary.

"Requiring a 25-foot distance from a police officer may not be a practical or effective approach in many situations," state Rep. Delisha Boyd (D–New Orleans) tells Reason. "Policing situations vary widely, and a blanket requirement for a 25-foot distance may not account for the diverse scenarios officers encounter. Who on the scene will determine what exactly is 25 feet away? What happens if within that 25 feet is on my personal property?"

Louisiana already has a law outlawing "interfering with a law enforcement investigation." Critics of the new law say that an additional law proscribing the simple act of approaching police is superfluous.

One such critic is Meghan Garvey, the legislative chair and former president of the Louisiana Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Police work "is already protected from interference by current law," she tells Reason. "The measure criminalizes citizens for engaging in constitutionally protected activity and discourages citizen oversight of law enforcement."

The law, "like many other bills brought this session, seeks to make Louisianans more subservient to government," Garvey concludes.

The Louisiana Legislature passed a similar bill, House Bill 85, in June 2023, but that measure was vetoed by former Gov. John Bel Edwards. "The effect of this bill were it to become law would be to chill exercise of First Amendment rights and prevent bystanders from observing and recording police action," Edwards said in a statement explaining his veto.

Though the Supreme Court has declined to address the issue, there is significant legal precedent in the circuit courts—including in the 5th Circuit, which contains Louisiana—that the First Amendment's press and speech clauses collectively safeguard a "right to record the police." Last year, a federal judge struck down an Arizona measure that outlawed filming police from within 8 feet after receiving a verbal warning because it "prohibits or chills a substantial amount of First Amendment protected activity and is unnecessary to prevent interference with police officers given other Arizona laws in effect."

In Louisiana, "an officer could be arresting someone in a manner indicating excessive force, have a bystander approach to record the arrest, and the bystander could then be immediately told by the officer 'to stop approaching or to retreat,' chilling the bystander's right to record," Louisiana attorney Philip Adams tells Reason. "Thus, the bystander could be placed in a position in which the First Amendment right to record could be functionally neutered." 

The post Louisiana's New 25-Foot Legal Forcefield for Police Threatens Accountability and Civil Liberties appeared first on Reason.com.

For nearly a decade, the transit authority in Washington, D.C., has faced controversy over restrictive guidelines governing advertisements in the city's subways and busses. Now, it might have to scrap some of them.

The controversial rules prohibit any ad that is "issues-oriented" or "intended to influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions." The guidelines also single out religious ads, prohibiting "advertisements that promote or oppose any religion, religious practice or belief."

Last month, a D.C. district court ruled in favor of a Christian group seeking to challenge the rules, placing a preliminary injunction on part of the guidelines that ban ads "intended to influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions."

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) first enacted the controversial rules after an anti-Islam activist attempted to buy an advertisement depicting Muhammad in 2015.

In 2017, the American Civil Liberties Union sued WMATA over the guidelines, joined by plaintiffs ranging from vegan group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. That case is still ongoing. In 2018, however, a D.C. district court ruled against a request for a preliminary injunction against WMATA's rules.

But the ACLU has joined another lawsuit challenging the guidelines on First Amendment grounds—this time, to much better success. This latest lawsuit was filed in December 2023 by WallBuilders, an organization that aims to educate the public "concerning the Godly foundation of our country," according to legal records.

When WallBuilders attempted to purchase ads to go in WMATA busses, reading "Christian? To find out about the faith of our founders, go to wallbuilders.com." WMATA rejected the ads, citing their guidelines. When WallBuilders resubmitted the ads, omitting all text except "visit wallbuilders.com," they were still rejected.

WallBuilders sued. On May 21, Judge Beryl A. Howell of the District Court of D.C. granted WallBuilder's motion for a preliminary injunction, halting enforcement on the part of the guidelines that prohibited advertisements seeking "to influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions."

"WMATA is permitted to retain considerable discretion in evaluating the intent and purpose of an ad…but this discretion must be coupled with objective, workable standards," wrote Howell. "Put simply, the utterly undefined use of the phrase '[a]dvertisements intended to influence . . . regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions,' coupled with the lack of any definitions or official guidance and WMATA's inconsistent application of [the guideline], makes clear that [it] is not a reasonable restriction on speech."

The ruling is a major victory for a whole range of controversial groups who want to buy ads on D.C. buses and subways. It also sends a clear message to WMATA: While it can place some restrictions on the content of ads, its rules have to be well-defined and narrowly tailored. 

The post D.C.'s Rules for Subway Ads Are Blocked in Federal Court appeared first on Reason.com.

What do the National Rifle Association (NRA), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and nine U.S. Supreme Court justices from five presidential administrations all have in common? That list is likely relatively small. But at least one area of overlap was made evident Thursday when the Court published a unanimous ruling that a New York government official allegedly violated the First Amendment by pressuring insurers and banks to sever business ties with the NRA, which the ACLU is representing.

The decision resuscitates the gun advocacy group's lawsuit against Maria Vullo, the former head of New York's Department of Financial Services (DFS). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit had previously ruled in her favor.

At the core of the case is Vullo's advocacy following the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. After that tragedy, in private meetings with insurance companies, Vullo allegedly expressed she would selectively apply enforcement action to groups that insisted on serving the NRA.

She didn't stop there. She also sent letters titled "Guidance on Risk Management Relating to the NRA and Similar Gun Promotion Organizations" to insurers and banks, in which she encouraged them to "continue evaluating and managing their risks, including reputational risks, that may arise from their dealings with the NRA or similar gun promotion organizations"; to "review any relationships they have with the NRA or similar gun promotion organizations"; and to "take prompt actions to manag[e] these risks and promote public health and safety." And in a press release with then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the two officials urged such companies to terminate their relationships with the gun advocacy group. Some took them up on the suggestion.

The constitutional issue at stake here is similar to the one the Court explored in Murthy v. Missouri, the case that asks if President Joe Biden's administration violated the First Amendment when it sought to convince social media companies to remove content it disliked. During those oral arguments in March, many justices appeared sympathetic to the view that government officials had not overstepped the bounds of their authority and had merely exercised their own free speech rights to persuade those companies to adopt their views, not unlike a White House press secretary promoting an ideological slant to the media. 

But in NRA v. Vullo, the Court ruled unanimously that Vullo's actions as alleged by the NRA had crossed the line from persuasion into coercion. "Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors," wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The NRA, she said, "plausibly alleges that respondent Maria Vullo did just that."

The decision sends the case back to the 2nd Circuit, which could still give Vullo qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that shields government officials from suits like the NRA's if the misconduct alleged has not been "clearly established" in prior case law. That outcome is certainly probable, as the 2nd Circuit's original decision not only ruled that Vullo had not violated the Constitution—which the Supreme Court rejected today—but that even if she had, qualified immunity would insulate her from the NRA's claim.

It is difficult to imagine, however, a more obvious violation of the Constitution than the weaponization of government power to cripple advocacy disfavored by the state. The supposed reason for qualified immunity is that taxpayer-funded civil servants deserve fair notice that conduct is unlawful before a victim can seek recourse for those misdeeds. To argue that a government agent could not be expected to understand the contours of the First Amendment here is rather dire.

Many people may struggle to separate the constitutional question from the ideological backdrop. The NRA, after all, is one of the more polarizing lobbying organizations in the country, not least of which because its founding issue—gun rights—is not exactly a topic that elicits cool-headed responses. It has also become an advocacy group not just for firearms but for the Republican Party more broadly and the identity politics associated with it, alienating large swaths of people, to put it mildly.

There is another major group in the country that has followed a similar story arc, just on the other side of the political spectrum: the ACLU. Once a stalwart free speech group—so principled it defended the First Amendment rights of Nazis—it has, in modern times, sometimes actively advocated against civil liberties when those principles transgress progressive politics, an awkward move when considering the group's name. But no matter how much you dislike one or both of them, the NRA and the ACLU coming together here is all the more reflective of the fact that some things, like the First Amendment, really aren't partisan.

The post The NRA's Unanimous Supreme Court Victory Is Good for Free Speech—No Matter How You Feel About Guns appeared first on Reason.com.

A man has filed a lawsuit against the town of Sturgeon, Missouri, a little more than a week after a police officer shot and killed his small, blind, and deaf dog.

In a federal lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, Nicholas Hunter alleges that Officer Myron Woodson and the city of Sturgeon violated his Fourth Amendment rights when Woodson killed Teddy, his 13-pound blind and deaf Shih Tzu, shortly after finding the dog wandering in a neighbor's yard on May 19.

"Woodson's warrantless seizure of Teddy was unnecessary, callous, and egregious as it was unwarranted by law and violative of Plaintiff Hunter's most fundamental and guaranteed of constitutional rights," Hunter's lawsuit says. "At no time during the encounter between Teddy and Defendant Woodson did Teddy show any aggression towards Defendant Woodson. Teddy never barked, growled, or even moved towards Defendant Woodson. Instead, the small, blind and deaf dog simply kept trying to walk away, oblivious to the danger that Defendant Woodson posed to him."

The shooting has outraged the town's residents, especially after body camera footage obtained by a local news outlet contradicted the officer and city officials' narrative of events. The mayor of Sturgeon resigned last Saturday evening after defending the shooting for several days, and Woodson has been placed on leave.

The shooting, though, is only an egregious example of a phenomenon that is so common that it has its own tag on Reason's website: "puppycide." No one knows exactly how many dogs police shoot around the country, but every year there are more cases of wanton killings that, besides terrorizing owners, generate huge lawsuits, viral outrage, and in rare instances result in officers being fired, such as the case of an Arkansas officer who casually killed a nine-pound dog.

The incident in Sturgeon started when Teddy dug under Hunter's backyard fence while Hunter was out at dinner and escaped, leaving its collar behind in the process. A neighbor called a county dispatch center to report that the dog had wandered into their yard and to get help finding its owner. According to Hunter's lawsuit, the caller responded, "No, not at all," when asked if the dog was aggressive.

The town of Sturgeon's official Facebook page actually posted an alert on May 19 about the missing dog, along with photos of Teddy: "Do you know this doggie? Joint communications has been notified. The doggie seems in need of medical attention."

Medical attention was not what the doggie received. Woodson arrived on the scene, and a few minutes later he shot Teddy twice.

In the meantime, Hunter had been called and told about the Facebook post. He was on his way to pick up Teddy, but arrived too late.

A day later, the city of Sturgeon posted on Facebook about the incident, defending Woodson's decision: "Based on the behavior exhibited by the dog, believing the dog to be severely injured or infected with rabies, and as the officer feared being bitten and being infected with rabies, the SPD officer felt that his only option was to put the animal down," Sturgeon wrote. "It was later learned that the animal's behavior was because the animal was blind. Unfortunately, the animal's lack of a collar or tags influenced the SPD Officer's decision to put the animal down due to his belief that the animal was injured, sick and abandoned."

Both Hunter and the neighbor filed complaints with the city. "I cannot stress enough that this animal was in no way a threat to others," the neighbor, whose complaint was obtained by local news outlet ABC 17, wrote. "Woodson discharged his firearm multiple times in a residential area without a threat presenting itself, without warning."

ABC 17 also obtained Woodson's body camera footage, which showed that Teddy was never aggressive and didn't bark or growl. Woodson tried to lasso Teddy with a catch pole—a common tool used in animal control—but the dog simply shook its head free of the rope and trotted away. After fumbling the catch pole several times, Woodson drew his gun and killed Teddy. ABC 17 reported that Woodson's entire encounter with Teddy, from exiting his car to putting two bullets in the animal, lasted three minutes and six seconds.

After body camera footage was released, Sturgeon doubled down.

"The City believes that the officer acted within his authority based on the information available to him at the time to protect against possible injury to citizens from what appeared to be an injured, sick, and abandoned dog," Sturgeon posted in a follow-up Facebook post.

Of course, it would have been embarrassing to admit the real reason that the officer resorted to using his gun: He was unable to snare a blind, deaf dog and was too poorly trained to come up with a solution besides shooting a harmless animal.

But police habitually lie about the behavior of dogs that they shoot. Dogs are almost always described in incident reports as snarling, aggressive, or lunging, and because department policies typically allow police to shoot dogs when they feel afraid for their safety, these shootings are almost always deemed justified.

For example, last year in Missouri a police officer shot a family's dog and dumped it in a ditch. Similar to Hunter's case, the dog had gotten loose during a storm, and a neighbor called to report it missing. In another case last year, Detroit cops killed a woman's dog and dumped its body in a trash can. An Arkansas woman also filed a lawsuit after a cop accidentally shot her while trying to kill her Pomeranian—a toy breed that resembles a Koosh ball with legs.

This is the sort of behavior that's flagged as sociopathic when committed by anyone who's not represented by a police union.

And it's the sort of behavior that can cost a small town like Sturgeon quite a lot of money, as city officials are surely fretting now. After Sturgeon's mayor resigned last Friday, the acting mayor posted on Sturgeon's Facebook account: "Like you we were just as appalled by what we saw. The actions of the Officer involved are not the values and beliefs of the residents of Sturgeon or the board of Alderman. Currently I have made calls to the Boone County Sheriff to meet and discuss an investigation."

