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Tag: First Amendment

  • Fort Worth ISD to consider new prayer policy during school day for students

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    FW - September 15, 2004 - Burleson High School students pray together outside the school early Wednesday morning, at the national student prayer event, See You At the Pole, which began in Burleson in 1990. (Special to the Star-Telegram/Jessica Kourkounis)

    FW – September 15, 2004 – Burleson High School students pray together outside the school early Wednesday morning, at the national student prayer event, See You At the Pole, which began in Burleson in 1990. (Special to the Star-Telegram/Jessica Kourkounis)


    Jessica Kourkounis

    Special to the Star-Telegram/Jes

    A new state law requiring Texas school boards to vote on whether they will allow students to pray and read religious texts during the school day is up for consideration in Fort Worth on Tuesday night.

    Fort Worth ISD staff is recommending the board vote no, because the district already has a policy allowing students to pray and engage in religious expression during the school day and on school property.

    Senate Bill 11, passed during last year’s legislative session, requires Texas school boards to weigh a decision on creating a prayer policy by March 1.

    Fort Worth ISD’s existing policy says “a public school student has an absolute right to individually, voluntarily, and silently pray or meditate in school in a manner that does not disrupt the instructional or other activities of the school. A student shall not be required or coerced to engage in or refrain from such prayer or meditation during any school activity.”

    The policy also allows students to organize prayer groups and religious clubs or gatherings before, during and after the school day. A student’s religious viewpoint must be treated the same way as a student’s secular viewpoint, and district officials are barred from discriminating against a student based on their religious views.

    The restrictions of a new policy, as outlined in Senate Bill 11, require parents to submit a consent form waiving their right to take legal action against the district in regards to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which prevents the government from establishing a religion. Students must also engage in the prayer or reading outside the presence of a student who doesn’t have a signed consent form.

    The Fort Worth ISD school board meets at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

    Related Stories from Fort Worth Star-Telegram

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    Lina Ruiz

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  • Donald Trump’s Disingenuous Promise to Champion Free Speech

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    By all means, let’s cheer these heartening signs of the backbone and integrity of everyday Americans in the face of once unthinkable attacks on our democracy. But best to remember, too, that what Trump is pursuing here is an attempted criminalization of political speech the likes of which has never happened.

    Scroll through the list of members of Congress who have been convicted of crimes over the two hundred and fifty years of American history. There have been plenty of crooks, Democrats and Republicans alike, who took bribes or extorted them. But you’d have to go back to 1798 to find the one disgraceful example of a congressman prosecuted for exercising his constitutional right to free speech: Matthew Lyons, of Connecticut, was convicted and jailed for four months after publishing an editorial critical of President John Adams in violation of the Alien and Sedition Acts, which, thankfully, have long since been repealed and repudiated.

    The point is this: not even during the violent rupture of the Civil War or the Red Scare crackdown of the First World War or the worst excesses of McCarthyism did any President attempt what Trump has this week. He failed with one indictment and one grand jury, but he has three more years to go. Can anyone say confidently that he will not succeed when he tries once again to jail his political opponents for speaking out against him, as he seems so intent upon doing?

    In the immediate aftermath of news about the attempted indictment, there was a furious reaction from Democratic colleagues of the targeted six. Brian Schatz, the senator from Hawaii, called it “absolutely obscene, disgusting,” and “the stuff of dictatorships.” Chris Murphy, the senator from Connecticut, came out within minutes with a message to those “who have been biding their time and waiting for him to cross the magic red line before speaking up”; with Trump actually moving to arrest senators, Murphy suggested, now “is a good time to get off the fucking sidelines.”

    A couple of days later, it’s clear that the sidelines are still filled with those who are not likely to say anything unless and until Trump comes for them, too. On Thursday morning, when I spoke with Jason Crow, a Democratic congressman and military veteran from Colorado who was one of the six targeted members, he told me that, “in the last twenty-four hours since this news broke, zero Republicans have come up to me” or reached out to express their alarm. Instead, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a constitutional lawyer by training who certainly knows better, endorsed the failed indictment and claimed that shooting the video constituted “obstructing law enforcement.” The silence of those who so recently claimed that free speech in America was under attack by left-wing thought police speaks for itself.

    Just as worrisome is that this attempted indictment is not some crazy one-off or stupid error on the part of Jeanine Pirro, the President’s Fox News cheerleader turned U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. It’s the policy now, not the aberration. I think we have failed to appreciate that Trump has undertaken such a sweeping campaign against free speech precisely because it has proceeded so swiftly over the past year on so many fronts: lawsuits against news organizations; arrests of protesters in cities such as Chicago, Portland, and Los Angeles; the expulsion of disfavored journalists from the White House and Pentagon press corps; pressure on media ownership by Trump and other senior executive-branch officials.

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    Susan B. Glasser

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  • Don Lemon’s arrest looks like an assault on freedom of the press

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    Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, two journalists who covered a protest that disrupted services at a St. Paul church on January 18, were arrested last week on federal charges punishable by up to a decade in prison. While the protest itself entailed trespassing coupled with disorderly conduct, the attempt to treat reporting on the event as a federal felony looks like a thinly veiled assault on freedom of the press.

    Opponents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) crackdown in Minnesota targeted Cities Church because one of its pastors, David Easterwood, directs enforcement and removal operations at ICE’s field office in St. Paul. Was that a good reason to interrupt a service at his church and self-righteously harangue the congregants to the point that many of them fled?

    No, it was not. Even if Easterwood had been there, the demonstration would have been misguided, misdirected, obnoxious, morally objectionable, and plainly illegal, especially after the protesters were asked to leave and refused to do so. But that does not mean Lemon and Fort should be held criminally liable for the conduct of the people they were covering.

    Lemon, a former CNN anchor and longtime critic of President Donald Trump who hosts a YouTube show, and Fort, a local reporter who runs a livestreaming news outlet, covered an organizational meeting that preceded the protest, agreed not to divulge the protest’s location ahead of time, and recorded the event itself. According to a federal indictment filed last Thursday, those actions made them “co-conspirators.”

    Lemon and Fort allegedly conspired with the protest’s organizers to “injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate” the Cities Church worshipers “in the free exercise or enjoyment” of their religious freedom—a crime that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. The evidence supporting that charge seems skimpy.

