The Freedom from Religion Foundation claims that it’s unconstitutional for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio to tweet Bible verses, as he often does [complaint letter] The question of when officials’ social media feeds should be deemed governmental in nature as distinct from personal sidelines, and what exactly that should mean in practice, has been much in the news, especially since a federal court ruled that a county supervisor in Virginia acted improperly by banning some constituents from her Facebook page. Critics have similarly sued on the theory that President Trump’s @realdonaldtrump Twitter account is a government forum that may not block viewers based on the viewpoint of their likely responses. Eugene Volokh sorts out some of the issues and notes that the Supreme Court, including some of the most liberal members, have taken the view that elected officials are free to voice religious convictions in public speeches without fear of violating the Establishment Clause. Earlier here and here.
Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’
Coral Gables sues to unmask critical social media accounts
Florida: “someone set up a handful of social media accounts criticizing the City of Coral Gables for its use of private security guards. … So in late May, deputy city attorney Miriam Ramos fired off two cease-and-desist letters and sent them to Silicon Valley, threatening to fine Facebook and Instagram $500 a day if they didn’t remove the posts, which Ramos said infringed on the city’s trademarks. Now, the city is suing Mark Zuckerberg’s multibillion-dollar businesses in an attempt to get the name, phone number, and address of whoever ‘cast the city in a false light.'” While cities can own trademarks, as in the slogans and logos used in marketing campaigns, courts are likely to accord broad recognition to fair use of those marks in discussions of civic affairs. Can cities sue over false light at all? [Jessica Lipscomb, Miami New Times; Lance Dixon/Miami Herald]
Social media liberty roundup
- “Congress is on the cusp of gutting Section 230. This is the threat we’ve always knew was coming” [Eric Goldman, R Street Institute/TechFreedom letter, Emma Llansó/CDT on SESTA, Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act]
- Psychiatrist sues to unmask author of 1-star review that caused him “extreme and constant distress” [Post and Courier]
- Judge: Loudoun County, Va. public official violated constituent’s rights by blocking him from “Chair Randall” Facebook page [Sydney Kashiwagi, Loudoun Times, Eugene Volokh, earlier on asserted First Amendment right not to be blocked or deleted on officials’ accounts]
- “Ominous: Canadian Court Orders Google To Remove Search Results Globally” [Daphne Keller/CIS via Volokh, EFF; decision defended by Neil Turkewitz, Truth on the Market]
- “Washington law bans repeated online posts intended to ‘embarrass’ anyone” [Eugene Volokh and second post on Rynearson/Moriwaki dispute]
- Blasphemy laws: Taimoor Raza becomes first person sentenced to death in Pakistan over Facebook posts [CNN]
July 19 roundup
- “Biometric Privacy Laws: How a Little-Known Illinois Law Made Facebook Illegal” [Jane Bambauer]
- Organized dentists work to block legal recognition of independent dental therapist practices [Mary Jordan, Washington Post]
- Some yearn to bring back Warren Court (or even more interventionist) antitrust doctrine. Just don’t [John McGinnis]
- “O’Neil is the Wang of Ireland” says apparel trademark disputant [Timothy Geigner, Techdirt]
- “Religious people should live under the same laws as everyone else” was a nice slogan while it lasted [Julie Zauzmer, Washington Post on nuns’ construction of chapel in field so as to block pipeline, plus resulting Twitter thread]
- “Therapy animals are everywhere, but proof that they help is not” [Karin Brulliard, Chicago Tribune]
Right to curse out one’s boss on Facebook
“It’s been two years since the NLRB determined that section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act protected an employee’s profanity laced Facebook rant simply because he ended it with a pro union message. I held out hope that the court of appeals would see the folly in the decision and send a clear message to employees and employers that such misconduct remains a terminable offense. NLRB v. Pier Sixty (2nd Cir. 4/21/17) dashed that hope.” [Jon Hyman] More: Nixon Peabody, Eric Goldman.
July 5 roundup
- Court order (arising from federal demand for information on three accounts) forbids Facebook “from communicating the existence of the warrants to its users” [Paul Alan Levy]
- “The great intellectual property trade-off”: brief guide to IP by economist Tim Harford [BBC]
- Eye-opening if dogmatic history of how federal government and other institutions connived at residential segregation [David Oshinsky in N.Y. Times reviewing Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law]
- About those “do not remove under penalty of law” mattress tags [Now I Know]
- What comes after a Congressional Review Act (CRA) repeal of a regulation? [Sam Batkins and Adam White, Cato Regulation magazine]
- Estate tax, DC Metro, bogus search-engine takedown suits, and kudos for a Democrat in my latest Maryland policy roundup [Free State Notes]
Facebook prevails in another pair of abetting-terrorism suits
“A federal judge in Brooklyn, New York, has dismissed two lawsuits that claimed Facebook should be liable for allowing terrorists to use its platform to advance violence….The plaintiffs had claimed that Palestinian terrorism organizations used the social media platform to incite and organize attacks.” [Debra Cassens Weiss, ABA Journal; Eugene Volokh (federal judge ruled “in my view quite correctly”)]
“Families of San Bernardino Shooting Sue Facebook, Google, Twitter”
“Family members of three victims of the December 2015 shooting rampage in San Bernardino, California, have sued Facebook, Google and Twitter, claiming … that by allowing Islamic State militants to spread propaganda freely on social media, the three companies provided ‘material support’ to the group and enabled attacks.” [Reuters, ABA Journal]
“Dad who live-streamed his son’s birth on Facebook loses in court”
Fair use, says a federal judge: “A father who live-streamed his son’s birth on Facebook and proceeded to sue for copyright infringement several media outlets that used the clips has lost his case.” [Joe Mullin, ArsTechnica]
Germany mulls crackdown on social media speech
In the name of combating harms from false reports as well as injury to reputation, the government of Germany is considering imposing a tough legal regime on Facebook and other social media sites. Next year it “will take up a bill that’d let it fine social networks like Facebook $500,000 [per post] for each day they leave a ‘fake news’ post up without deleting it.” Both official and private complainants could finger offending material. The new law would also require social networks to create in-country offices charged with rapid response to takedown demands, and would make the networks responsible for compensation when posts by their individual users were found to have defamed someone. [David Meyer Lindenberg, Fault Lines; Parmy Olson, Forbes]
P.S. If not closely, then at least distantly related: “Ridiculous German Court Ruling Means Linking Online Is Now A Liability” [Mike Masnick, TechDirt]