The city of Sturgeon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The post A Missouri Police Officer Shot a Blind and Deaf Dog. Now He's Being Sued. appeared first on Reason.com.

pThe Supreme Court’s docket this term includes many of the complex issues American society is currently facing, including gun control, free speech online, race-based discrimination in voting, reproductive rights, presidential immunity from criminal accountability, and more./p pThe ACLU has served as counsel or filed friend-of-the-court briefs in all of the cases addressing these hot-button issues. The court will decide all its cases by the beginning of July. Here are eight undecided cases to watch, and what they mean for the future of our civil liberties./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markReproductive freedom: Protections for medication abortion and access to abortion during medical emergencies /h2 /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardFDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine/h3 /div pbThe Facts:/b Anti-abortion doctors, who do not prescribe medication abortion, are asking the Supreme Court to force the Food amp; Drug Administration (FDA) to impose severe restrictions on mifepristone – a safe and effective medication used in this country in most abortions and for miscarriage management – in every state, even where abortion is protected by state law./p pbOur Argument: /bThe FDA approved mifepristone more than 20 years ago, finding that it is safe, effective, and medically necessary. Since its approval, more than 5 million people in the U.S. have used this medication. Our brief argued that the two lower courts – a district court in Texas and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit – relied on junk science and discredited witnesses to override the FDA’s expert decision to eliminate medically-unnecessary restrictions on an essential medication with a stronger safety record than Tylenol. We urged the Supreme Court to protect access to medication abortion and reverse the lower courts’ rulings./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/danco-laboratories-llc-v-alliance-for-hippocratic-medicine-u-s-fda-v-alliance-for-hippocratic-medicine target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=700 height=350 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/359637f7872568a863b03d635c156d9a.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/359637f7872568a863b03d635c156d9a.jpg 700w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/359637f7872568a863b03d635c156d9a-400x200.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/359637f7872568a863b03d635c156d9a-600x300.jpg 600w sizes=(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/danco-laboratories-llc-v-alliance-for-hippocratic-medicine-u-s-fda-v-alliance-for-hippocratic-medicine target=_blank Danco Laboratories, LLC, v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine; U.S. FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/danco-laboratories-llc-v-alliance-for-hippocratic-medicine-u-s-fda-v-alliance-for-hippocratic-medicine target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletThe American Civil Liberties Union joined over 200 reproductive health, rights, and justice organizations in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court.../p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/danco-laboratories-llc-v-alliance-for-hippocratic-medicine-u-s-fda-v-alliance-for-hippocratic-medicine target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pbWhy it Matters:/b Today, with abortion access already severely restricted, the ability to get medication-abortion care using mifepristone is more important than ever. If the Fifth Circuit’s ruling is allowed to stand, individuals would be blocked from filling mifepristone prescriptions through mail-order pharmacies, forcing many to travel, sometimes hundreds of miles, just to pick up a pill they can safely receive through the mail. Healthcare professionals with specialized training, like advanced practice clinicians, would also be prohibited from prescribing mifepristone, further limiting where patients can access this critical medication. The American Cancer Society and other leading patient advocacy groups are also sounding the alarm that overturning the FDA’s decision would upend drug innovation and research, with consequences well beyond reproductive health care./p pbThe Last Word: /b“As this case shows, overturningi Roe v. Wade /iwasn’t the end goal for extremists. In addition to targeting nationwide-access to mifepristone, politicians in some states have already moved on to attack birth control and IVF. We need to take these extremists seriously when they show us they’re coming for every aspect of our reproductive lives.” – emJennifer Dalven, director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project./em/p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardIdaho amp; Moyle et. al v. US/h3 /div pbThe Facts: /bIdaho politicians want the power to disregard the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) that requires emergency rooms to provide stabilizing treatment to patients in emergency situations, including abortion where that is the appropriate stabilizing treatment. If the state prevails, it would jail doctors for providing pregnant patients with the necessary emergency care required under this federal law./p pbOur Argument: /bThe ACLU and its legal partners filed a friend-of-the-court brief explaining that the law requires hospitals to provide whatever emergency care is required; there is no carve-out for patients who need an abortion to stabilize an emergency condition. All three branches of government have long recognized that hospitals are required under EMTALA to provide emergency abortion care to any patient who needs it./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/idaho-and-moyle-et-al-v-united-states target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=700 height=350 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/359637f7872568a863b03d635c156d9a.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/359637f7872568a863b03d635c156d9a.jpg 700w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/359637f7872568a863b03d635c156d9a-400x200.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/359637f7872568a863b03d635c156d9a-600x300.jpg 600w sizes=(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/idaho-and-moyle-et-al-v-united-states target=_blank Idaho and Moyle, et al. v. United States /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/idaho-and-moyle-et-al-v-united-states target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletIdaho and Moyle, et al. v. United States was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by Idaho politicians seeking to disregard a federal statute — the.../p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/idaho-and-moyle-et-al-v-united-states target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pbWhy it Matters:/b Because Idaho#8217;s current abortion ban prohibits providing the emergency care required under EMTALA, medical providers have found themselves having to decide between providing necessary emergency care to a pregnant patient or facing criminal prosecution from the state. Depending on how the court rules, medical providers and patients in several other states with extreme abortion bans could find themselves in a similar position./p pbThe Last Word: /b“If these politicians succeed, doctors will be forced to withhold critical care from their patients. We’re already seeing the devastating impact of this case play out in Idaho, and we fear a ripple effect across the country.” – emAlexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project/em/p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markFree speech: Government authority over online and political speech /h2 /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardNational Rifle Association v. Vullo /h3 /div pbThe Facts: /bIn 2018, Maria Vullo, New York’s former chief financial regulator, in coordination with then-Mayor Andrew Cuomo, threatened to use her regulatory power over banks and insurance companies to coerce them into denying basic financial services to the National Rifle Association (NRA) because she and Cuomo disagreed with its pro-gun rights advocacy. The NRA argued that Vullo’s alleged efforts to blacklist the NRA penalized it for its political advocacy, in violation of the First Amendment./p pbOur Argument: /bThe ACLU, representing the NRA at the Supreme Court, argued that any government attempt to blacklist an advocacy group and deny it financial services because of its viewpoint violates the right to free speech. Our brief urges the court to apply the precedent it set in 1963 in iBantam Books v. Sullivan/i, which established that even informal, indirect efforts to censor speech violate the First Amendment./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/national-rifle-association-v-vullo target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=700 height=350 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/29cdadc17d83f5ef0a78a0e3eca67374.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/29cdadc17d83f5ef0a78a0e3eca67374.jpg 700w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/29cdadc17d83f5ef0a78a0e3eca67374-400x200.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/29cdadc17d83f5ef0a78a0e3eca67374-600x300.jpg 600w sizes=(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/national-rifle-association-v-vullo target=_blank National Rifle Association v. Vullo /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/national-rifle-association-v-vullo target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletOn January 9th, 2024, the American Civil Liberties Union filed its opening brief on behalf of the National Rifle Association (NRA) in National.../p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/national-rifle-association-v-vullo target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pbWhy it Matters: /bWhile the ACLU stands in stark opposition to the NRA on many issues, this case is about securing basic First Amendment rights for all advocacy organizations. If New York State is allowed to blacklist the NRA, then Oklahoma could similarly penalize criminal justice reformers advocating for bail reform, and Texas could target climate change organizations advancing the view that all fossil fuel extraction must end. The ACLU itself could be targeted for its advocacy./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/why-is-the-aclu-representing-the-nra-before-the-us-supreme-court target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=1200 height=628 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/7e5c30fc4a1d9a737ed614291b23e1ec.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/7e5c30fc4a1d9a737ed614291b23e1ec.jpg 1200w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/7e5c30fc4a1d9a737ed614291b23e1ec-768x402.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/7e5c30fc4a1d9a737ed614291b23e1ec-400x209.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/7e5c30fc4a1d9a737ed614291b23e1ec-600x314.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/7e5c30fc4a1d9a737ed614291b23e1ec-800x419.jpg 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/7e5c30fc4a1d9a737ed614291b23e1ec-1000x523.jpg 1000w sizes=(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/why-is-the-aclu-representing-the-nra-before-the-us-supreme-court target=_blank Why is the ACLU Representing the NRA Before the US Supreme Court? /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/why-is-the-aclu-representing-the-nra-before-the-us-supreme-court target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletThe ACLU has always stood up for free speech – no matter the speaker./p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/why-is-the-aclu-representing-the-nra-before-the-us-supreme-court target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pbThe Last Word: /b“The right to advocate views the government opposes safeguards our ability to organize for the country we want to see. It’s a principle the ACLU has defended for more than 100 years, and one we will continue to protect from government censorship of all kinds, whether we agree or disagree with the views of those being targeted.” – emDavid Cole, ACLU legal director/em/p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardNetChoice v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice /h3 /div pbThe Facts: /bMotivated by a perception that social media platforms disproportionately silence conservative voices, Florida and Texas passed laws that give the government authority to regulate how large social media companies like Facebook and YouTube curate content posted on their sites./p pbOur Argument: /bIn a friend-of-the-court brief, the ACLU, the ACLU of Florida and the ACLU of Texas argued that the First Amendment right to speak includes the right to choose what to publish and how to prioritize what is published. The government’s desire to have private speakers, like social media companies, distribute more conservative viewpoints–or any specific viewpoints–is not a permissible basis for state control of what content appears on privately-owned platforms./p pbWhy it Matters:/b If these laws are allowed to stand, platforms may fear liability and decide to publish nothing at all, effectively eliminating the internet’s function as a modern public square. Or, in an attempt to comply with government regulations, social media companies may be forced to publish a lot more distracting and unwanted content. For example, under the Texas law, which requires “viewpoint neutrality,” a platform that publishes posts about suicide prevention would also have to publish posts directing readers to websites that encourage suicide. ./p pbThe Last Word: /b“Social media companies have a First Amendment right to choose what to host, display, and publish. The Supreme Court has recognized that right for everyone from booksellers to newspapers to cable companies, and this case should make clear that the same is true for social media platforms.” — emVera Eidelman, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, amp; Technology Project/em/p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markVoting rights: Racial gerrymandering and the fight for fair maps /h2 /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardAlexander v. South Carolina NAACP/h3 /div pbThe Facts: /bIn 2022, South Carolina adopted a racially-gerrymandered congressional map. The state legislature singled out Black communities, “cracking” predominantly Black communities and neighborhoods across two districts to reduce their electoral influence in the state’s first congressional district./p pbOur Argument: /bThe ACLU and its legal partners sued on behalf of the South Carolina NAACP and an affected voter to challenge the constitutionality of the new congressional map. We argued that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment forbids the sorting of voters on the basis of their race, absent a compelling interest, which the state failed to provide./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/alexander-v-south-carolina-state-conference-of-the-naacp target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=1000 height=667 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/adacb5fd2b08ce6397602bca3ce44e82.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/adacb5fd2b08ce6397602bca3ce44e82.jpg 1000w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/adacb5fd2b08ce6397602bca3ce44e82-768x512.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/adacb5fd2b08ce6397602bca3ce44e82-400x267.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/adacb5fd2b08ce6397602bca3ce44e82-600x400.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/adacb5fd2b08ce6397602bca3ce44e82-800x534.jpg 800w sizes=(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/alexander-v-south-carolina-state-conference-of-the-naacp target=_blank Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP (Congressional Map Challenge) /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/alexander-v-south-carolina-state-conference-of-the-naacp target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletSouth Carolina unlawfully assigned voters to congressional districts based on their race and intentionally discriminated against Black voters in.../p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/alexander-v-south-carolina-state-conference-of-the-naacp target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pbWhy it Matters: /bThis racially-gerrymandered congressional map deprives Black South Carolinians the political representation they deserve in all but one of seven districts, limiting the power and influence of more than a quarter of the state’s population just before the 2024 election./p pbThe Last Word: /b“South Carolina’s failure to rectify its racially-gerrymandered congressional map blatantly disregards the voices and the rights of Black voters. The ACLU is determined to fight back until Black South Carolina voters have a lawful map that fairly represents them.” – emAdriel I. Cepeda Derieux, deputy director of the ACLU Voting Rights Project/em/p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markGender justice: Denying guns to persons subject to domestic violence restraining orders/h2 /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardUnited States v. Rahimi /h3 /div pbThe Facts: /bZackey Rahimi was convicted under a federal law that forbids individuals subject to domestic violence protective orders from possessing a firearm. Mr. Rahimi challenged the law as a violation of his Second Amendment right to bear arms./p pbOur Argument: /bThe U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that individuals subject to domestic violence protective orders have a constitutional right to possess guns. It invalidated the federal gun law because it found no historical analogues in the 1700s or 1800s that prohibited those subject to domestic violence protective orders from possessing a firearm. The ACLU argued that the Fifth Circuit’s analysis is a misapplication of the Supreme Court’s decision in iNew York State Rifle amp; Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen/i because it effectively required a “historical twin” law in order to uphold a law today. There were no identical laws at the time of the Framing because there were no domestic violence protective orders then, but that should not be a basis for invalidating the laws today. We also argued that imposing time-limited firearms restrictions based on civil restraining orders is a critical tool for protecting those who have experienced domestic violence and face a threat of further violence./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/united-states-v-rahimi target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=700 height=350 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/5d4549447588adb73b5aba378f7d7f59.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/5d4549447588adb73b5aba378f7d7f59.jpg 700w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/5d4549447588adb73b5aba378f7d7f59-400x200.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/5d4549447588adb73b5aba378f7d7f59-600x300.jpg 600w sizes=(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/united-states-v-rahimi target=_blank United States v. Rahimi /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/united-states-v-rahimi target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletWhether 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), which prohibits the possession of firearms by persons subject to domestic-violence restraining orders, violates the.../p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/united-states-v-rahimi target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pbWhy it Matters: /bIf the Fifth Circuit’s rationale is affirmed, then governments would lose the ability to prohibit gun possession by persons subject to restraining orders — and presumably even to run pre-acquisition background checks, which have stopped more than 77,000 purchases of weapons by individuals subject to domestic violence orders in the 25 years that the federal law has been in place. This “originalist” interpretation of the Second Amendment not only hinders our ability to protect individuals against newly recognized threats, but also tethers the authority to regulate gun possession to periods when governments disregarded many forms of violence directed against women, Black people, Indigenous people, and others./p pbThe Last Word:/b “It would be a radical mistake to allow historical wrongs to defeat efforts today to protect women and other survivors of domestic abuse. The Supreme Court should affirm that the government can enact laws aimed at preventing intimate partner violence, consistent with the Second Amendment.” –em Ria Tabacco Mar, director of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project/em/p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markCriminal justice: Eighth-Amendment protections for unhoused persons accused of sleeping in public when they have nowhere else to go /h2 /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardCity of Grants Pass v. Johnson /h3 /div pbThe Facts: /bGrants Pass, Oregon, enacted ordinances that make it illegal for people, including unhoused persons with no access to shelter, to sleep outside in public using a blanket, pillow, or even a cardboard sheet to lie on. Last year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that punishing unhoused people for sleeping in public when they have no other choice violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment./p pbOur Argument: /bIn Oregon, and elsewhere in the United States, the population of unhoused persons often exceeds the number of shelter beds available, forcing many to sleep on the streets or in parks. The ACLU and 19 state affiliates submitted a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that it is cruel and unusual to punish unhoused people for the essential life-sustaining activity of sleeping outside when they lack access to any alternative shelter./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/city-of-grants-pass-v-johnson target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=700 height=350 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/ba988bc008254460d80a4ea1aa03d252.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/ba988bc008254460d80a4ea1aa03d252.jpg 700w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/ba988bc008254460d80a4ea1aa03d252-400x200.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/ba988bc008254460d80a4ea1aa03d252-600x300.jpg 600w sizes=(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/city-of-grants-pass-v-johnson target=_blank City of Grants Pass v. Johnson /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/city-of-grants-pass-v-johnson target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tablet/p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/city-of-grants-pass-v-johnson target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pbWhy it Matters: /bWhen applied to people with nowhere else to go, fines and arrests for sleeping outside serve no purpose and are plainly disproportionately punitive. Arresting and fining unhoused people for sleeping in public only exacerbates cycles of homelessness and mass incarceration./p pbThe Last Word: /b“There is no punishment that fits the ‘crime’ of being forced to sleep outside. Instead of saddling people with fines, jail time, and criminal records, cities should focus on proven solutions, like affordable housing, accessible and voluntary services, and eviction protections.” – emScout Katovich, staff attorney with the ACLU Trone Center for Justice and Equality/em/p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markDemocracy: Presidential immunity from prosecution for criminal acts after leaving office /h2 /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardTrump v. United States/h3 /div pbThe Facts: /bFormer President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to rule that he cannot be held criminally liable for any official acts as president, even after leaving office, and even where the crimes concern efforts to resist the peaceful transition of power after an election. This claim runs contrary to fundamental principles of constitutional accountability, and decades of precedent./p pbOur Argument: /bOur friend-of-the-court brief argues that former President Trump is not immune from criminal prosecution, and that the Constitution and long-established Supreme Court precedent support the principle that in our democracy, nobody is above the law — even the president. Our brief warns that there are “few propositions more dangerous” in a democracy than the notion that an elected head of state has blanket immunity from criminal prosecution./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/trump-v-united-states target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=700 height=350 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/ba988bc008254460d80a4ea1aa03d252.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/ba988bc008254460d80a4ea1aa03d252.jpg 700w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/ba988bc008254460d80a4ea1aa03d252-400x200.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/ba988bc008254460d80a4ea1aa03d252-600x300.jpg 600w sizes=(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/trump-v-united-states target=_blank Trump v. United States /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/trump-v-united-states target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tablet/p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/trump-v-united-states target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pbWhy it Matters: /bNo other president has asserted that presidents can never be prosecuted for official acts that violate criminal law. The president’s accountability to the law is an integral part of the separation of powers and the rule of law. If the President is free, as Trump’s legal counsel argued, to order the assassination of his political opponents and escape all criminal accountability even after he leaves office, both of these fundamental principles of our system would have a fatal Achilles’ heel./p pbThe Last Word: /b“The United States does not have a king, and former presidents have no claim to being above the law. A functioning democracy depends on our ability to critically reckon with the troubling actions of government officials and hold them accountable.” – emDavid Cole, ACLU legal director /em/p

