Articles Posted in First Amendment

Religious Exemptions from Mandatory Vaccinations Updated: by

All states require children to be immunized or to be in the process of receiving immunizations against certain contagious diseases before a child care facility or a school may admit them. For each state, the immunization schedule may be found in the state code or its administrative regulations, usually in…

Courthouse News Wins First Amendment Case for Access to Court Records Updated: by

Courthouse News Service won a ruling in the Ninth Circuit recently for access to court filings. CNS went to federal court last year to challenge the Ventura County Superior Court policy of delaying the release of court opinions.  A U.S. district court judge dismissed the case, finding that it was…

Should Arbitration Dockets in Public Courts be Public? Updated: by

Delaware Courts of Chancery appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court recently, seeking to validate a law that would allow them to hold confidential arbitration proceedings for parties with $1M litigation at stake. Professor Judith Resnik wrote about this in the NYT Op-Ed pages,  "Renting Judges for Secret Rulings."

Pending Cases on the FISA Public Court Docket Updated: by

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has created a public docket for declassified opinions. The documents have been released through the efforts of providers like Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google, as well as advocacy groups like the ACLU and the EFF, who filed requests to publish the opinions and filings in the…

Illinois Eavesdropping Law Blocked; It “Likely Violates First Amendment,” Federal Appeals Court Rules Updated: by

A 1961 Illinois eavesdropping law "likely violates the First Amendment's free speech-speech and free-press guarantees," a federal appeals court ruled. The 69-page decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit blocks enforcement of an Illinois criminal law that made it a felony to make audio recordings of…

H.S. Senior Tweets F-word from Home; School’s Response: Get the F**k Out Updated: by

In an outrageous misunderstanding of students' off-campus free speech rights, an Indiana school district expelled a high school senior just three months shy of his graduation for tweeting an F-bomb from home at 2:30 AM. Austin Carroll says that he sent the offending F-bomb tweet from home, from his own…