First Amendment organizations are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case of a Minnesota community-college student kicked out of school over a dispute with a classmate on Facebook.
In a brief filed Wednesday, the Student Press Law Center and leading news-media organizations ask the Michigan Supreme Court to take on a case challenging the legality of secret “pre-meeting meetings” where trustees of Michigan universities discuss public business behind closed doors.
Neil O’Brien, a conservative student activist attending California State University-Fresno, was disciplined in September 2011 after he confronted two professors at their offices, with a video camera rolling, asking questions about their involvement in a campus magazine that O’Brien believed to be liberally biased.
In a 2013 ruling, a federal appeals court in Cincinnati threw out a First Amendment challenge by an anti-abortion political committee that sought to invalidate an Ohio law penalizing factually false speech in the course of political campaigns.
The Mackey-Meggs case is part of the first wave of legal challenges to state statutes making it a crime to engage in “cyberbullying” or other acts of online cruelty.
Convicted of making threats against his estranged wife and law-enforcement officers via posts on his Facebook page, Anthony Elonis challenged the conviction as a violation of his First Amendment rights.
Journalism teacher Ben Lange refused to engage in censorship that he saw unlawful based on the Iowa Student Free Expression Law.
In December 2003, Thomas Mink published articles on his website that criticized Junius Peake, finance professor at his school, the University of Northern Colorado.
In spring 2004, Kansas State Collegian adviser Ron Johnson was fired after the school’s journalism director reviewed the paper and said he found the overall quality to be poor.
In December 2005, high school senior Justin Layshock created a MySpace page parodying his principal, Eric Trosch.