Across the nation, college administrators are cracking down on pro-Palestenian speech. In Texas, police violently broke up peaceful protests, and one college even reportedly told students that they couldn't use the phrases "Israel," "Zionism," or chant in Arabic. At Brandeis University, police shut down a pro-Palestine protest because its president said it had "devolved into the invocation of hate speech."

While progressives have tended to support campus censorship efforts in recent years, an article in Vox by writer Eric Levitz argues that the left should embrace free speech—and that its push to censor speech in the name of inclusion and social justice was misguided. 

"Should students concerned with social justice rethink their previous skepticism of free speech norms, for the sake of better protecting radical dissent? I think the answer is yes." wrote Levitz. "There is reason to believe that progressives would be better equipped to resist the present crackdown on pro-Palestinian advocacy had social justice activists not previously popularized an expansive conception of harmful speech."

Levitz's article also argues that rejecting censorship could lead the left to find more allies when their ideas are on the chopping block.

"In a world where right-of-center intellectuals had more cause for believing that their defense of leftists' free expression would be reciprocated," Levitz wrote, "it seems plausible that opposition to the Antisemitism Awareness Act might be a bit more widespread and its prospects for clearing the Senate somewhat dimmer."

While Levitz's piece is refreshing, its support for free speech isn't about adopting a new appreciation for the principles of free expression, regardless of political viewpoint. It's about adopting the best policies to protect left-wing ideas.

Save several paragraphs reminding progressives that debate is necessary for finding the truth and that "the more insulated any ideological orthodoxy is from critique, the more vulnerable it will be to persistent errors," Levitz's argument is pragmatic in nature. He spends most of the piece—correctly—arguing that if progressives had been willing to take a stand against censorship of right-wing beliefs, the current norms allowing for the censorship of pro-Palestine activists would not have been set in place. 

However, if your reason to defend speech is purely practical and self-interested, it becomes much easier to indulge in exceptions to your free speech principles. Surely, allowing the censorship of the most offensive, unproductive viewpoints couldn't be used to justify the suppression of your own, much better, ideas, right?

Levitz even hints at such exceptions. "If adopting a permissive attitude toward campus speech entailed significant costs to progressive causes, then doing so might be unwise," he wrote, later adding, "Defending free speech and standing up for the disempowered may sometimes be competing objectives."

When your defense of free speech comes from a core, universal principle, calls for censorship are unthinkable. This is why, for example, it's so frustrating to see Levitz group the First Amendment nonprofit the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) with a long list of "conservatives" who have spoken out against censorship of pro-Palestinian activism. 

FIRE—and everyone else smeared as "conservative" for standing up against censorship—doesn't begrudgingly defend left-wing speech so that right-wing speech will stay protected—they're a nonpartisan organization that defends First Amendment rights because they believe fiercely in the importance of free speech.

Perhaps the biggest flaw is that Levitz's piece still doesn't make the core realization that there can be true, principled, defenders of free speech—those who truly think a nation with more ideas and more voices, even offensive ones, is better than one with fewer. Instead, he sees speech protections as a kind of truce, a decision from both the left and right to leave each other alone so they can both best further their political goals.

We would have a better, more functional world if more people—left or right—were willing to passionately defend the free speech rights of those with whom they disagree. However, getting to that world requires that people let go of the idea that censorship is ever a good idea, not merely that it's impractical. 

The post <i>Vox</i> Wants Progressives To Support Free Speech for the Wrong Reasons appeared first on Reason.com.

On May 10, 1924, one of the worst events in history for American civil liberties happened: 29-year-old J. Edgar Hoover assumed the role of director of the then-Bureau of Investigation. Ambitious, power-hungry, and conniving, Hoover epitomized the snake in the proverbial garden. Under his watch, which lasted until his death in 1972, the FBI emerged as an alarming adversary to constitutional freedoms. 

Starting his career at the Justice Department in 1917 at only 22 years old, Hoover quickly ascended the ranks, often at the expense of Americans' civil liberties. By 1919, he headed the Justice Department's Radical Division, charged with destroying the supposed communist infiltration of America. Hoover's lifelong disdain for communists was matched only by his disregard for their constitutional rights, making this role a perfect fit for his ambitions. 

Hoover Cuts His Unconstitutional Teeth

As head of the Radical Division, Hoover began developing the dirty tricks he would become known for, relying on tactics fundamentally at odds with a free society. For example, he started compiling the secret files that made him infamous and feared by the political elite. "What Hoover accomplished during his first months at the Radical Division forever changed the nature of American politics," writes Beverly Gage in G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century, "launching an unprecedented experiment in peacetime political surveillance."

Under Hoover's leadership and fueled by the Espionage Act of 1917, federal agents aggressively pursued radicals—communists, socialists, and anarchists—tapping their phone lines and intercepting their mail. Hoover amassed more power, and at the tender age of 24, according to Tim Weiner in Enemies: A History of the FBI, Hoover "could call for the arrest of almost anyone he chose."

In April 1919, a coordinated anarchist campaign of mail bombs targeted prominent Americans, including Hoover's boss, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Though none of the bombs met their intended targets, the first Red Scare was on. 

Hoover answered by organizing what became known as the Palmer Raids, with the initial raid in November 1919 leading to the mass arrests of nearly 1,200 suspected radicals—far more people than Hoover secured warrants for. Many rotted in city and county jails for months, and nearly 200 were deported under the Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1918.

But it was Hoover's encore the following January that epitomized what would become his lasting legacy: utter disregard for constitutionally protected rights. Beginning at 9 p.m. on January 2, 1920, Hoover led the largest mass arrests in American history. The raids continued into the week, and thousands were detained indiscriminately, many without warrants or just cause. 

According to Weiner in Enemies, "somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 people were swept up in the raids." However, he notes that we will likely never know the exact number as "no official accounting ever took place."

Rather than landing Hoover behind bars or at least ending his career, he evaded accountability and mastered the art of bureaucratic survival that protected him through eight presidential administrations. Before long, he was rewarded. On May 10, 1924, Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone named Hoover acting director of the Bureau of Investigation. Stone was a believer in civil liberties, notably, and told Hoover he was on probation and that the Bureau was out of the secret police game. 

But Hoover would have the last laugh. Soon after, he revived his domestic intelligence operations and unconstitutional ways, often operating beyond public and political accountability scrutiny.

Friends in High Places

Presidential administrations throughout the 20th century—likely fearing Hoover and his secret files—left him unchecked and either actively supported or tacitly approved of his methods. Presidents from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Richard Nixon found Hoover's capabilities useful for their political agendas, thus embedding a culture of surveillance and political manipulation that Hoover masterfully orchestrated. 

"He wasn't acting on his own," writes FBI Special Agent Paul Letersky in The Director: My Years Assisting J. Edgar Hoover. "Since before World War II, every president he'd served—those revered by the left and those revered by the right—knew what Hoover and the Bureau were doing in domestic security and surveillance." 

During the run-up to World War II, FDR turned Hoover loose, empowering the FBI director to return to gathering intelligence on American fascists and communists. Hoover revived secret warrantless wiretapping only two years after Congress banned it in the Communications Act of 1934. 

With war breaking out in Europe, Hoover's worries about internal subversion grew. On December 6, 1939, Hoover issued his agents a secret (read: unauthorized) order named "Internal Security." The agents were to begin compiling a list of "dangerous" people—not just immigrants but also American citizens—to be detained when the war came to American shores. 

The list was known as the Custodial Detention Program. It categorized people into three groups (A, B, and C), with people in Group A considered to be the most dangerous—if war broke out, they would be arrested and detained immediately. One conspicuous name in Group A was Roger Baldwin, one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union and its current chief. 

Attorney General Francis Biddle learned about the Custodial Detention Program in 1943 and ordered it shuttered. Hoover simply renamed it the Security Index. It would remain secret until after Hoover's death, growing to include well over 20,000 names, almost all Americans. 

But no matter how many laws or norms Hoover broke, he continued atop his powerful perch at the FBI. President Harry Truman didn't like Hoover. In the words of his Treasury Secretary John Snyder, Truman believed "Mr. Hoover had built up a Frankenstein in the FBI." 

John F. Kennedy—like his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy—wanted to send Hoover packing. Bobby Kennedy said Hoover was "frightening" and called the FBI "a very dangerous organization." But JFK ultimately concluded, "You don't fire God."

Hoover, if nothing else, was a survivor.

Seeing Red Again

Perhaps the most infamous example of Hoover's brazen attacks on American civil liberties was the Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO). Initiated in 1956, COINTELPRO's operations were characterized by illegal surveillance, organizational infiltration, and police harassment. With this tool in place, Hoover shifted his concentration to a new enemy: the civil rights movement and its leader, Martin Luther King Jr.

Hoover believed the Soviets—not black Americans fed up with segregation and racial injustice—were behind the civil rights movement. He also believed King was a Moscow stooge, which landed him on the Security Index.

The FBI's disdain for the civil rights movement was so visceral that agents would tip off police in Alabama about the plans of the Freedom Riders, a contingent of black and white demonstrators protesting Jim Crow laws. Freedom Riders were often met with overwhelming violence by both police and the Ku Klux Klan, who had also thoroughly infiltrated the Alabama police. 

In arguably the FBI's most infamous COINTELPRO operation, agents bugged MLK's hotel rooms as he traveled. The preacher had his own dark side. The bugs would frequently pick up the sounds of sex after late-night parties. In an effort to destroy King for good in November 1964, Hoover's intelligence chief sent the sex tapes to King's wife with a letter that gave him an ultimatum—suicide or disgrace. Its conclusion read:

King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do…You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.

It would take the rifle of James Earl Ray to do what the FBI couldn't—end King's life.

