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FIRE to the Supreme Court: The First Amendment applies in Texas, too
The First Amendment RetweetedDon't mess with Texas?
Don't mess with the #FirstAmendment.
Don't mess with the #FirstAmendment.
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FIRE to the Supreme Court: The First Amendment applies in Texas, too
FIRE files an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to grant certiorari and reverse the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals’ ruling that the First Amendment doesn’t apply to a Texas law criminalizing certain forms of online speech.
by Abby Smith February 2, 2023
A Texas court ruled that the First Amendment doesn’t apply in Texas. We’re asking the Supreme Court to remind Texas that it hasn’t seceded from the union just yet.
FIRE recently filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the petition for the Court to hear a First Amendment challenge filed by Charles Barton, Nathan Sanders, and their counsel at the Yale Law School Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic. Barton and Sanders were convicted under a Texas law that criminalizes sending repeated electronic communications “in a manner reasonably likely to harass, annoy, alarm, abuse, torment, embarrass, or offend another” with intent to do the same. As FIRE’s brief explains, this profoundly overbroad law violates the First Amendment and threatens to chill online speech for 30 million Texans, particularly over matters of public concern.
{snip}
As FIRE’s work shows, police and prosecutors in Texas and around the country have increasingly used similar laws to criminally charge or harass ordinary citizens for online speech protected by the First Amendment. In Laredo, Texas, for example, citizen journalist Priscilla Villarreal, known for her unfiltered local reporting on Facebook, was arrested under a different section of the Texas Penal Code for asking a police officer to confirm information she had already received from other sources. And in Louisiana, police officers entered a man’s home with their guns drawn, arrested him, and threw him in jail for violating the state anti-terrorism law. His crime? Making a joke on Facebook that compared the COVID-19 pandemic to a zombie apocalypse.
The First Amendment protects speech on the internet, even in Texas. FIRE urges the Supreme Court to grant certiorari in this case, which it will consider for the first time at its February 17, 2023 conference, to protect ordinary Texans from this extraordinary threat to free speech online.
You can read more about the case here.
Many thanks to attorneys John F. Bash, Nicholas Caluda, Seth Todd, and Emily Couture at the law firm Quinn Emanuel for their work drafting this brief pro bono on FIRE’s behalf.
FIRE files an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to grant certiorari and reverse the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals’ ruling that the First Amendment doesn’t apply to a Texas law criminalizing certain forms of online speech.
by Abby Smith February 2, 2023
A Texas court ruled that the First Amendment doesn’t apply in Texas. We’re asking the Supreme Court to remind Texas that it hasn’t seceded from the union just yet.
FIRE recently filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the petition for the Court to hear a First Amendment challenge filed by Charles Barton, Nathan Sanders, and their counsel at the Yale Law School Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic. Barton and Sanders were convicted under a Texas law that criminalizes sending repeated electronic communications “in a manner reasonably likely to harass, annoy, alarm, abuse, torment, embarrass, or offend another” with intent to do the same. As FIRE’s brief explains, this profoundly overbroad law violates the First Amendment and threatens to chill online speech for 30 million Texans, particularly over matters of public concern.
{snip}
As FIRE’s work shows, police and prosecutors in Texas and around the country have increasingly used similar laws to criminally charge or harass ordinary citizens for online speech protected by the First Amendment. In Laredo, Texas, for example, citizen journalist Priscilla Villarreal, known for her unfiltered local reporting on Facebook, was arrested under a different section of the Texas Penal Code for asking a police officer to confirm information she had already received from other sources. And in Louisiana, police officers entered a man’s home with their guns drawn, arrested him, and threw him in jail for violating the state anti-terrorism law. His crime? Making a joke on Facebook that compared the COVID-19 pandemic to a zombie apocalypse.
The First Amendment protects speech on the internet, even in Texas. FIRE urges the Supreme Court to grant certiorari in this case, which it will consider for the first time at its February 17, 2023 conference, to protect ordinary Texans from this extraordinary threat to free speech online.
You can read more about the case here.
Many thanks to attorneys John F. Bash, Nicholas Caluda, Seth Todd, and Emily Couture at the law firm Quinn Emanuel for their work drafting this brief pro bono on FIRE’s behalf.