    At one point, the indictment says, Lemon and Fort “approached the pastor” running the service, Jonathan Parnell, and “largely surrounded him.” They “stood in close proximity to the pastor,” allegedly “in an attempt to oppress and intimidate him,” and “physically obstructed his freedom of movement” while Lemon “peppered him with questions to promote the operation’s message.”

    That is one way to describe Lemon’s interaction with Parnell. Here is another way: Lemon interviewed the pastor about his response to the protest.

    Lemon’s questions were clearly sympathetic to the protesters. But the interview looks a lot more like journalism, however biased, than a conspiracy to violate someone’s constitutional rights.

    The indictment says Fort “stood in front” of “a minivan full of children” outside the church while interviewing a protest organizer. Although Fort’s behavior may have been inconsiderate, that interview likewise does not easily fit within the statute that the Justice Department is invoking.

    The indictment also charges Lemon and Fort with violating a federal law that applies to someone who, “by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates, or interferes with” a person exercising his religious freedom at a place of worship. Again, that description does not seem consistent with their conduct or their avowed intent.

    Those difficulties help explain why a federal magistrate judge who approved arrest warrants for three protesters declined to approve warrants for Lemon and Fort. When federal prosecutors asked Patrick Schiltz, a George W. Bush appointee who serves as chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Minnesota, to override that decision, he saw “no evidence” that the journalists at the scene “engaged in any criminal behavior or conspired to do so.”

    You can fault Lemon for implicitly condoning this protest, which he acknowledged was intended to be “traumatic and uncomfortable,” and for erroneously suggesting that it was protected by the First Amendment. But those misjudgments are not the same as actively participating in what the indictment calls “a coordinated takeover-style attack” on the church.

    If the evidence is not driving the case against Lemon, what is? The White House’s gloating take on his arrest suggests his real offense was political.

    © Copyright 2026 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

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    Jacob Sullum

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  • The Trump administration is lying about gun rights and the death of Alex Pretti

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    Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents shot and killed a U.S. citizen in Minneapolis, Minnesota, outside a restaurant on Saturday. The victim, 37-year-old Alex Pretti, was licensed to carry a firearm, and he had one with him. The available footage does not show every detail of what happened, but Pretti was holding a cell phone rather than his gun when the officers initiated contact and began wrestling him to the ground.

    Trump administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, have already declared the killing completely justified, claiming that Pretti had intended to murder law enforcement agents. There is no evidence of this—none whatsoever—which makes it difficult to avoid the conclusion that the administration is prepared to brazenly lie about what happened.

    Other Republican officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and FBI Director Kash Patel, are taking the position that merely bringing a gun to a protest is a violation of the law or an indication of murderous intent. This is deeply wrong, and it is in conflict with the First and Second Amendments—two fundamental rights that Republicans typically profess to care about.

    As with the killing of Renee Good two weeks ago, the legal threshold at which lethal force can be justified is whether the officer who killed Pretti reasonably feared for his own safety. Only a careful, impartial investigation can determine that. The Justice Department has declined to conduct such an investigation into Good’s death, instead seeking to investigate the victim’s family.

    Video footage of Pretti’s death shows federal agents using pepper spray on protesters. Pretti appears to be recording the altercation with his cell phone. After an agent shoves one of the protesters to the ground, Pretti moves to assist her. Several CBP agents then decide to bring Pretti down.

    It’s conceivable that the agent who shot Pretti had the impression that he was reaching for his weapon—though the first shot clearly went off after another agent disarmed the protester. It’s also possible that the killer didn’t have even that much justification. Yet federal authorities have all but ruled out that possibility, and are making abjectly false statements in support of their mendacious posture.

    Noem has repeatedly claimed it as a fact that Pretti intended to harm officers. “This individual showed up to a law enforcement operation with a weapon and dozens of rounds of ammunition,” she told reporters. “He wasn’t there to peacefully protest. He was there to perpetuate violence.” Miller flatly asserted that Pretti was a “domestic terrorist” who “tried to assassinate federal law enforcement.”

    These are lies. They have no evidence that Pretti wanted to kill anyone. Even if evidence were unexpectedly to come out tomorrow that he was secretly a would-be assassin, it would still be wrong for officials to state as fact that Pretti intended to kill. There are no known facts that establish murder as his motivation. This is a man who was watching officers interact with protesters and recording it on his phone. Contrary to what the Department of Homeland Security wrote on X, he did not approach law enforcement, let alone with a gun drawn.

    These willful omissions and obvious lies do not inspire confidence that the federal government has any interest in discovering the truth of what happened. That is a glaring indictment of the Trump administration’s approach to immigration enforcement specifically and law enforcement in general.

    As if quietly conceding that none of the available facts were advancing their preferred narrative, several Republican officials are taking the ludicrous position that merely possessing a gun in the first place is evidence of an intent to cause harm. Bessent and Patel both sided with Noem on the Sunday morning shows, agreeing that Pretti should not have possessed the gun in the first place. Bessent said the protesters should carry billboards rather than guns. Patel said that bringing a gun to a protest was a violation of the law. That is simply untrue, as Minnesota is a concealed carry state, where it is lawful to carry a firearm in a public place. The notion that an individual cannot or should not exercise his First Amendment and Second Amendment rights at the same time is usually a misguided leftist talking point; in fact, the American Civil Liberties Union has taken criticism from conservatives and libertarians for becoming squishy on this and advocating against the gun rights of protesters after the January 6 riot.

    U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli went even further in the wrong direction, writing on X: “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.”

    Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) took that to task. “Carrying a firearm is not a death sentence, it’s a Constitutionally protected God-given right, and if you don’t understand this you have no business in law enforcement or government,” wrote Massie.

    Essayli’s comments also drew a rebuke from Gun Owners of America, a lobby that defends the Second Amendment.

    “Federal agents are not ‘highly likely’ to be ‘legally justified’ in ‘shooting’ concealed carry licensees who approach while lawfully carrying a firearm,” the group wrote on X. “The Second Amendment protects Americans’ right to bear arms while protesting—a right the federal government must not infringe upon.”

    More Republicans should take their cues from Massie and Gun Owners of America. The administration is eager to jettison cherished First and Second Amendment rights to forestall any possibility that a federal agent might be held responsible for an improper shooting. If they succeed, the GOP will cease to be a political party that even pretends to care about free speech and gun rights.