Hoover's corruption extended into his personal realm, too. He maintained a luxurious lifestyle, heavily subsidized by the FBI's budget and, therefore, the American taxpayer. "The Bureau provided with him chauffeurs, handymen, gardeners, valets, and the tax accountants who sorted out the honoraria he received, totaling tens of thousands of dollars, from corporate grandees," explains Weiner in Enemies. "The gifts, given for ghostwritten speeches and articles, and as private awards for public service, supplemented the freely spent tax dollars that financed Hoover's four-star style." 

On May 2, 1972, Hoover's heart gave out in his sleep. While this ended his reign of terror, Hoover's methods and the culture he cultivated within the FBI have left a lasting imprint on American law enforcement and intelligence practices. Libertarians often describe government as a form of organized crime. Hoover's godfather-like dominion over the FBI makes that comparison harder to dismiss. 

A Man of Zeal

In his dissent in Olmstead v. U.S., which coincidentally legalized government wiretapping for a short time, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote: "The greatest dangers to liberty lie in insidious encroachments by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."

And therein lies the danger of men like Hoover. To give the devil his due, Hoover most certainly believed plunging his hands into the latrine was necessary to defend the country he loved from those he thought would destroy it. As Letersky writes in The Director, Hoover was "a man who in his sincere belief that he was protecting his country had repeatedly violated the principles of the Constitution on which the country was founded." 

The 100th anniversary of Hoover's rise to power should serve as a reminder that the FBI—and the national security state it exemplifies—remains a dagger pointed at the heart of American civil liberties. All the Bureau needs to break bad again is another man "of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding" to return to Hoover's dirty tricks. 

There is no greater domestic threat to American freedom than a secret police. Hoover proved that for five decades until the devil called him home. May his ghost never wander the FBI's halls.

The post An American Gangster at 100: J. Edgar Hoover's Authoritarian Legacy appeared first on Reason.com.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been imprisoned in London for five years, while Texas journalist Priscilla Villarreal was only briefly detained at the Webb County Jail. But both were arrested for publishing information that government officials wanted to conceal.

Assange and Villarreal argue that criminalizing such conduct violates the First Amendment. In both cases, the merits of that claim have been obscured by the constitutionally irrelevant question of who qualifies as a "real" journalist.

Assange, an Australian citizen, is fighting extradition to the United States based on a federal indictment that charges him with violating the Espionage Act by obtaining and publishing classified documents that former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning leaked in 2010. He has already spent about as much time behind bars as federal prosecutors say he would be likely to serve if convicted.

President Joe Biden says he is "considering" the Australian government's request to drop the case against Assange. But mollifying a U.S. ally is not the only reason to reconsider this prosecution, which poses a grave threat to freedom of the press by treating common journalistic practices as crimes.

All but one of the 17 charges against Assange relate to obtaining or disclosing "national defense information," which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Yet all the news organizations that published stories based on the confidential State Department cables and military files that Manning leaked are guilty of the same crimes.

More generally, obtaining and publishing classified information is the bread and butter of reporters who cover national security. John Demers, then head of the Justice Department's National Security Division, implicitly acknowledged that reality in 2019, when he assured reporters they needn't worry about the precedent set by this case because Assange is "no journalist."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit took a similarly dim view of Villarreal in January, when it dismissed her lawsuit against the Laredo prosecutors and police officers who engineered her 2017 arrest. They claimed she had violated Section 39.06(c) of the Texas Penal Code, an obscure law that makes it a felony to solicit or obtain nonpublic information from a government official with "intent to obtain a benefit."

The cops said Villarreal committed that crime by asking Laredo police officer Barbara Goodman to confirm information about a public suicide and a fatal car crash. As interpreted by the Laredo Police Department, Section 39.06(c) sweeps even more broadly than the Espionage Act, making a felon out of any reporter who seeks information that is deemed exempt from disclosure under the Texas Public Information Act.

Gliding over the alarming implications of making it a crime for reporters to ask questions, the 5th Circuit dismissed the idea that Villarreal is "a martyr for the sake of journalism." The majority opinion by Judge Edith Jones dripped with contempt for Villarreal, an independent, uncredentialed journalist who posts her unfiltered reports on Facebook instead of publishing vetted and edited stories in a "mainstream, legitimate" news outlet.

Seemingly oblivious to what quotidian news reporting across the country entails, Jones faulted Villarreal for relying on a "backchannel source" and for "capitaliz[ing] on others' tragedies to propel her reputation and career." But like the judgment that Assange is "no journalist," such criticism fundamentally misconstrues freedom of the press, which applies to anyone who engages in mass communication.

The 5th Circuit's decision provoked four dissents authored or joined by seven judges, and it is not hard to see why. "If the First Amendment means anything," Judge James C. Ho wrote, "surely it means that citizens have the right to question or criticize public officials without fear of imprisonment."

In a petition it filed on Villarreal's behalf last week, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression urges the U.S. Supreme Court to vindicate that right. "Villarreal went to jail for basic journalism," it notes. "Whatever one may make of Villarreal's journalistic ethics, they are of no constitutional significance."

© Copyright 2024 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

The post Journalism Is Not a Crime, Even When It Offends the Government appeared first on Reason.com.

In February, police officer John Barton arrested Twyla Stallworth in Andalusia, Alabama, because she refused to give him her photo identification. The only problem? Barton had no legal basis to demand Stallworth fork over her I.D. 

Stallworth's arrest is just the latest in a series of false arrests in Alabama that have stemmed from a misinterpretation of the state's 2006 "stop and identify law," which allows police, when they have reasonable suspicion that a crime is taking place, to demand individuals provide their name, address, and an explanation of their actions—but not their photo I.D.

It's not entirely clear how Barton ended up at Stallworth's home on February 23. A lawsuit filed by Stallworth earlier this month does not provide background on the incident, and video filmed by Stallworth's 18-year-old son Jermari starts after Barton had come to Stallworth's door. According to USA Today, Stallworth's lawyers say that the confrontation started when she called to complain about a neighbor's loud music.

However, even if Barton had some reason to believe Stallworth might have been committing a crime—something that is possible but seems unlikely given Stallworth was in her own home—he still wouldn't have been able to demand her I.D.

"Give me an I.D. or go to jail," Barton told Stallworth, who incredulously responded, "I'm going to jail for not providing my I.D."

In the video of the incident, Barton is seen pushing Jermari away and attempting to handcuff Stallworth.

"Don't push my son! What's wrong with you? You will not push my son!" Stallworth yelled.

A struggle ensued, during which Barton "physically assaulted Ms. Stallworth by shoving her down on a couch," according to the lawsuit.

After Stallworth had been arrested, video shows Jermari asking Barton to see the statute he claims Stallworth violated: "I actually want to see this law in play," he says. 

The statute, which Barton pulled up on his phone, allows police to "stop any person abroad in a public place whom he reasonably suspects is committing, has committed or is about to commit a felony or other public offense and may demand of him his name, address and an explanation of his actions."

"I don't see where it says anything about an I.D.," Jermari says. "It says your name, address, and an explanation."

"She failed to identify," Barton replied.

"I mean it doesn't specifically, you know, say an I.D.," Jermari added before Barton cut in: "I know, but I'm not going to argue with you either."

Despite Stallworth's son pointing out the obvious—that Stallworth hadn't broken the Alabama identification law—she was still charged with "obstruction, resisting arrest, and eluding," according to the lawsuit. The charges have since been dropped.

On March 8, Mayor of Andalusia Earl Johnson issued a formal apology to Stallworth, saying, "I would like to apologize to Twyla Stallworth for her arrest in February. All charges against Ms. Stallworth are being dropped." Johnson noted that Barton "has been disciplined for failing in his duty to know the law."

This is far from the first time that Alabama cops have misinterpreted the state's "stop and identify" law, wrongfully arresting individuals for not forking over their photo identifications. A man who was watering his neighbor's plants was arrested after refusing to give an officer his I.D. in May 2022. Last October, a federal court refused to grant qualified immunity to police officers who arrested a mechanic who refused to provide a government I.D. in 2019.

"The police are free to ask questions, and the public is free to ignore them," wrote 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Charles R. Wilson in that last case. "Any legal obligation to speak to the police and answer their questions arises as a matter of state law."

The post Alabama Woman Arrested for Refusing To Give a Cop Her I.D. appeared first on Reason.com.

State legislation can have an immense impact on your civil rights, for better or for worse. And even though state lawmakers are tasked with determining which bills get turned into laws, you hold a lot of power to make these decisions because you elect candidates into office. Take this quiz to learn about lawmaking at the state level, and how you can play a part in this process at the ballot box.

Click to see Quiz

State legislation is crucially connected to our civil liberties, and can either expand our rights or chip away at them. These bills touch nearly every aspect of our lives. From Roe v. Wade and the Dobbs case that overturned the right to an abortion, to Loving v. Virginia, which struck down laws banning interracial marriage, and Obergefell v. Hodges, which recognized marriage equality across the country — many Supreme Court cases that address all of our civil rights come from laws that were passed in state legislatures.

With an increasingly conservative Supreme Court and federal court system, as well as a Congress whose members are constantly in gridlock, state legislatures offer a more accessible way to enact meaningful change. State lawmakers are easier to contact regarding policies that should be passed, and also frequently go on to run for federal office, or become governors. What’s more, state actions can lead to national impact if many similar policies are passed around the country, signaling national trends.

With many state legislative sessions currently underway, learn more about this important political process, how it affects your rights, and how to get involved.

Each state has its own legislative body in which lawmakers work together to pass policies — just like Congress does at the federal level. Every state except for Nebraska has a legislature composed of two chambers, or a ​​bicameral legislature — which must work together to get a majority of favorable votes and pass bills in both chambers. While the exact names and powers of these entities depend on the specific states, once a bill is passed, it will be sent to the governor to be signed into law or may face a veto.

Most state legislatures are made up of lawmakers who meet to pass laws during legislative sessions each year. If circumstances arise that require lawmakers to address legislation outside of these regular sessions, a special session can be called. There are also several states with full-time legislatures whose lawmakers meet year-round. Lawmakers often engage in this work part time, and are often not adequately paid.

The length and timing of state legislative sessions differ from state to state. Some legislatures are in session for many months, while others only take a few. The sessions that aren’t full time usually take place in the first half of the year, traditionally beginning in January.

The laws that are passed during state legislative sessions run the gamut and can affect a number of constituents’ rights, including reproductive freedom, voting protections, access to gender-affirming care, and others. But this influence goes both ways. Presumably, the prospective laws should reflect the majority opinions of individuals in the state, with lawmakers acting as advocates for these interests. Many bills and policies that make it to state legislatures are promoted by advocacy organizations or interest groups who work with lawmakers to get them passed. The ACLU is among these entities, and is the only organization focusing on civil rights and civil liberties that has an office with staff in every state, working with local policymakers.

There are many decisions happening in states around the country that put our rights in the balance. Without the federal protections from Roe v. Wade, many lawmakers are attacking abortion rights at the state level. There has also been a surge of state laws introduced that block trans youth from receiving gender-affirming care, censor student free speech, and suppress people’s voting powers.

But the ACLU will never stop fighting for your rights. We have taken on countless state-level legal battles to protect people’s liberties — and have seen many victories along the way.

The ACLU always encourages our community to play a hands-on role in the fight for our freedoms. Across the country, we implement strategies that empower voters around the country to stay informed about local races and elect candidates whose interests align with theirs. We’re also mapping state-level attacks on LGBTQ rights so you can keep track of your own area’s legislation — and fight back accordingly.

Supporters can get in touch with the ACLU affiliate offices in their state to learn about local issues they are taking action on. Many affiliate websites offer primers on state legislatures. Our grassroots effort People Power also allows volunteers to engage with state-level actions in their area.

To learn about your state’s legislature, identify the lawmakers who represent you and what their stances are on the issues you care about most. State lawmakers and governors will usually highlight the issues they care about, and the legislative work they’ve done, wherever they are able. With most state legislative sessions underway right now, you can also keep track of policies that are being voted on. This will let you know your legislature’s priorities and if your lawmakers are fulfilling their campaign promises to constituents. Remember, the key players involved in the legislative process are voted into office by you. You have the power in numbers to elect or replace representatives based on whether they are advocating for your interests.

On Friday, the Biden administration unveiled final Title IX regulations, nearly two years after the administration proposed dramatic changes to how colleges handle sexual assault allegations. The new rules largely mirror proposed regulations released last year and will effectively reversing Trump-era due process reforms. 

According to the final regulations, accused students will lose their right to a guaranteed live hearing with the opportunity to have a representative cross-examine their accuser. This is accompanied by a return to the "single-investigator model," which allows a single administrator to investigate and decide the outcome of a case.

Further, under the new rules, most schools will be required to use the "preponderance of the evidence" standard, which directs administrators to find a student responsible if just 51 percent of the evidence points to their guilt. Schools are also no longer required to provide accused students with the full content of the evidence against them. Instead, universities are only bound to provide students with a description of the "relevant evidence," which may be provided "orally" rather than in writing. 

This is a stunning rollback of due process rights for accused students. Under the new regulations, a student can be found responsible for sexually assaulting a classmate because a single administrator believed there was a 51 percent chance he had committed the assault, and this conclusion can be reached without ever allowing the accused student to know the full evidence against him or providing a hearing during which he could defend himself.

The rules also represent a continuing partisan tension in education policy. Following President Barack Obama's 2011 "Dear Colleague" letter, which first mandated campus sexual assault tribunals, regulations have flip-flopped consistently along party lines. In 2020, the Trump administration introduced broad due process rights for accused students while prohibiting schools from taking many cases that occurred off-campus. Today's reforms mark the third major change to Title IX regulations in as many presidents.

