free speech

Just in From the Supreme Court

The Court refused to hear two cases, but with noteworthy separate opinions.

The Supreme Court declined to hear two cases today.  Neither case was earthshaking, but conservative Justices wrote revealing separate opinions. The case with the greatest import for environmental law was Paul v. U.S. The facts of the case had nothing to do with environmental law, but the issue involved has large implications for environmental statutes. …

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Climate Gag Rules and the First Amendment

Are climate gag rules constitutional? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

There have been recent reports about state agencies that forbid employees from discussing climate change.  Since this is obviously a restriction on speech, it’s natural to wonder what the First Amendment has to say on the subject.  The answer depends in large part on the kind of employee speech at issue. Let’s being with a ban …

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Iowa’s Attack on Animal Rights Groups and the First Amendment

Industrial farmers have a PR problem: large-scale food manufacturing tends to go hand-in-hand with incidents of animal abuse.  We can disagree about the pervasiveness of the problem, but it is nevertheless a problem.  Iowa’s solution?  Criminalize the whistleblowers. From time to time, animal rights activists infiltrate corporate agribusinesses and film various abuses, such as pigs …

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