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    Robby Soave

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  • Cabarrus County ends ‘draconian’ comment rules about cursing, personal attacks

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    James Campbell is escorted out of a April 15, 2024, Cabarrus County commission meeting after he addressed members of the commission by name. The county agreed to settle with Campbell.

    James Campbell is escorted out of a April 15, 2024, Cabarrus County commission meeting after he addressed members of the commission by name. The county agreed to settle with Campbell.

    Screenshot via CabCoTV.

    Cabarrus County commissioners voted 4-1 on Tuesday night to approve a new public-participation policy that rolls back restrictions on what residents can say at board meetings, a move commissioners said was necessary to comply with a recent North Carolina Court of Appeals decision on free speech.

    The change came after months of scrutiny surrounding the county’s public-comment rules, which drew a federal lawsuit last year after a resident was removed from a meeting and banned from attending meetings for 90 days after he allegedly violated the county’s policy.

    While the new policy removes restrictions on profanity, personal insults and other harsh language in public comment, one commissioner said the change could invite abusive language into county meetings.

    “We can basically allow hate speech in here under this policy,” Commissioner Jeff Jones warned, arguing the revised rules could intimidate residents from speaking for fear of “abuse” and could lead to more censorship rather than free-speech rights. “I cannot promote hate speech, and I can not promote any policy that allows obscenity, vulgarity and profanity. I think it degrades the civic discourse of this meeting. It can lower the standards of debate. I think it lowers the standards of Cabarrus County.”

    Commissioners approved the new policy after County Attorney Doug Hall said the board was responding to guidance from a state court case, State v. Barthel. The case, decided in November, involved charges tied to a profane banner displayed during an Avery County Board of Commissioners meeting. The Court of Appeals vacated a conviction under North Carolina’s “disrupting an official meeting” law, finding the speech at issue was protected by the First Amendment and emphasizing that government officials “cannot require citizens to be polite when criticizing their representatives.”

    “I certainly hear what Commissioner Jones is saying, but I think these changes that you all are considering tonight are more or less necessary for us to comply with this new case,” Hall said.

    During Tuesday’s meeting, Commissioner Larry Pittman said he personally disliked profanity and vulgar speech, but said he believed the board had little choice.

    “I don’t want that stuff in here, but if we’re constrained by a lawsuit that says we can’t do that anymore, we need to work on changing some minds in the judiciary on that,” he said. “And meanwhile, we have to put up with it. I hate that, but that’s just how it is.”

    The new Cabarrus policy vote follows prior controversy over the county’s old rules. Last month, Cabarrus County agreed to publicly acknowledge it had misspoken about its participation policy and provide training for newly elected or appointed commissioners after settling a free-speech lawsuit brought by a county resident. The lawsuit argued the county violated the First Amendment by removing a resident from a meeting and banning him.

    Commissioner Ian Patrick, who made the motion to approve the new rules on Tuesday night, told The Charlotte Observer before the meeting that the policy was being updated as part of the board’s annual review process, but also because the Court of Appeals “basically said that there are almost no restrictions on what the public can and can’t say in public meetings,” aside from the need to keep meetings orderly.

    Patrick said he believed the old Cabarrus rules were too restrictive even before the ruling, describing them as “draconian” and objecting to language requiring residents to show “respect” toward commissioners.

    “They absolutely do not have to respect us if they don’t,” Patrick said. “We work for the public. It’s not the other way around. … I believe that it should be a free-speech policy.”

    Patrick reiterated his point on Tuesday night, saying public officials are obligated to listen even when the public’s speech is harsh.

    “We are public officials. We are accountable to the people,” Patrick said. “If they have something they want to say to us, whether we like it or not, we have to sit up here and listen to it. … I believe this policy should have been changed long ago.”

    This story was originally published January 21, 2026 at 7:45 AM.

    Related Stories from Charlotte Observer

    Nora O’Neill

    The Charlotte Observer

    Nora O’Neill is the regional accountability reporter for The Charlotte Observer. She previously covered local government and politics in Florida.

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    Nora O’Neill

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  • Colorado got schooled by the courts on our constitutional freedoms, again in 2025 (Opinion)

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    2025 was the year of remedial education for the Colorado General Assembly.

    Since legislators in the majority just can’t seem to understand the First Amendment, they got schooled by the courts on multiple occasions.

    Constitution 101: the First Amendment forbids government agencies, federal, state or local, from enacting a law or regulation “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech.”

    The government cannot quash or coerce speech, establish religion or prevent its exercise. If state legislators and regulators learn these principles, taxpayers will not have to foot the bill for yet another needless trip to the U.S. Supreme Court.

    Lesson one: Agencies cannot abridge free speech by forcing people to parrot the government’s ideological message. That’s called coerced speech. A week ago, a Biden-appointed federal judge blocked Colorado from enforcing a 2025 law, House Bill 1161, that requires cigarette pack-style health warnings on gas stoves and imposes a fine of up to $20,000 per violation if they don’t.

    The judge agreed with the plaintiffs, the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, that the law likely infringes on their First Amendment freedoms. “The court disagrees that the labeling requirement merely enables customers to access information — the only reason customers can access this information is because the State compels peddlers of gas stoves to speak it,” the court ruled. “Further … whether the information is truthful and accurate is subject to substantial disagreement within the scientific community.”

    In addition to familiarizing themselves with the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers v. Weiser decision, legislators will want to read the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in the Colorado case 303 Creative LLC vs Elenis and the cases it cites as homework.

    Lesson two: The government cannot abridge free speech by censoring it. Earlier this year, Kaley Chiles, a licensed professional counselor, defended her First Amendment rights to the Supreme Court. A 2019 law prohibits counselors from helping clients come to terms with their biological sex through talk therapy. The law threatens counselors with thousands of dollars in fines and a potential loss of license unless they stick to government-approved speech. Based on the justices’ questions during oral argument, the Colorado law is likely to be struck down.

    In addition to familiarizing themselves with the Chiles v. Salazar case, legislators will want to read Riley v. National Federation of the Blind of N.C., Inc. and the National Institute of Family & Life Advocates. v. Becerra decisions as homework.