"Justice is only possible when hearings are fair for everyone. So today's regulations mean one thing: America's college students are less likely to receive justice if they find themselves in a Title IX proceeding," the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) said in a Friday statement. "When administrators investigate the most serious kinds of campus misconduct, colleges should use the time-tested tools that make finding the truth more likely. But the new regulations no longer require them to do so."

So far, the new rules have been met with widespread praise from victims' rights groups.

"Students who experience sexual violence or discrimination shouldn't have to weigh our safety against our ability to go to class or participate in campus life," said college student Emily Bach in a press release from Know Your IX, a campus sexual assault awareness group. "The Biden Administration's updated Title IX rule will make sure that students who experience harm can come forward and seek support without jeopardizing our ability to graduate on time or get a degree."

But contrary to what many victims' rights activists say, due process rights for accused students are essential, not contrary, in treating campus sexual assault as a pressing issue. College sexual assault victims should be taken seriously—but taking their accusations with the gravity they deserve also means providing those they accuse with the right to defend themselves in kind.

Even if Title IX hearings don't have the gravity of criminal proceedings, they have the potential to upend accused students' lives. Students have been expelled, had their degrees revoked, or even been deported after being found responsible for a Title IX violation. 

If we want university investigations into sexual assault allegations to maintain any sheen of legitimacy, we can't entrust the power to inflict such severe penalties to a single administrator working behind closed doors. Instead, we need a process that puts due process front and center—any other system quickly becomes shamefully untrustworthy.

The post New Title IX Rules Erase Campus Due Process Protections appeared first on Reason.com.

As we keep more and more personal data on our phones, iPhone and Android devices now have some of the most advanced encryption technology in existence to keep that information safe from prying eyes. The easiest way around that, of course, is for someone to gain access to your phone.

This week, a federal court decided that police officers can make you unlock your phone, even by physically forcing you to press your thumb against it.

In November 2021, Jeremy Payne was pulled over by two California Highway Patrol (CHP) officers over his car's window tinting. When asked, Payne admitted that he was on parole, which the officers confirmed. After finding Payne's cellphone in the car, officers unlocked it by forcibly pressing his thumb against it as he sat handcuffed. (The officers claimed in their arrest report that Payne "reluctantly unlocked the cell phone" when asked, which Payne disputed; the government later accepted in court "that defendant's thumbprint was compelled.")

The officers searched through Payne's camera roll and found a video taken the same day, which appeared to show "several bags of blue pills (suspected to be fentanyl)." After checking the phone's map and finding what they suspected to be a home address, the officers drove there and used Payne's keys to enter and search the residence. Inside, they  found and seized more than 800 pills.

Payne was indicted for possession with intent to distribute fentanyl and cocaine.

In a motion to suppress, Payne's attorneys argued that by forcing him to unlock his phone, the officers "compelled a testimonial communication," violating both the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure and the Fifth Amendment's guarantee against self-incrimination. Even though the provisions of his parole required him to surrender any electronic devices and passcodes, "failure to comply could result in 'arrest pending further investigation' or confiscation of the device pending investigation," not the use of force to make him open the phone.

The district court denied the motion to suppress, and Payne pleaded guilty. In November 2022, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Notably, Payne had only served three years for the crime for which he was on parole—assault with a deadly weapon on a peace officer.

Payne appealed the denial of the motion to suppress. This week, in an opinion authored by Judge Richard Tallman, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled against Payne.

Searches "incident to arrest" are an accepted part of Fourth Amendment precedent. Further, Tallman wrote that as a parolee, Payne has "a significantly diminished expectation of privacy," and even though the conditions of his parole did not require him to "provide a biometric identifier," the distinction was insufficient to support throwing out the search altogether.

But Tallman went a step further in the Fifth Amendment analysis: "We hold that the compelled use of Payne's thumb to unlock his phone (which he had already identified
for the officers) required no cognitive exertion, placing it firmly in the same category as a blood draw or fingerprint taken at booking," he wrote. "The act itself merely provided CHP with access to a source of potential information."

From a practical standpoint, this is chilling. First of all, the Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that police needed a warrant before drawing a suspect's blood.

And one can argue that fingerprinting a suspect as they're arrested is part and parcel with establishing their identity. Nearly half of U.S. states require people to identify themselves to police if asked.

But forcibly gaining access to someone's phone provides more than just their identity—it's a window into their entire lives. Even cursory access to someone's phone can turn up travel history, banking information, and call and text logs—a treasure trove of potentially incriminating information, all of which would otherwise require a warrant.

When they drafted the Fourth Amendment, the Founders drew on the history of "writs of assistance," general warrants used by British authorities in the American colonies that allowed government agents to enter homes at will and look for anything disallowed. As a result, the Fourth Amendment requires search warrants based on probable cause and signed by a judge.

Tallman does note the peculiar circumstances of the case: "Our opinion should not be read to extend to all instances where a biometric is used to unlock an electronic device." But, he adds, "the outcome…may have been different had [the officer] required Payne to independently select the finger that he placed on the phone" instead of forcibly mashing Payne's thumb into it himself.

The post Appeals Court Rules That Cops Can Physically Make You Unlock Your Phone appeared first on Reason.com.

Several inmates in an Oklahoma prison say they were locked in filthy shower stalls, some as small as 2 feet by 2 feet,* for days on end. In a lawsuit filed last week, the inmates claim that this treatment caused "severe physical and emotional suffering," and was an obvious violation of their Eighth Amendment rights.

According to the suit, staff at the Great Plains Correctional Center locked several inmates in small shower stalls for extended periods, without access to basic amenities like adequate food and water. Most were placed in 3-foot by 3-foot shower cells, though at least one was confined in an even smaller space. Confinement periods listed in the suit ranged from 24 hours to four days. 

The suit describes harrowing conditions for inmates held in the shower stalls. They allege they were placed in stalls filled with human feces and deprived of bathroom breaks. Additionally, several inmates say the only water they had access to was scalding hot shower water.

One prisoner confined in the shower stalls says he was repeatedly pepper sprayed during his detention in the ad hoc solitary cell. Another inmate claims that he was left without clothing, and had to borrow a shirt from an inmate in an adjoining stall—a shirt he later used to attempt suicide. That same inmate claims that he wasn't confined for any formal disciplinary infraction, but instead because guards knew that he was a sex offender.

"This systemic practice, akin to an unofficial custom, involved the use of shower stalls for extended confinement, often without even a bucket for defecating or any drinking water save scalding water from the shower," the suit reads. "The conditions were recognized by some members of the prison staff as violations of civil and human rights…some sympathetic staff members attempted to address these harsh conditions but faced internal conflict."

According to the suit, the state of Oklahoma launched an investigation into prisoner treatment at the facility in August 2023—around the same time as many of the alleged confinements. Shockingly, this investigation found that several different Oklahoma facilities regularly locked inmates in shower stalls.

While the state's investigation eventually led to the end of shower cell confinement, the suit argues that inmates are still owed unspecified damages. 

"The Plaintiffs were subject to prolonged confinement in feces-laden shower cells, under conditions lacking basic amenities like restroom facilities, proper bedding, a space to sit or lie down, drinking water, as well as basic humane treatment, which amounted to cruel and unusual punishment," the suit reads. "Despite the obvious and egregious nature of these conditions, the Defendants showed deliberate indifference to the Plaintiffs' health, safety, and basic human rights."

*CORRECTION: This piece previously misstated the size of the shower stalls.

The post Oklahoma Prisoners Say They Were Locked In Filthy, Tiny Shower Stalls for Days appeared first on Reason.com.

Tech companies and First Amendment groups are calling attention to a provision in a domestic spying bill that they say would significantly expand the federal government's power to snoop on Americans' digital communications—potentially by forcing employees of private businesses to become informants.

The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), a global trade group that represents major tech companies including Google and Microsoft, is calling for last-minute changes to the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act (RISAA), which could get a final vote in the Senate on Friday. The bill's primary purpose is to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows U.S. intelligence agencies to scoop up communications between Americans and individuals abroad.

But the bill also includes a provision that "vastly expands the U.S. government's warrantless surveillance capabilities, damaging the competitiveness of U.S. technology companies large and small, and arguably imperiling the continued global free flow of data between the U.S. and its allies," the ITI said in a statement this week.

As Reason reported in December, that provision means that nearly any business or entity with access to telecom or internet equipment could be forced to participate in the federal government's digital spying regime. The big target, as Wired noted this week, is likely to be the owners and operators of data centers.

Under the current FISA law, Section 702 only applies to telecommunications companies and internet service providers. But the amendment included in the RISAA would expand that definition to cover "any service provider" with "access to equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store" electronic communications.

"The practical impact of the revised definition is significant and means any company, vendor, or any of their employees who touch the physical infrastructure of the internet could now be swept under FISA's scope and compelled to assist with FISA surveillance," the ITI warns. "If this amendment were to become law, any electronic communications service equipment provider or others with access to that equipment, including their employees or the employees of their service providers, would be subject to compelled FISA disclosure or assistance."

In short, even someone like a custodian could be legally compelled to assist in the federal government's spying efforts.

Marc Zwillinger, an attorney who has experience arguing before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), wrote this week on his personal blog that the RISAA would "permit the government to compel the assistance of a wide range of additional entities and persons in conducting surveillance under FISA 702."

The newest version is less broad than what was initially proposed in December—for example, gathering places like hotels and coffee shops have been specifically excluded from the law. But, as Zwillinger writes, the revised definition would cover "the owners and operators of facilities that house equipment used to store or carry data, such as data centers and buildings owned by commercial landlords, who merely have access to communications equipment in their physical space," as well as "other persons with access to such facilities and equipment, including delivery personnel, cleaning contractors, and utility providers."

Because newsrooms and other places where journalists work are not specifically exempted, some First Amendment groups are also worried about how the expansion of digital spying authority could affect journalism.

"This bill would basically allow the government to institute a spy draft," Seth Stern, director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), said in a statement on Thursday. "If this bill becomes law, sources will rightly suspect that American newsrooms are bugged by the government. And journalists won't be able to reassure them that they're not, because, for all they know, the building maintenance worker is an involuntary government spy."

The reactions from tech companies, legal experts, and free press advocates come on the heels of objections raised by various civil libertarian groups. As Reason's J.D. Tuccille covered earlier this week, some opponents of the FISA reauthorization bill have taken to calling it "the 'Everyone Is a Spy' provision, since potentially anybody with access to a laptop or WiFi router could be compelled to help the government conduct surveillance."

If the RISAA is approved by the Senate on Friday, as expected, and signed by President Joe Biden, Americans will have little recourse except to hope that the Justice Department is telling the truth when it says it won't use the broad authority contained in the bill. In a letter to senators on Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland wrote that his department "commits to applying" the new definition of electronic communications service providers in a narrow fashion. "The number of technology companies" covered by the new provision, he wrote, "is extremely small."

Of course, anyone with a working knowledge of the history of federal surveillance programs—or any government initiative, for that matter—is probably right to be skeptical of that assurance.

"Even if the bill is intended to target data centers, it doesn't say that," Stern said in a statement. "And, even if one trusts the Biden administration to honor its pinky swears, they're not binding on any future administrations."

The post How the FISA Reauthorization Bill Could Force Maintenance Workers and Custodians To Become Government Spies appeared first on Reason.com.

Welcome to the police state: Yesterday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that 750 National Guardsmen and 250 state police officers will be deployed to patrol the New York City subway system, Hochul's attempt at combating recent high-profile crimes, like the incident in which an A train conductor's neck was slashed last week.

Law enforcement will also start doing bag checks for straphangers, and will bar people who have been convicted of violent crimes against subway passengers from using public transit for three years. It's clear how the bag checks will be enforced (in a way that costs the city money and commuters time) but it's not clear how the ban on past offenders will be enforced.

This all comes in addition to the roughly 1,000 New York City Police Department officers who were deployed throughout the subway system last month, and the cameras that have been installed in roughly one-sixth of the subway cars. That was in response to a January spike in major crime—driven mostly by grand larcenies, which are thefts without force—compared with January 2023. But crime stats are notoriously hard to untangle, and just because police are deployed doesn't mean they're effective: Subway crime, which is tracked as its own category, was up 30 percent year over year in 2022 when compared with 2021, despite Adams choosing to deploy police patrols throughout the system.

Hochul's new initiative appears to have already started; when I was going through the Broadway Junction stop last night, which connects the A train to the L, I counted a greater density of law enforcement than I'd seen before.

Bag checks are already happening at Grand Central: 

If you're going to introduce a bunch of new police officers and National Guard soldiers into the subway system, what is the point of having them all stand in the same place instead of riding trains and walking laps of stations? pic.twitter.com/dhpdgB3b2X

— Anthony LaMesa (@ajlamesa) March 7, 2024

But political stunts are different than good policing, and this looks more like the first.

Patrol politics: Interpreted as part of the power struggle between Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams, this looks like an attempt by the governor's office to either undermine Adams or set the stage to be able to take credit for a decline in crime—if that is in fact what results, which is a big if.

Interpreted as a tactic by major Democrats in major cities to be responsive to people's crime fears, it looks a lot like pandering. Neither Adams nor Hochul is up for reelection this year, but the political tides feel like they're turning in a direction of even soft-on-crime liberals being dissatisfied with the status quo.

There is a vast middle ground between the two loudest types of New Yorkers: the "I ride the subway all the time and it's totally safe, what are you talking about?" and the "this city is a hellscape, I fear for my life every time I leave my house." The truth is somewhere in between: It is common to get on a subway car and have a crazy person yelling. Sometimes they're threatening, but infrequently. I see smoking inside the subway car or urinating inside the station every month or so. I've seen bum fights. I've noticed people passed out in front of the turnstile, blocking access, a few times before; it's hard to know if the person is dead or passed out, and what to do. (Nor is it lost on me that the above sentence is a crazy thing to have to write.)

These situations force hard questions: What do we owe to our fellow New Yorkers, especially those in severe need, who sometimes refuse to help themselves? Should we expect public spaces to be free of threat and despair and, if so, what policing or surveillance should be used to get there? Are these tradeoffs worth it?

But Hochul's plan probably doesn't address the actual issue, which has less to do with a criminal free-for-all and more to do with erratic mentally ill people who essentially use the subway system as free shelter, and sometimes act out with violence. "The [subway disorder] problem got worse in 2017, when Transit Police stopped enforcing loitering and related subway rules to keep homeless and mentally ill people and drug addicts from living and sleeping in the subway system. This was a simply a political choice," wrote Peter Moskos on X. "Before then, people using the system for shelter and not transit would be told to leave. Not arrested. But you can't stay here. After, they were told of shelter options. If they chose not to [accept], they were left alone. 95% chose to remain."

"The right to prohibit behavior on the subway that is permitted on the street (EG begging) was affirmed by Young v. New York City Transit Authority (1990). This was a hard fought battle by the MTA back in the days. It made a huge difference in crime & riders' Quality of Life," added Moskos (in a useful thread), who argued that "turning the subway into a defacto shelter isn't good for homeless people. Nor is it not fair to the rest of us who need to ride the subway."

Exiling mentally ill people from select public spaces doesn't sound like a solution that solves underlying needs. But it is a solution that possibly returns subways to the people who pay for them, and to their original use. Perhaps New Yorkers would instead prefer to have cops going through their handbags during rush hour so they can feel like the city has finally started to do something. The problem is that the something actually matters, and that random searches, which violate people's privacy, should not be taken lightly or instituted for political gain.

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Scenes from New York: That's enough New York up above, I think. But here's a subway ad I saw yesterday. End microaggression discourse and return to real issues!

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QUICK HITS

• "Corporations will have to share key details about their role in driving climate change and the threat that warming poses to their operations under a contentious proposal the Securities and Exchange Commission approved 3-2 on Wednesday over intense business opposition," reported The Washington Post. 
• The U.S. is negotiating a six-week ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that Hamas is allegedly refusing to sign onto. Both Qatar and Egypt are also helping to broker it, and all parties view the holy month, Ramadan, as an urgent and looming deadline.
• Armed gangs in Haiti are putting pressure on the country's prime minister, Ariel Henry, to resign, and it looks like the country may be heading toward a civil war. So far, gangs have set a bunch of prisoners free, seized the airport, and attacked a police academy.
• "Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey swiftly signed legislation on Wednesday passed by the state's GOP-controlled legislature giving physicians who provide in vitro fertilization civil and criminal immunity for any death or damage to embryos," reported Politico.
• Inside the Satoshi Nakamoto trial in the U.K., which aims to figure out who actually created bitcoin.
• Linwei Ding, a Google employee in the U.S. who is originally from China, was just charged with stealing AI trade secrets that he was allegedly feeding to two Chinese companies.
• In the Elizabeth Warren formulation of the world, high prices are attributable to greed. So maybe landlords actually just magically became less greedy?

Austin built a shit ton of new housing and now rent is falling 7% year-over-year pic.twitter.com/BI0tWoSkU8

— Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) March 6, 2024

The post Empire State Police State appeared first on Reason.com.

Many polls suggest if the presidential election were held today, Donald Trump could return to the White House. Fears of irreparable threats to our democracy and freedoms are neither abstract nor hyperbolic.

We must believe Trump when he reveals his authoritarian plans for a second term and take these threats seriously. He has made clear he intends to deploy the military to crush protests; activate state national guards to deport millions of immigrants; build on his legacy of gutting reproductive freedoms by implementing a nationwide abortion ban; create a police state in which anyone who he views as an “enemy” is surveilled and our law enforcement are further empowered to use lethal force; and undermine the integrity of our elections.

Terrifying as these threats are, despair and resignation are not a strategy. We and our allies are prepared to fight back, informed by our experiences in his first term.

Molly Kaplan/ACLU

The ACLU filed 434 legal actions against the Trump administration, and hundreds of other lawsuits were filed by sister organizations, state attorneys general and even private citizens.

We turned to the courts during Trump’s first week in office when we, with the International Refugee Assistance Project and other partners, filed the first lawsuit challenging Trump’s Muslim ban. We got our first win the day after Trump’s executive order was signed. As the administration pivoted to “perfect” its unconstitutional ban, we fought every subsequent version. Along with our allies, we defeated the first two iterations of the ban, and ramped up pressure for President Biden to revoke the third and final ban on day one of his presidency.

We employed a similar strategy when the administration started forcibly separating families at the southern border. Initially, we only wanted to reunite one mother and her daughter, but subsequently learned that the government had codified this horrific practice into standard policy. We quickly expanded our suit and did everything possible to have the full extent of this tragedy revealed to the public. We, Kids in Need of Defense, the Women’s Refugee Commission and Justice in Motion mobilized thousands of people to march in opposition. Under significant, sustained public and legal pressure, the administration finally reversed their family separation policy, with our lawsuit helping reunite approximately 3,200 families.

Litigation remains a powerful tool even in the face of Trump’s 245 judicial appointments. Much to his chagrin, many of his appointees proved willing to buck his agenda as Trump-appointed judges stood up nearly en masse for the rule of law and civil liberties in response to attempts to overturn the 2020 election results. Trump appointees also ruled against the administration’s anti-immigrant policies around Title 42 and the third-country transit ban.

AJ Mast/ACLU

Should Trump return to the White House, advocacy organizations will need to come together like never before. No single organization will be able to stop the power of the federal government at Trump’s disposal. If he unleashes a deportation force to remove 13 million immigrants or deploys the National Guard to crack down on demonstrations, we and our partners will be in court daily challenging these unconstitutional and immoral policies. But that’s not enough.

Even more so than the first, the second resistance will be one of the people, not just lawyers. We will activate our 6.5 million supporters and our 54 affiliates in every state and territory. In partnership with grassroots organizations, labor unions, religious congregations and community leaders, we will exercise our First Amendment rights to mobilize the people in the streets, lobby in their statehouses, and advocate for local leaders to resist. General strikes, economic boycotts, and worker walk-outs will be critical tools to demonstrate that Americans will not sit idly by while a constitutional crisis is perpetrated.

Bonnie Cash/UPI/Shutterstock

In a second Trump administration, the public must force Congress to serve as a co-equal branch of government, not the lap-dog of the executive branch. We have to hold Congress accountable to do its job—keeping the pressure on through calls, lobbying, and grassroots visits, reminding them they work for us.

But fixing a broken Congress can’t just come from the Democratic Party. With the future of our democracy at stake, we need a bipartisan commitment to govern. We’ve seen glimmers of it. If a group of bipartisan Senators found common ground to reform the antiquated Electoral Count Act—which would now prevent Donald Trump, or any president, from pressuring their vice president to refuse certifying election results—surely they can agree to update the two-centuries old Insurrection Act and ensure its not abused by President Trump to shut down legitimate forms of dissent and debate.

As we ramp up the pressure on our representatives, the ballot box is where the people will get the final say. The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade—all thanks to a new Trump majority on the bench—illustrated the extent to which states are our last line of defense to bring forth the will of the people on issues such as abortion. And wherever reproductive freedom has been on the ballot since, we’ve won. Since Dobbs, we spent more than $23 million in key elections to protect abortion rights. This year, that playing field has significantly expanded: there are abortion ballot measures under consideration in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Maryland, New York, Montana, Nebraska, and Nevada.

Admittedly, ballot initiatives won’t be enough if Trump enacts a nationwide ban that restricts abortion services everywhere. But direct democracy efforts, through state constitutional amendments and local elections, will send strong signals that a power grab by the federal government will not be tolerated, and help make a case on states’ rights and federalism that might convince even conservative judges to limit these power grabs.

Trump and his allies have spent the last four years plotting his return and revenge. They will be more organized, deliberate, and aggressive. But if Trump does return to the Oval Office, the first “resistance” will look tame by comparison. Trump’s anti-liberty and fundamentally anti-American policies will assuredly be met with the full firepower of the ACLU, the might of our allies, and the commitment of the American people.