    Lesson three: The government cannot establish religion, or prohibit its exercise. Laws must be neutral toward religion neither advancing nor hindering its practice, and the government cannot discriminate against people for their beliefs. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court received 19 friend-of-the-court briefs from 22 states, numerous representatives from policy and law think tanks and various faith traditions, and Colorado families urging the Supreme Court to hear St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, a suit brought by the Archdiocese of Denver, two Catholic parishes, and two parents of preschool-age children. Colorado has been excluding Catholic preschool providers from its “universal” state preschool program for upholding church doctrines. Catholic families seeking a preschool education that aligns with their faith must pay out of pocket while other families get 15 hours of preschool education for free.  That’s not fair or consistent with the First Amendment.

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    Krista Kafer

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  • Justice Department says filming immigration raids is ‘domestic terrorism’

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    After leaving the Chicago area in November, U.S. Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino made an unexpected return on December 16, along with several hundred federal agents and a film crew. Returning to the same aggressive tactics that sparked protests earlier this year, local officials criticized Bovino for using immigration operations as a form of political theater. 

    In a statement to the Chicago Sun-Times, a spokesperson for Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson called out agents for allegedly arresting people indiscriminately and without arrest warrants. The mayor’s office also criticized them for filming the raids and “[turning] these operations into a spectacle.”

    “This activity is occurring alongside a film crew, which appears to be using these raids to create content at the expense of traumatizing families,” said the spokesperson. “These tactics are destabilizing, wrong, and must be condemned.” 

    But this is not the first time a federal agency has filmed immigration operations for political theater. In addition to being tasked with carrying out record levels of deportations, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under President Donald Trump has seemingly been transformed into a propaganda arm to sell the public on the president’s increasingly unpopular immigration policies. Examples include a video posted on X by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem of agents raiding a South Shore apartment building on September 30 and a video posted on the DHS’ official Instagram account depicting various immigration arrests.

    As Bovino and the DHS have embraced the power of cinema to document immigration arrests and promote current policies, the Trump administration is also cracking down on individuals who choose to record immigration operations. In a December 4 memo, originally leaked by journalist Ken Klippenstein, the Justice Department encourages federal prosecutors to press “domestic terrorism” charges against people for “doxing” law enforcement officers. While undefined in the memo, “doxing” in this context is understood to mean the publishing of information that identifies law enforcement officers, which the Justice Department insinuates is a threatening activity used to “silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society.” 

    This definition mirrors previous statements by DHS officials earlier this year, including a statement made by Noem in July: “Violence is anything that threatens [agents] and their safety, so it’s doxing them, it’s videotaping them where they’re at when they’re out on operations.”

    However, much of what the Trump administration tries to paint as the unacceptable “doxing” of law enforcement agents is often observers merely recording on-duty officers—an activity firmly protected by the First Amendment when no physical interference or danger is present, and an important tool for holding public officials accountable. By broadly defining domestic terrorism to include something as vague as “doxing,” the Trump administration has rolled out a “nationwide policy of intimidating and threatening people who attempt to observe and record DHS operations,” according to David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute.

    Under such a broad definition, even the DHS’ own camera crews and media hired specifically to record and publish details of immigration operations could potentially be prosecuted for domestic terrorism. The only limiting factor in the memo seems to be whether the publisher is considered Trump’s political ally or opponent, i.e., an “Antifa-aligned extremist,” which the December 4 memo defines, in part, as someone with “extreme viewpoints on immigration,” such as “mass migration and open borders.” 

    But the right to free speech isn’t taken away when someone says or does something that the government disagrees with. Attempting to define who is and isn’t protected by the First Amendment is not only unconstitutional, but also a strategy that could put even Trump’s allies at the mercy of federal prosecutors.  

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    Autumn Billings

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  • Detained immigration activist Jeanette Vizguerra must get bail hearing before Christmas, judge rules

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    Immigration authorities must provide detained activist Jeanette Vizguerra with a bail hearing in the next week, a federal judge ruled Wednesday in Denver.

    The order offers an avenue for potential temporary release for Vizguerra, an immigrant without proper legal status who has spent nine months in federal immigration detention.

    The activist was arrested in March and has been fighting efforts by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain and deport her ever since. The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Nina Wang requires that authorities give Vizguerra the opportunity to seek a temporary release before an immigration judge in Aurora’s detention center by Christmas Eve.

    Her hearing is currently set for Friday morning, according to one of her attorneys, Laura Lichter.

    If granted bail, Vizguerra would be released from detention while her immigration case continues to wind its way through the courts. Because Vizguerra is fighting her deportation both in federal court and in immigration court, it will likely be “many months or even years” before her case is fully resolved, Wang said.

    The Mexico-born activist has lived in the United States for more than 30 years and has repeatedly fought attempts to deport her, though she accepted a voluntary departure in 2011. During the first Trump administration, she sought shelter in a Denver church and was named by TIME as one of the most influential people of 2017. She left the church’s sanctuary and was given reprieves by ICE.

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    Seth Klamann

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  • Alex Hunter, Boulder’s longest-serving DA and key figure in JonBenét Ramsey case, dies at 89

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    In the end, Alex Hunter picked the day of his death.

    Boulder’s longest-serving district attorney — who defined more than a quarter century of criminal justice for the region and oversaw the early years of the JonBenét Ramsey case — had exhausted all options for medical care after suffering a heart attack in mid-November.

    The 89-year-old spent several days in Colorado hospitals, alert and cogent, saying goodbye to colleagues, friends and family.

    Then he picked 1:30 p.m. Friday as the time for medical staff to stop the life-supporting medicines keeping him alive. He drifted off and died later that evening, a month shy of his 90th birthday, said his son, Alex “Kip” Hunter III, who is acting as a spokesman for the family.

    “He was just crystalline clear,” Hunter III said Monday. “He was intentional and purposeful, gracious and elegant. …He had come to a place where he was totally at peace with the scope of his life.”

    Hunter spent 28 years as Boulder County’s elected top prosecutor, serving seven consecutive terms between 1973 and 2001. He forged a community-driven, progressive, victim-focused approach to prosecution and helped shape Boulder’s reputation as a liberal enclave.

    He faced intense public scrutiny in the late 1990s after 6-year-old JonBenét was killed and, in the ensuing media firestorm, he chose not to bring charges against her parents — even after a grand jury secretly returned indictments against them during his final term.

    Hunter kept a picture of the young beauty queen in his office and, throughout, stood by his controversial decision in the city’s highest-profile murder case, his son said.

    “He probably suffered more criticism as a result of that than any other moment in his career,” Hunter III said. “And yet he remained confident till he died that that was the right decision.”

    In 1997, Hunter named JonBenét’s parents, John and Patsy, as a focus in the investigation into their daughter’s killing. More than a year later, Hunter announced that Boulder County’s grand jury had completed its work investigating the case, and that there was not sufficient evidence for charges to be filed against the Ramseys.

    He was roundly criticized during the early years of the Ramsey case, featured in tabloids and The New Yorker. Some called for a special prosecutor to replace him, and a Boulder detective resigned from the case, accusing Hunter of compromising the investigation. Outsiders said Boulder needed a tough-on-crime prosecutor — decidedly not Hunter — to bring justice to JonBenét’s killer.

    What Hunter kept secret in 1999 was that the grand jury had voted to indict the parents on charges of child abuse resulting in death — essentially alleging the Ramseys placed their daughter in a dangerous situation that led to her death — but that he’d declined to sign the indictments and move forward with a prosecution, believing he could not prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.

    That highly unusual detail remained secret until it was reported by the Daily Camera more than a decade later.

    “It was so like him to refuse the grand jury instruction,” Hunter III said. “Because he believed in his heart that it would have a negative impact on the outcome of the case.”

    Over time, Hunter came to realize the Ramsey case would define his career, even if he would rather it did not. He was surprised by how it followed him even years after his retirement, Hunter III said.

    “Horrible crimes happen every day, and that was a horrible crime, but it’s had legs, it’s had a life that I think often surprised Dad in particular,” Hunter III said. “I think that a lot of Dad’s 28 years as the district attorney perhaps got lost in the JonBenét Ramsey case.”

    From left, Adams County Chief Deputy District Attorney Bruce Levin, Assistant Boulder County District Attorney Bill Wise, Denver Chief Deputy District Attorney Mitch Morrissey, Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter and the JonBenét Ramsey grand jury’s special prosecutor, Michael Kane, walk outside the Ramsey family’s former Boulder home on Oct. 29, 1998. (Photo by Paul Aiken/Daily Camera)

    ‘Doing the right thing time and time again’

    Through the decades, Hunter was attuned to the Boulder community in a way few others ever were — for years, he invited cohorts of random voters into his office on Tuesday nights for candid discussions on crime and the courts, and he often made decisions and implemented policy based on what he heard in those meetings.

    He was a master at reading a room and took pride in surrounding himself with good people, said Dennis Wanebo, a former prosecutor in the Boulder DA’s office.

    He rarely faced any serious opposition on the ballot.

    “He was there for 28 years,” said Peter Maguire, a longtime Boulder prosecutor during Hunter’s tenure. “And you don’t do that without being the consummate politician who has his finger on the pulse of the community, and by doing the right thing time and time again.”

    Hunter was first elected by a narrow margin in 1973 in no small part because he promised to stop prosecuting possession of marijuana as a felony — prompting University of Colorado students to vote for him in droves, said Stan Garnett, who served as Boulder district attorney beginning in 2009.

    Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter is pictured in this October 1980 photo. (Photo by Dave Buresh/The Denver Post)
    Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter is pictured in this October 1980 photo. (Photo by Dave Buresh/The Denver Post)

    Hunter was part of a wave of Democratic leadership that swept through Boulder in the 1970s. He hosted his own talk radio show for a while in the 1980s, and ran up Flagstaff Road almost every workday, leaving at 11:30 a.m. and having his secretary collect him at the top and return him to the courthouse. He was media-savvy and funny, charming and articulate.

    He declared bankruptcy in the 1970s after a failed real estate venture left him $6 million in debt. Hunter married four times and had five children, one of whom, John Hunter-Haulk, died in 2010 at the age of 20 — the “heartbreak of his life,” that Hunter never fully moved past, his son said.

    In the late 1970s, after regularly hearing people’s displeasure with plea agreements, Hunter declared that his office would no longer offer plea bargains in any cases, instead requiring defendants to plead guilty to the original charges or take their cases to trial.

    The effort quickly failed as the court system buckled under the increased number of jury trials.

    “People made fun of him at the time, other DAs mocked him for it and said it was a fool’s errand,” Wanebo said. “And maybe in hindsight it can be looked at that way. And yet there was also a very good secondary effect of that for our office, which was, we got really careful about what we charged people with.”

    ‘A Renaissance man’

    Hunter was moveable when he made mistakes, Maguire said, though he needed to be convinced through either a reasoned or political argument — this is what the community wants — to change his stances.

    “Alex was a Renaissance man,” Garnett said. “He was interested in everything. And he was very thoughtful, very kind. He was very ethical.”

    Tom Kelley, a former First Amendment attorney for The Denver Post, remembered a time in which he convinced Hunter that he was legally obligated to release some criminal justice records to the newspaper. Kelley swung by the courthouse to pick the records up, and Hunter met him, leading Kelley through the courthouse’s winding back hallways in search of the records.

    Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter makes his way down a hill in front of the Boulder County Justice Center, through a mass of media and bystanders, on his way to announce that the grand jury in the JonBenét Ramsey case was disbanding without taking action on Oct. 13, 1999. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
    Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter makes his way down a hill in front of the Boulder County Justice Center, through a mass of media and bystanders, on his way to announce that the grand jury in the JonBenét Ramsey case was disbanding without taking action on Oct. 13, 1999. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)

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  • Muslim civil rights group CAIR sues Texas over Abbott’s ‘terrorist’ designation

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    A prominent Muslim advocacy organization is taking Texas to court, arguing that Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to brand it a “foreign terrorist organization” tramples both the U.S. Constitution and state law.

    The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin chapters filed a federal lawsuit Thursday seeking to overturn Abbott’s proclamation issued earlier in the week.

    “This attempt to punish the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization simply because Governor Abbott disagrees with its views is not only contrary to the United States Constitution, but finds no support in any Texas law,” the group said in its lawsuit.

    Founded in 1994, CAIR operates 25 chapters nationwide, including a small Texas staff of eight employees and two contractors, according to the filing.