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pWith his white handlebar mustache, Levon “Bo” Jones was a striking and unmistakable presence. Mr. Jones, a Black man from Duplin County, North Carolina, was wrongfully convicted in 1993 and sentenced to death. a href=https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/innocent-north-carolina-man-exonerated-after-14-years-death-row After 14 years on death row/a, Mr. Jones, who had always maintained his innocence, was exonerated and released in 2008. We were among the lawyers working with Mr. Jones to win his freedom./p pIn 2009, Mr. Jones was among three death row exonerees — found guilty and sentenced by all-white or nearly all-white juries — who lobbied in support of novel and transformative legislation that would allow people on death row to challenge their convictions if they could show race played a significant factor in their prosecution. Out of that effort, the state legislature passed the North Carolina Racial Justice Act (RJA)./p pThe RJA was a historic and overdue piece of legislation that sought to rectify long standing racial injustices in death penalty cases. After its momentous passage in 2009, more than 100 people on death row filed RJA claims, challenging their convictions. We represented several of these people, bringing some of the first successful cases under the RJA and reducing four people’s sentences from death to life./p pUnfortunately, a new conservative majority in the North Carolina Legislature repealed the law four years after it was passed./p pBut the fight for justice never stopped. After a lengthy legal battle, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled, in 2020, that all lawsuits brought under the RJA before its repeal could still move forward./p pThat brings us to this month, where, in a landmark hearing, we’ll be back in court arguing on behalf of Hasson Bacote, a Black man who was sentenced to death after the prosecution prevented multiple qualified Black jurors from serving on his jury. He argues that race played an impermissible role in jury selection, not just in his case, but in all death penalty cases in North Carolina./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-standardPervasive Racial Discrimination in Jury Selection/h2 /div pWe will come to court with statistical, case specific, and historical evidence that racial discrimination tainted jury selection in Mr. Bacote’s case, in Johnston County (where Mr. Bacote was prosecuted), and the entire state./p pIn Mr. Bacote’s case, the prosecution a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/north-carolina-v-hasson-bacote?document=North-Carolina-v-Bacote-Amended-RJA-Motion-with-Exhibits#press-releasesstruck/a three times more Black prospective jurors than white prospective jurors. In Johnston County, prosecutors struck prospective jurors of color at nearly twice the rate of white prospective jurors in all capital cases. A similar pattern emerges across the state: in North Carolina capital cases, prosecutors struck Black prospective jurors at nearly twice the rate of white jurors./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/north-carolina-v-hasson-bacote target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=3000 height=2058 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/39338ce9384b4dff4baa9810b8eb2295.jpg class=attachment-original size-original alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/39338ce9384b4dff4baa9810b8eb2295.jpg 3000w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/39338ce9384b4dff4baa9810b8eb2295-768x527.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/39338ce9384b4dff4baa9810b8eb2295-1536x1054.jpg 1536w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/39338ce9384b4dff4baa9810b8eb2295-2048x1405.jpg 2048w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/39338ce9384b4dff4baa9810b8eb2295-400x274.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/39338ce9384b4dff4baa9810b8eb2295-600x412.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/39338ce9384b4dff4baa9810b8eb2295-800x549.jpg 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/39338ce9384b4dff4baa9810b8eb2295-1000x686.jpg 1000w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/39338ce9384b4dff4baa9810b8eb2295-1200x823.jpg 1200w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/39338ce9384b4dff4baa9810b8eb2295-1400x960.jpg 1400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/39338ce9384b4dff4baa9810b8eb2295-1600x1098.jpg 1600w sizes=(max-width: 3000px) 100vw, 3000px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/north-carolina-v-hasson-bacote target=_blank North Carolina v. Hasson Bacote /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/north-carolina-v-hasson-bacote target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletHasson Bacote, a Black man from Johnston County, is challenging his death sentence under the North Carolina Racial Justice Act./p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/north-carolina-v-hasson-bacote target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pHow have prosecutors gotten away with this?/p pIn all criminal cases that go to trial, prosecutors and defense attorneys have what are known as “peremptory strikes” — that is, an attorney can remove a certain number of potential jurors for any reason. Often, prosecutors exclude Black jurors on the basis of their race./p pEven though the landmark 1986 Supreme Court case, iBatson v. Kentucky,/i prohibited peremptory strikes on the basis of race or gender, unconstitutional juror discrimination persists./p pOften, prosecutors offer pretextual — or disingenuous — reasons for excluding Black jurors and other jurors of color. In our previous RJA casei, /ia href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/north-carolina-v-robinson?document=north-carolina-v-robinson-orderiNorth Carolina v. Robinson/i/a, a judge found North Carolina prosecutors excluded Black jurors for pretextual, even irrational, reasons, interrogated Black jurors with invasive questions not posed to white jurors, and struck Black jurors even though they allowed white jurors with similar characteristics to remain in the jury pool./p pWe even have a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/capital-punishment/will-north-carolinas-supreme-courtevidence/a of overt racism in jury selection which we’ve presented in past RJA cases. One prosecutor wrote in his notes that a Black juror with a criminal record was a “thug” while a white juror with a criminal record was “a fine guy;” a Black juror was described as a “blk wino” while a white juror with a DUI conviction was a “country boy – ok.” In another case, a prosecutor noted on a juror questionnaire that a Black woman was “too dumb.”/p figure class=wp-image mb-8 img width=2294 height=1112 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screen-Shot-2024-02-21-at-3.32.06-PM.png class=attachment-original size-original alt=Handwritten jury selection notes in which a black candidate was described as a “blk wino.” decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screen-Shot-2024-02-21-at-3.32.06-PM.png 2294w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screen-Shot-2024-02-21-at-3.32.06-PM-768x372.png 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screen-Shot-2024-02-21-at-3.32.06-PM-1536x745.png 1536w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screen-Shot-2024-02-21-at-3.32.06-PM-2048x993.png 2048w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screen-Shot-2024-02-21-at-3.32.06-PM-400x194.png 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screen-Shot-2024-02-21-at-3.32.06-PM-600x291.png 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screen-Shot-2024-02-21-at-3.32.06-PM-800x388.png 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screen-Shot-2024-02-21-at-3.32.06-PM-1000x485.png 1000w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screen-Shot-2024-02-21-at-3.32.06-PM-1200x582.png 1200w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screen-Shot-2024-02-21-at-3.32.06-PM-1400x679.png 1400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screen-Shot-2024-02-21-at-3.32.06-PM-1600x776.png 1600w sizes=(max-width: 2294px) 100vw, 2294px / /figure pThe effect of outright or pretextual racial discrimination is ultimately the same: Black prospective jurors are excluded from jury service at greater rates than white prospective jurors, and a person facing capital punishment is judged by a jury inot/i of their peers./p pThe results of these unrepresentative juries are stark: Since 1990, a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/north-carolina-v-hasson-bacote?document=North-Carolina-v-Bacote-Amended-RJA-Motion-with-Exhibits#press-releasesevery Black person/a facing a capital prosecution in Johnston County has been sentenced to death./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-standardA Question of Democracy /h2 /div pParticipation in the jury box is one of the fundamental ways Americans engage with their democracy. Even though the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments conferred citizenship rights and equal protection to Black Americans, the right to serve in a jury remains compromised by racial discrimination. Jury service — like the right to vote — is a question of democracy. Who do we consider part of our community, whose voices matter, who has power./p pLevon “Bo” Jones’ voice mattered. Even though he was disenfranchised for the years he was wrongfully convicted, he became a powerful voice for freedom and equal justice. Because of his efforts and the efforts of other Black exonerees — survivors of the racist death penalty and criminal legal system — our client Hasson Bacote will have his day in court on February 26, and the opportunity to win relief for his case, and a ruling that could mean relief for almost all of North Carolina#8217;s death row./p pRace has always been at the center of the death penalty. The RJA challenges give North Carolina the rare legal opportunity to confront that shameful fact. In court this month, we will take another step with our client Mr. Bacote to shed light on and rectify the harms that racism has caused in our legal system./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-standardThe Racial Justice Act: A Timeline/h2 /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-mark1977/h2 /div pNorth Carolina passes the current law authorizing the death penalty. Johnston County a href=https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article233018762.htmlremoves the KKK billboards /athat line the highway into Smithfield, the County Seat./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-mark1987/h2 /div pIn iMcCleskey v. Kemp/i, the Supreme Court majority holds that, despite statistical evidence of racial discrimination in Georgia’s administration of the death penalty, there is no Equal Protection violation because the petitioner, Warren McCleskey, couldn’t show overt racial discrimination occurred in his case./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-mark1988/h2 /div pA federal Racial Justice Act bill is drafted in response to iMcCleskey/i. The federal RJA ultimately passed the House of Representatives in 1992 and in 1994, but failed in the Senate./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-mark1998/h2 /div pKentucky becomes the first state to enact a Racial Justice Act statute./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-mark2007-2008/h2 /div pThree Black men, Jonathan Hoffman, Levon Jones, and Glen Chapman, are exonerated from death row in North Carolina. All three innocent men, wrongfully convicted by all-white or nearly all-white juries, become inspired to help other people wrongfully convicted on the basis of race./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-mark2009/h2 /div pMr. Jones, Mr. Hoffman, and Mr. Chapman join with Darryl Hunt, another wrongfully convicted person charged with capital murder and later exonerated, to lobby the North Carolina Legislature. North Carolina enacted the Racial Justice Act in August, allowing people on death row to challenge their sentences if they could show race played a significant factor. The North Carolina law is the first law in the country to specify that statistical evidence of discrimination in jury selection and/or jury sentencing is sufficient proof to set aside a death sentence./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-mark2009/h2 /div pOur client, Hasson Bacote, is convicted of felony murder in Johnston County. Like every Black man tried in Johnston County, Mr. Bacote receives the death penalty./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-mark2010/h2 /div pIn August, more than 100 people on North Carolina’s death row filed RJA motions. At least 30 of those people were sentenced to death by all-white juries./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-mark2010/h2 /div pIn November, control of the North Carolina General Assembly flipped from Democratic control to Republican control. A single Republican donor, Art Pope, was connected toa href=https://www.npr.org/2011/10/06/141078608/the-multimillionaire-helping-republicans-win-n-c 75 percent/a of all outside group spending on the race, spending millions on small local campaigns. Some of these groups ran ads deliberately attacking candidates for voting for the Racial Justice Act. Ironically, these ads profiled a href=https://nccadp.org/stories/henry-mccollum-leon-brown/Henry McCollum/a, a Black man then on North Carolina’s death row who would ultimately be exonerated./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-mark2012/h2 /div pNorth Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue issued pardons of innocence to the defendants in the a href=https://www.cnn.com/2012/12/31/justice/north-carolina-wilmington-10/index.htmlWilmington 10 case/a on December 31, citing “the dominant role that racism played in jury selection.” The prosecution’s jury selection notes included overt race-based bias, such as a capital B written next to the name of every Black juror, and “KKK good!!” written next to the names of at least six prospective jurors./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-mark2012/h2 /div pThe first RJA case in the country is heard by a superior court judge in Cumberland County in a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/north-carolina-v-robinsoniNorth Carolina v. Robinson/i/a. The death row petitioner, Marcus Robinson, proved widespread discrimination in jury selection across North Carolina, in Cumberland County, and in his own case. a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/north-carolina-v-tilmon-golphin-christina-walters-and-quintel-augustineThree other cases/a were heard in Cumberland County later that year based on similar evidence, and those challengers, Tilmon Golphin, Christina Walters, and Quintel Augustine, also prevailed. The state sought review of these decisions by the North Carolina Supreme Court./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-mark2013/h2 /div pThe North Carolina Legislature repealed the Racial Justice Act on June 19 and overrode the governor’s veto./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-mark2015/h2 /div pThe North Carolina Supreme Court held that prosecutors should have been given more time to prepare for the Cumberland County RJA hearings, vacated the decisions, and remanded for new cases. This meant that the iRobinson/i and other Cumberland County case orders had no precedential value./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-mark2017/h2 /div pA North Carolina Superior Court dismissed the claims of Mr. Robinson and the other three people in Cumberland County, holding that the legislature’s repeal was retroactive and required dismissal of their cases. The four defendants sought review./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-mark2019/h2 /div pCharles Finch, a Black man, is exonerated from North Carolina’s death row. Mr. Finch is the 12th person exonerated in North Carolina since the death penalty was reinstated in 1973. a href=https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/database/innocence?state=North+CarolinaEleven of the 12/a men exonerated are men of color and 10 are Black men./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-mark2020/h2 /div pIn iState v. Ramseur/i, and iState v. Burke/i, the North Carolina Supreme Court held that application of the repeal to bar review of properly-filed RJA claims violated the Ex Post Facto clause of the North Carolina Constitution. This ruling effectively reinstated the more than 100 filed claims by people on death row, including Hasson Bacote./p pIn iState v. Robinson/i, the Hon. Justice Cheri L. Beasley, the first African-American woman to serve as Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, wrote for the majority in an opinion that cataloged the history of Black citizens’ exclusion from jury service in the United States and North Carolina, and the failure of state appellate courts to confront the problem. The state Supreme Court reinstated the life sentences of Marcus Robinson, Tilmon Golphin, Christina Walters, and Quintel Augustine./p div class=rss-cta__titleWe need you with us to keep fighting/diva href=https://action.aclu.org/give/now class=rss-cta__buttonDonate today/a/div

Just 15 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing. But why is it broken and how do we fix it? Those are just two of the questions that Reason's Nick Gillespie asked Justin Amash, the former five-term congressman from Michigan who is currently exploring a Senate run.

Elected as part of the Tea Party wave in 2010, Amash helped create the House Freedom Caucus but became an increasingly lonely, principled voice for limiting the size, scope, and spending of the federal government. After voting to impeach Donald Trump, he resigned from the GOP, became an independent, and then joined the Libertarian Party in 2020, making him the only Libertarian to serve in Congress.

They talked about the 2024 presidential election and the country's political and cultural polarization that seems to be growing with every passing day. And about how his parents' experiences as a Christian refugee from Palestine and an immigrant from Syria inform his views on foreign policy, entrepreneurship, and American exceptionalism.

This Q&A took place on the final day of LibertyCon, the annual event for Students for Liberty that took place recently in Washington, D.C.

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Watch the full video here and find a condensed transcript below.

Nick Gillespie: Why is Congress broken and how do we fix that?

Justin Amash: We can take up the whole 30 minutes talking about that if we wanted to. We don't know exactly how Congress got to where it is, but today it is highly centralized, where a few people at the top control everything. And that has a lot of negative consequences for our country. Among them is that the president has an unbelievable amount of power because the president now only has to negotiate with really a few people. You have to negotiate with the speaker of the House. You have to negotiate with the Senate majority leader and maybe some of the minority leaders. But it's really a small subset of people that you have to negotiate with. And when that happens, it gives the president so much leverage. 

So when we talk about things like going to war without authorization, as long as the speaker of the House isn't going to hold the president accountable and the Senate majority leader is not going to, the president is just going to do what he wants to do. And when it comes to spending, as long as the president only has to negotiate with a couple of people, the president's going to do whatever the president wants to do. So it's super easy in the system for the president to essentially bully Congress and dictate the outcomes. 

But there's a deeper problem with all of this, which is that representative government is supposed to be a discovery process. You elect people to represent you. You send them to Washington, and then the outcomes are supposed to be discovered by these representatives through discussions and debates, and the introduction of legislation, and amendments. You're supposed to have lots of votes, where the votes freely reflect your will representing the people back home. But instead, in Congress today, a few leaders are deciding what the final product is and then they're not bringing it to the floor until they know they have the votes. So there's no actual discovery process. Nancy Pelosi used to brag about this; she wouldn't bring a bill to the floor unless she knew it was going to pass. Which is the opposite of how Congress should work.

Gillespie: What are some of the ways to decentralize power within Congress? When you were in Congress, you founded the Freedom Caucus, which was supposed to be kind of a redoubt of people who believed in limited government and libertarian and conservative principles and actually even some liberal principles, but decentralizing authority. You got kicked out of the Freedom Caucus, right?

Amash: Well, I resigned from it.

Gillespie: Well, you were asked to leave. The police sirens were coming, and it's like, "Hey, you know what? I'm going to go," right? But even places like that, that were explicitly designed to act as a countervailing force to this unified Congress, how can that happen? What can you do or what can somebody do to make that happen?

Amash: Well, it does take people with strong will. I think that when we go to vote for our elected officials, when you go to vote for a representative, when you go to vote for a senator, you have to know that that person is willing to stand up to the leadership team. And if that person's not willing to break from the leadership team on a consistent basis—and this doesn't mean they have to be mean or anything like that; it just means that they have to be independent enough where you know they're willing to break from their leadership team. If they're not willing to do that, it doesn't matter how much they agree with you on the issues, don't vote for them because that person is going to sell out. There's no chance they're going to stand up for you when it counts. I think you need to have people who have a strong will, who are going to go there and actually represent you and are willing to stand up to the leaders.

Gillespie: If you are interested in Congressman Amash's commentary on contemporary issues, go to his substack Justin Amash. The tagline is: "A former congressman spills on Congress and makes the practical case for the principles of liberty." It's a great read, particularly on issues you mentioned.

Can you tell us how you discovered libertarian ideas? You got elected in 2010, which was a wave election. It was part of the Tea Party reaction to eight years of Bush, and more problems during the financial crisis and the reaction of the government to that. Where did you first encounter the ideas of liberty, and how did that motivate you to get into Congress?

Amash: The ideas of liberty are something that have been with me since I was a child. It's hard to pinpoint exactly where they came from. I think they came from my parents' immigrant experience, coming to the United States. My dad came here as a refugee from Palestine. He was born in Palestine in 1940. And when the state of Israel was created in '48, he became a refugee. My mom is a Syrian immigrant. 

When my parents came here, they weren't wealthy. My dad was a very poor refugee. He was so poor that the Palestinians made fun of him. So that's really poor. When he came here, he didn't have much, but he felt he had an opportunity. He felt he had a chance to start a new life, a chance to make it, even though he came from a different background from a lot of people, even though his English wasn't great compared to a lot of people. So he came here and he worked hard, and he built a business. When we were young, he used to tell us that America is the greatest place on earth, where someone can come here as a refugee like he did and start a new life and have the chance to be successful. It doesn't matter what your background is. It doesn't matter what obstacles you face. You have a chance here and you don't have that chance in so many places around the world. 

I think that's where that spirit of liberty came from. It was from my dad's experience especially, my mom as well, coming here as a young immigrant. So I was always a little bit anti-authoritarian as a child. I rebelled against teachers at times. I didn't like arbitrary authority, let's put it that way. When someone would just make up a rule, like this is the rule, "I just say so/" Well, tell me why. 

Gillespie: Have you rethought that as a parent?

Amash: No, I mean, I let my kids think very freely.

Gillespie: As long as they follow the rules.

Amash: I don't mind when they are a little bit rebellious. I think it doesn't hurt for kids to have some independence. I encourage them to challenge their teachers, even when they think the teacher is wrong about something. I think that it's a good thing for people to go out there and not just accept everything as it is.

Gillespie: You famously, as a congressman, explained all of your votes on Facebook, which is a rare concession by authority to say, okay, this is why I did what I did.

Amash: Yeah. Actually, a lot of the people in leadership and in Congress didn't like that I was doing that because I was giving people at home the power to challenge them. Instead of just being told this is the way it is, now I was revealing what was going on.

Gillespie: You grew up in Michigan. You went to the University of Michigan as an undergrad and for law school. Was it there that you started coming across names like Hayek, and Mises, and Friedman, Rand, and Rothbard?

Amash: Not really, no. My background is in economics, my degree is in economics. I did well in economics at Michigan, but we sure didn't study Austrian economics. We didn't study Hayek. I think he might have been mentioned in one class. Very briefly he was mentioned, like there was one day where he was mentioned. But I'd say that what happened is, as I went through my economics degree, and then I got a law degree at Michigan as well, I started to realize that I had a lot of differences from other people who were otherwise aligned with me. I was a Republican. I aligned with them on a lot of things, but there were a number of issues where we didn't align— some of the foreign policy issues, but certainly a lot of civil liberties issues. 

I started to wonder, what am I? What's going on here? I just thought of myself as a Republican, and I would read the platform and hear what they're saying. They believe in limited government, economic freedom, and individual liberty. 

But when push came to shove on a lot of issues, they didn't believe those things. They'd say they believe those things, but they didn't. I've told this story before, I just typed some of my views into a Google search, and up popped Hayek's Wikipedia page. Literally, it was like the top thing on Google. So I clicked on that, started reading about them, and I was already in my mid-20s at this time. And I was like, yes, this is what I believe.

Gillespie: It is interesting because you would have been coming of age during a time when the Republicans were ascendant. But they were the war party. And we were told after 9/11 that you should not speak freely. That was kind of a problem, right?

Amash: Yeah, sure. Throughout my life, I believed in freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and freedom of expression. These are critical values. Maybe they're the essence of everything that makes this country work. The idea that we come from a lot of places—there's an incredible amount of diversity in the United States. I think diversity is always treated or often treated like a bad word these days. But it's a blessing to our country that we have people who come from so many backgrounds. Actually, the principle of liberty is about utilizing that diversity.

It's in centrally planned systems where diversity is not utilized, where someone at the top dictates to everyone else and doesn't take advantage of any of the diversity. They say no, a few of us at the top, we know everything. It doesn't matter. All of your backgrounds, all of your skills, all of your talents, that doesn't matter. What matters is we've got a few people in a room somewhere, and they're going to decide everything. And they know best because they're experts.

Gillespie: You came into office in 2011, and it seemed like there was a real libertarian insurgency within the Republican Party. But more nationally in discourse, people were tired of continued centralization, and government secrecy—famously, a lot of Bush's activities and particularly war spending early on was done in supplemental and emergency preparations, not really open to full discussions.

All of the stuff coming out of the Patriot Act, somebody like Dick Cheney kind of saying we're in control. But then Obama also promised the most transparent administration ever and plainly did not deliver on that. 

That energy pushing back on centralization and government power and government secrecy that helped bring you and other people like you to Congress seems to have dissipated. Do you agree with that? And if so, what took that away?

Amash: Yeah, I agree with that. When I was running for office, both for State House in 2009 and when I got to Congress in 2011, there was a lot of energy behind a limited government, libertarian-ish republicanism. I felt like libertarianism was really rising. There was a chance for libertarian ideals to get a lot of traction. A lot of people who used to be more like Bush conservatives were coming around to the libertarian way. 

I felt really good about where things were heading. And for the first, I'd say three or four years that I was in Congress, I felt like we continued to move in the right direction. The creation of the Freedom Caucus was kind of a dream of bringing people together to challenge the leadership. They weren't all libertarians or anything like that. There are a few who are libertarian-leaning, but the idea that a group of Republican members—it wasn't determined that it was going to be only Republicans, but it ended up being Republicans—got together and said, "Hey, we're going to challenge the status quo. We're going to challenge the establishment." That was kind of a dream that had come together. 

Then when Donald Trump came on the scene, I think a lot of that just fell apart because he's such a strong personality and character, and had so much hold over a lot of the public, especially on the Republican side, that it was very hard for my colleagues to be able to challenge him. 

Gillespie: What's the essential appeal of Trump? Is it his personality? Is that that he said he could win and he ended up doing that at least once? Is it a cult of personality? What's the core of his appeal to you?

Amash: I think he is definitely a unique character. He has a certain charisma that is probably unmatched in politics. I don't think I've ever seen someone who campaigns as effectively as he does. It doesn't mean you have to agree with all of the ethics of what he does or any of that, or the substance. 

Gillespie: To keep it in Michigan, he's a rock star. He's Iggy Pop. You may not like what he's doing on the stage, but you can't take your eyes off it.

Amash: That's right. He holds court. When he's out there, people pay attention. He really understands the essence of campaigning, and how to win a campaign. He understands how to effectively go after opponents. Now, again, I'm not saying that all of these things are necessarily ethical or that other people should do the same things, but he really understands how to lead a populist movement. 

Gillespie: How important do you think in his appeal is a politics of resentment, that somehow he is going to get back what was taken from you?

Amash: The whole Make America Great Again, there's a whole idea there of "someone is destroying your life, and I'm going to get it back for you." That's a very powerful thing to a lot of people. For a lot of people out there, it is more important to get back at others than necessarily to have some kind of vision of how this is all going to work going forward. It's not appealing to me because I understand, we live in one country. We have people of all sorts of backgrounds. And if you're going to persuade people, you have to be able to live with them and work with them, regardless of your differences. It doesn't mean that you can't be upset, be angry about what some other people are doing or saying. But there has to be an effort to live together here as one country. We have too much in common in this country.

Gillespie: Michigan was a massive swing state when he won the election. You voted to impeach Donald Trump. What went into that calculation? What was the reaction like to that? That's a profile in courage.

Amash: Well, I don't think that's my most courageous vote, not even by a long shot. 

Gillespie: What was? Naming the post office after your father?

Amash: I didn't name any post offices after my father, to be clear. I think that the courageous votes are the ones where everyone is against you. And I don't mean just one party. It's one thing to vote for impeachment and half the country loves what you did and half the country doesn't like what you did. That's, in my mind, not that challenging or difficult. It's when you take a vote and you know that 99 percent of the public is going to misconstrue this, misunderstand it, be against it. The vote is going to be something like 433 to 1 in the House or something like that. Those are the tough votes. And there are plenty of those votes out there, where you're taking a principled stand and you're doing it to protect people's rights. But it's not the typical narrative. 

Gillespie: Is there an example that, in your legislative record, you would put forth for that?

Amash: One of the ones I've talked about before is, they tried to pass some anti-lynching legislation at the federal level and everyone's against lynching, obviously, but the legislation itself was bad and would actually harm a lot of people, including harming a lot of black Americans. There was this idea that this legislation was good and parroted by a lot of people in the media. They didn't read the legislation. In fact, I complained about it and it mysteriously did not pass both houses of Congress after I pointed out all the problems with it. It did pass the House of Representatives. Did not pass both Houses and get signed by the president. Mysteriously, the next Congress, they reintroduced it and rewrote it in a way that took into consideration all of my complaints, and they tried to pass it off like they were just reintroducing the same legislation. I pointed out: They actually saw that there was a problem here and then tried to pretend like, "Oh, we're just passing it again." Those kinds of votes are tough because when you take the vote, everyone thinks you're wrong. Everyone. And you have to go home and you have to explain it. Those are the ones that are tricky. 

Back to the impeachment point. Look, I'd impeach every president. Let's be clear. I'm not the kind of person who's going to introduce impeachment legislation over every little thing that a president does wrong. When you introduce legislation to impeach a president, you have to have some backing for it. It can't just be one person saying, let's impeach. 

For example, I would definitely impeach President Biden over these unconstitutional wars 100 percent. But the idea of introducing impeachment legislation suggests there's other people who will join you. Otherwise, it's just an exercise in futility. You introduce it. It doesn't go anywhere. It just sits there. If we're going to impeach people, there has to be some public backing, which is why I try to make the case all the time for these impeachable offenses, why some legislation should be brought forth. But you've got to get the public behind you on that kind of stuff. I think that every president should be impeached, every recent president at least. 

Gillespie: If Trump's populism, national conservatism, and politics of resentment are sucking up a lot of energy on the right, how do we deal with the rise of identity politics and a kind of woke progressivism on the left? Where is that coming from? And what is the best way to combat that?

Amash: I think a lot of it is just repackaged socialist ideas, collectivist ideas. The idea of equity, for example, is really like a perversion of the idea of equality. In most respects, when people say equity, they mean the opposite of equality. It means you're going to have the government or some central authority decide what the outcomes should be, how much each person should have, rather than some system of equality before the law, where the government is not some kind of arbiter of who deserves what. When you think about it, there is no way for the government to do this. There's no way for the government to properly assess all of our lives. This is in many ways the point of diversity: we're all so different. There's no way that a central authority can decide how to manage all that. 

For many of the people on the woke left who say they care about diversity, they don't care about diversity if they're talking about equity. These things are in conflict with each other. The idea that you're going to decide that someone is more deserving than another based on some superficial characteristics. As an example—I've talked about this and I've talked about this earlier in this conversation—my dad came here with nothing as a poor refugee. Yet, in a lot of cases, he might be classified as just a white American. Even though he came here as an extremely poor Palestinian refugee. The New York Times, for example, classifies me as white. They might classify someone else who's Middle Eastern as a person of color.

I think a lot of this is just, someone is making decisions at the top saying, "Well, we think this person is more like this or that, and we're going to decide they're more deserving." But they don't know our backgrounds. They don't know anything about us. They don't know who deserves this or who deserves that. No central authority could figure that out. The best thing we can do is have a system of equality before the law, where the law treats everyone the same. It doesn't give an advantage to any person over another person. It may not be fair in some sense to some people. Some people might say, "well, that's not fair." 

Some people, instead of having a dad who's a Palestinian refugee, their dad was some Silicon Valley billionaire. Some person might have a dad who was a professor. Another person might have a dad who worked at a fast-food restaurant. You don't know what the differences are. The government can't figure all of this out and say who is more deserving than someone else. So I really think that the woke left, when they pushed this idea of equity, they're really pushing against diversity. They're saying, a few people at the top are gonna decide who's valuable and who's not valuable, and they're not going to actually take into consideration any of our differences, because no central authority could take it into consideration.

Gillespie: You are a libertarian, not an anarchist. You believe there is a role for government, but it should be obviously much more limited. You are also an Orthodox Christian. Could you talk a little bit about how in a world of limited government, a libertarian world, the government wouldn't be doing everything for everybody, but placing organizations and institutions like the church or other types of intervening, countervailing, mediating institutions would help to fill the gaps that are left by the government?

Amash: The place for these organizations is to help society, not to have government deciding it. When you have some central authority deciding it, you are really limiting the opportunities for the public. You're limiting the opportunities for assisting people. You're deciding that a few people are going to make all the decisions, rather than having a lot of organizations and a lot of individuals making decisions. 

When you centralize it all, there are a lot of people who are going to be missed, a lot of people who are going to be ignored. When you let the marketplace work this out, when you let private organizations work this out, there is a lot more opportunity for people who need help to get help. I think that's really important.

Gillespie: There was a libertarian wave—I like to call it a libertarian moment—which I think we're still living in, but we don't understand, rhetoric aside. What are the best ways to get libertarian ideas and sensibilities in front of young people, to really energize Gen Z? The world is getting young again. How do we make sure that these people are hearing and understanding and maybe being persuaded by libertarian ideas?

Amash: For one thing, we have to meet them where they are. I spend a lot of time, for example, asking my kids, which social media kids use these days? They're in a lot of places that the adults aren't. We might be on Facebook—I mean, my generation, your generation. Other people are on X or Twitter. And there are other people on TikTok. 

You have to meet them where they are and if they're not on X and—it's still weird to call it X—if they're not on X and you are, well, they're not hearing your message. That's an issue. That's something we all have to work on. I'm probably reaching primarily Gen X and millennial people on X, and I'm probably not reaching Gen Z people as well. I think we need to work on getting them in those places.

Also, I think people who have libertarian instincts, people who want to present libertarianism and have an opportunity, go speak to students at schools. I used to do this as a member of Congress. I used that opportunity as much as I could. When schools would invite me, I'd say, "Yes, I'd be happy to come to the school to speak to the students" and take all their questions and be open about being a libertarian. Tell them frankly that your philosophy is libertarianism and talk to them about it. I think it's great. A lot of teachers end up surprised. I've had many teachers walk up to me and whisper to me, "I think I'm a libertarian, too," after having the conversation because they have stereotypes about what it might mean to be a libertarian and you have the opportunity to change their mind.

Gillespie: I have seen a lot of chatter. I have actually helped publish a lot of chatter that you may be running for the U.S. Senate from the mediocre state of Michigan. Do you have an announcement that you would like to make?

Amash: As a part of the national championship-winning state of Michigan this year, I am exploring a run for Senate. The [Federal Election Commission] FEC requires me to state that I am not a candidate for Senate, but I am exploring a run for Senate. 

If you're interested in checking it out, go to https://exploratory.justinamash.com/. I'm giving it serious thought. I think that there is an opportunity for libertarians this year, and there's an opportunity to win a Republican Senate seat this year. So I'm looking at the Republican primary. I think this is probably the best shot libertarians have had in a long time in the state of Michigan.

This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity.

Photo Credits: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Newscom; BONNIE CASH/UPI/Newscom

• Video Editor: Adam Czarnecki
• Audio Production: Ian Keyser
• Motion Graphics: Isaac Reese
• Cameras: Students For Liberty

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