    TEXAS GOV ABBOTT DECLARES CAIR, MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD AS TERRORIST GROUPS, PREVENTING LAND PURCHASES

    The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin chapters asked a federal judge to strike down the declaration from the governor. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

    “CAIR-Texas and the Texas Muslim community are standing up for our constitutional rights by directly confronting Greg Abbott’s lawless attack on our civil rights,” CAIR-Texas said in a statement. “We are not and will not be intimidated by smear campaigns launched by Israel First politicians like Mr. Abbott. Mr. Abbott is defaming us and other American Muslims because we are effective advocates for justice here and abroad. We plan to continue exercising our constitutional rights, defending civil rights, and speaking truth to power, whether in defense of free speech, religious freedom and racial equality here in Texas or in defense of human rights abroad.”

    Abbott’s order extended the “terrorist” label to the Muslim Brotherhood, even though federal authorities have never classified either group that way.

    The governor’s decree also bars CAIR from purchasing land in the Lone Star State under a new statute aimed at curbing purchases tied to “foreign adversaries.”

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott arrives at press conference

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s proclamation states that CAIR is blocked from purchasing land in the Lone Star State. (Antranik Tavitian/Reuters)

    The group’s filing contends Abbott relied on “inflammatory statements with no basis in fact,” selectively citing remarks by affiliates to paint CAIR as sympathetic to terrorism.

    “The lawsuit we have filed today is our first step towards defeating Governor Abbott again so that our nation protects free speech and due process for all Americans,” CAIR Litigation Director and General Counsel Lena Masri said in a statement. “No civil rights organizations are safe if a governor can baselessly and unilaterally declare any of them terrorist groups, ban them from buying land, and threaten them with closure. We have beaten Greg Abbott’s attacks on the First Amendment before, and God willing, we will do it again now.”

    The Muslim Legal Fund of America also said it is “proud to defend the constitutional rights of CAIR-Texas and the right of all Texans to engage in free speech and uphold civil rights without facing lawless and defamatory attacks by Greg Abbott.”

    “Mr. Abbott’s unconstitutional proclamation undermines the very foundational notions of due process that our system depends upon and it must not stand,” said Muslim Legal Fund of America attorney Charlie Swift. “For the sake of our nation’s basic freedoms, Greg Abbott’s latest attack on the American people must be defeated.”

    ANTI-ISLAM PROTESTERS, MUSLIMS CLASH IN DEARBORN, MICHIGAN, AFTER MAN ATTEMPTS TO BURN QURAN

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in front of microphone

    CAIR accused the governor of relying on “inflammatory statements that have no basis in fact.” (Ron Jenkins/Getty Images)

    Earlier this year, Texas Republicans sought to stop a Muslim-centered planned community around one of the state’s largest mosques near Dallas.

    Abbott and other Republican state officials opened investigations into the development linked to the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC), claiming the group is attempting to create a Muslim-exclusive community that would implement Islamic law.

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    EPIC City representatives called the attacks alleging Islamic law misleading, dangerous and without basis.

    The U.S. Justice Department closed a federal civil rights investigation into the planned community without bringing any charges or lawsuits.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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  • Supreme Court turns away dispute over pregame prayer at high school football games

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    Washington — The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a legal fight involving a Christian school that wanted to broadcast a pregame prayer over the stadium loudspeaker before a championship football game, turning away a major religious liberty dispute on the heels of a 2022 decision involving prayer in schools.

    In rejecting the appeal, the high court will not reconsider a 25-year-old decision that found student-led and initiated prayer at football games unconstitutional. There were no noted dissents.

    The legal battle before the justices was brought by a Tampa-based Christian school that wanted to broadcast a brief prayer before a state championship football game through the stadium’s public-address system. But the Florida High School Athletic Association denied the request, which the schools argued violated their rights to free exercise of religion and free speech.

    The school, Cambridge Christian, asked the Supreme Court to overturn its 2000 ruling in the case Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe. In that decision, the court held that the school district’s policy of allowing student-led, student-initiated prayer at football games violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

    But in declining to take up the appeal from the school, that 25-year-old decision will remain in place. Also left intact is a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in favor of the FHSAA, which found that use of the loudspeaker by the Christian schools to engage in communal prayer before a state-organized football game would be government speech.

    The dispute dates back to 2015, when Cambridge Christian School and University Christian were set to square off in the Class 2A state championship, played at the Citrus Bowl in Orlando. Ahead of the championship game set for that December, a representative for University Christian asked the state athletics association for permission to say a pregame prayer over the stadium’s loudspeaker. 

    But the association informed the schools that neither would be allowed to use the public-address system to broadcast a prayer before the game. The then-head of Cambridge Christian re-upped the request to Dr. Roger Dearing, executive director of the Florida athletics group, asking he “allow two Christian schools to honor their Lord before the game and pray” over the loudspeaker.

    But Dearing denied the schools’ request, and said he believed federal law prevented him from granting permission to broadcast a pre-game prayer because the Citrus Bowl is a public facility and the FHSAA is a “state actor,” and therefore cannot allow communal prayer. The athletics association instead suggested the two schools come together before the start of the game to pray, which they did.

    After the game, Dearing told the schools that he believed that if the athletic association were to allow prayer over the broadcast system, the state could be seen as endorsing or promoting religion in violation of the Establishment Clause. He cited the Supreme Court’s 2000 decision in the dispute involving the Santa Fe Independent School District.

    Cambridge Christian sued the FHSAA in 2016, alleging that it had violated its First Amendment rights. A federal district court ruled in favor of the athletics association in March 2022. As to the school’s free speech claims, the trial court found the pregame speech broadcast over the PA system at the state championship game is government speech. 

    As to the free exercise claims, the court ruled that Cambridge Christian’s religious rights were not violated when it was refused access to the loudspeaker for pregame prayer. The school appealed the decision.

    After the district court’s ruling, the Florida legislature enacted a law requiring the FHSAA to allow schools participating in a high school championship contest the chance to make brief opening remarks, if requested, through the public address system.

    When the 11th Circuit reviewed the district court’s decision, it agreed that pregame speech over the PA system at a FHSAA football championship game — which takes place at a neutral site — constitutes government speech.

    The appeals court also rejected Cambridge Christian’s free exercise claim, finding that the FHSAA was regulating its own expression when it prevented pregame speech over the public-address system at the 2015 championship game.

    The school appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the athletic association allowed private speech over its loudspeaker but impermissibly censored private religious speech, only because it was religious.

    Its lawyers warned in a filing that if the 11th Circuit’s decision were to stand, “state actors will be able to claim that virtually all private speech and religious exercise in a government setting lacks First Amendment protection.” 

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  • Rutgers teachers’ union backs Antifa-linked professor, blasts Turning Point USA students

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    A Rutgers University teachers’ union released a statement Tuesday defending Antifa-aligned professor Mark Bray and hitting the school’s Turning Point USA chapter, which launched a petition to have him removed.

    “Rutgers Professor and AAUP-AFT member Dr. Mark Bray has come under attack from Turning Point USA’s Rutgers chapter for his public scholarship,” the Rutgers AAUP-AFT Academic Worker Union said in a Tuesday X post.

    “As a result of this attack, he has been doxxed and threatened and has had to leave the country to protect himself and his family,” the statement continued. “As members of the Rutgers and New Jersey labor community, and as unions committed to the defense of our coworkers, we stand in strong solidarity with Professor Mark Bray and his partner, Professor Yesenia Barragan. We affirm the principles of academic freedom and support strong First Amendment rights for all workers in higher ed and beyond.”

    RUTGERS CONSERVATIVES WHO CHALLENGED ‘DR ANTIFA’ SAY THEY’RE BEING PUNISHED AS UNIVERSITY BACKS PROFESSOR

    The Rutgers Scarlet Knights logo is shown on concrete before the game between the Rutgers Scarlet Knights and the Oregon Ducks at SHI Stadium on Oct. 18, 2025, in Piscataway, New Jersey. (Isaiah Vazquez/Getty Images)

    The statement follows weeks of controversy surrounding Bray.

    Earlier this month, members of Rutgers’ Turning Point USA chapter launched a petition to remove Bray, an assistant teaching professor at Rutgers, citing concerns over his past statements supporting Antifa.

    Bray, who recently moved abroad “for safety reasons” and said that he had been doxxed and “received multiple death threats,” has expressed strong support for “antifacism” ​​in previous online posts.

    ‘DR ANTIFA’ RUTGERS PROFESSOR ANNOUNCES MOVE TO EUROPE AFTER TPUSA PETITION CALLS FOR HIS FIRING

    Split image Spain coastline and Mark Bray

    The seaside town and natural bay of Calella de Palafrugell on Catalonia’s Costa Brava. (L) Mark Bray, a Rutgers assistant professor of history, waits in a hotel room in Newark, N.J., before a planned flight to Spain on Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey; iStock)

    In an earlier statement posted at the beginning of October supporting Bray, the Rutgers AAUP-AFT called Turning Point USA “part of a larger network of groups and elected officials who have targeted faculty at Rutgers and around the country. The bad-faith effort to frame Dr. Bray as a threat to students and to get him fired is an affront to Rutgers’ values of academic freedom, as well as to Turning Point’s self-proclaimed commitment to a culture of open debate.”

    Whitney Strub, associate professor at Rutgers who has taught courses including Introduction to LGBT Studies, Visions of the City in American Cinema, and Gender and Sexuality in American History, among others, is also co-chair of the Joint Academic Freedom Committee at the Rutgers AAUP-AFT.

    Strub posted about Kirk’s assassination on X on Sept. 10, writing, “I don’t actually think Charlie Kirk is going to be our Archduke Franz Ferdinand or Reichstag fire, Trump himself got shot last year and everyone forgot about it within a week. We just live in a violent dystopian hell and this is completely normal.”

    He added, “Sorry to see Charlie Kirk didn’t make it. I deplore gun violence & find it tacky to speak ill of the dead so tomorrow I’ll pay my respects by protesting in my diapers.”

    RUTGERS CHANCELLOR LAUNCHES SAFETY REVIEW, ‘ACADEMIC FREEDOM’ TASK FORCE AMID ‘DR ANTIFA’ UPROAR

    rutgers-flag-and-mark-bray

    The chancellor of Rutgers University said the Ivy League institution is committed to academic freedom and will be launching a safety review and “academic freedom” task force amid the ongoing controversy surrounding Antifa-aligned professor Mark Bray.  (Isaiah Vazquez/Getty Images, AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey)

    Megyn Doyle, a student at Rutgers and the treasurer for the Turning Point USA chapter, who started the petition to remove Bray, told Fox News Digital in a statement that the Rutgers AAUP-AFT statement is “defamatory.”

    “The Statement from the union says our petition caused ‘Doxxing and death threats’ and we have deprived students of the ability to exchange ideas in the classroom,” Doyle said.

    She added, “This statement is not only defamatory, but it also defends an Antifa Professor who is affiliated with The Black Rosa Anarchist federation that calls for ‘mass civil disobedience,’ ‘militancy,’ ‘Illegal strikes,’ and wants to make sure that in 20 years it’s costly to say you voted for Trump.”

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    “This ‘academic freedom’ that the union is suggesting we are destroying is just Mark Bray’s repeated hostility towards conservatives,” Doyle said.

    Ava Kwan, the chapter’s outreach coordinator, told Fox News Digital in a statement that “The Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union (Rutgers AAUP-AFT) will not stop with their incessant lies about our TPUSA chapter.”

    She added, “Their choice of language, claiming Bray is under ‘attack’ by us is evidence that they are grasping at straws, unsuccessfully attempting to manipulate the narrative about Dr. Antifa’s terrorist activities. Everyone knows that advocating for preemptive violence against so-called fascists and financing a domestic terrorist organization is not protected speech.”

    Fox News Digital reached out to Rutgers and Bray for comment.

    Rachel del Guidice is a reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to rachel.delguidice@fox.com.

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  • Texas can’t force book vendors to rate books according to sexual content, district court decides

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    In a moral panic over allegedly damagingly filthy content in books that schoolchildren could access, Texas passed a law in 2023 known as the Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources (READER) Act. Aspects of the law that compelled certain behaviors from vendors who sold books into the school system were overturned last week in a decision in Book People v. Wong from U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright.

    The law’s purpose, as the decision summarized it, was “to regulate access to school library books deemed ‘sexually explicit’” (which were to be barred entirely) “or ‘sexually relevant’” (which were to require parental consent).

    Albright found elements of the law plainly unconstitutional because they required booksellers who sold to Texas schools to “categorize any books they sell or have ever sold to schools” and to “issue a recall for any ‘sexually explicit’ materials that they sold to schools.”

    The Texas Education Agency (TEA) would “oversee the ratings, which includes the power to overrule a vendor’s rating,” and by law, “booksellers who do not comply with the rating system (or the overruled ratings)…[could] not sell any books at any of the schools.”

    A group of plaintiffs—including a Texas bookstore, the American Booksellers Association, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund—sued over the law in July 2023. Last week, the court granted their motion for summary judgment against those aspects of the READER Act that directly affected them.

    Under READER, the booksellers would have to decide what material should be labeled “sexually explicit” or “sexually relevant,” which included determining whether the work was “so offensive on its face as to affront current community standards of decency.”

    TEA’s power to overrule the booksellers’ ratings meant that the state agency had, as Albright put it, the “power to substitute its own speech for a vendor’s…the vendors must forego their own determinations and allow the TEA to exercise its unilateral rating authority….To do business with public schools, vendors must accept that the TEA is allowed to publish its own determination as the vendor’s own. Vendors have no mechanism to appeal the TEA’s determination. They must simply accept the substituted speech, or lose their ability to sell library materials to public schools.”

    Since the law allowed TEA to attribute its own ratings to the booksellers, Albright concluded that “READER is compelling speech” by requiring booksellers “to rate books and adopt the governments’ ratings as their own.” The ratings that would be on public display per the law are presented, the court concluded, as “the vendor’s speech, not the government’s,” but could be controlled by the government.

    “READER imposes unconstitutional conditions on a party’s ability to contract with the government, because it requires Plaintiffs to surrender their First Amendment rights in order to do any business with public schools,” the decision concludes. “READER also compels Plaintiffs to assign ratings to books when they would prefer not to. The First Amendment protects against the government compelling a person to speak its message when he would prefer to remain silent or to include ideas within his speech that he would prefer not to include.”

    Albright’s decision also found aspects of the sections of the law he overturned unconstitutionally vague. Those portions of READER require booksellers to “assign subjective, confusing, and unworkable Rating Requirements. Even the TEA could not clearly define how a book seller could determine whether a book is ‘sexually relevant,’ in ‘active use,’ ‘directly related to the curriculum,’ or which community standards apply.”

    The decision lays out the vexatious potential 16 steps that booksellers had faced under READER as originally passed in order to obey the rating requirements. “Looking for what would often be considered ‘obscene’ is not instructive—because READER’s test is not like the normal ‘obscenity’ test standards” since the law’s failure “to account for a work’s literary, artistic, political, or scientific value encourages ad hoc judgments which can vary from bookseller to bookseller. READER therefore qualifies as void for vagueness.”

    Those aspects of the law had earlier been temporarily enjoined in an August 2023 decision and now have been quashed permanently.

    This doesn’t mean Texas is not still dedicated by law to imposing certain purity tests on the material available in its schools, and it will continue to do so. Albright’s decision spells out that “the government has the power to do the contextual ratings for the books itself. The government has the power to restrict what books its school purchase, within the confines of the Constitution, and there is a meaningful interest in curating educational content for children. But those powers should be exercised by the state directly—not by compelling third parties to perform it or risk losing any opportunity to engage in commerce with school districts.” By the letter of the law before this decision, if a publisher was selling directly to Texas schools and failed to rate according to the state’s desires, per the now-enjoined Sec. 35.003(d), schools would be forbidden to buy any book from them.

    For now, booksellers are no longer dragooned into being part of a rating regime, but the state still has the power to set its own restrictive standards in ways that will likely reflect the judgments, tastes, and opinions of only a portion of the public whom school libraries are supposed to serve. Jeff Trexler, the interim director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, notes that the sort of branding associated with a state barring or pulling books from libraries can stigmatize a book such that many other parties “might have a tendency to not want to buy it, or bookstores to carry it, and that stigma can have a devastating effect on the graphic novel market.” (Trexler’s group has a special interest in the current wave of states targeting books since comics’ visual nature, and even the fact that comics in book form are often called “graphic novels,” lead many to assume that the way they deal with any issue in any way intersecting human sexuality or other political hot-button topics is unacceptably “graphic” in a sexual sense.)

    The state’s side has already filed an appeal in Book People v. Wong.

    Another case involving book curation decisions in Texas public libraries, Little v. Llano County, is currently seeking consideration from the U.S. Supreme Court, which has not yet decided whether to take it on. The issues and background are explained in Publishers Weekly this week, which sums up:

    At stake in Little v. Llano County are fundamental First Amendment protections that apply in public libraries, including the right to receive information, and whether or not library collections are a form of “government speech,” as a plurality in the Fifth Circuit contended. The case would determine how much control public officials exert over library collection decisions, from book removals to approved selections, and would set precedent for not only public libraries but public school classrooms, public K–12 libraries, and higher education.

    The last time the Supreme Court considered the question of conflicts between school library decisions and First Amendment rights was Island Trees School District v. Pico (1982). The justices split 4–4 on the First Amendment question and established no clear precedent, though in an opinion from Justice William Brennan joined by two other judges, Brennan posited that “whether petitioners’ removal of books from the libraries denied respondents their First Amendment rights depends upon the motivation behind petitioners’ actions. Local school boards may not remove books from school libraries simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to ‘prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.’”

    To highlight the culture-war passions underlying Book People v. Wong, Texas state Rep. Jared Patterson (R–Frisco) said in response to an earlier iteration of the case that any court deciding to restrict READER’s vendor rating requirements was siding “with book vendors who push pornography on unsuspecting children in our public schools.”

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  • Labor unions sue Trump administration over social media monitoring of visa holders

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    Three labor unions filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Thursday, arguing that the federal government violated the First Amendment rights of visa holders legally in the U.S. by using a program to search their social media for specific viewpoints, including criticism of the U.S. government and Israel.

    United Auto Workers, Communications Workers of America and the American Federation of Teachers sued the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

    This comes after the State Department said it had revoked the visas of at least six people over social media comments made about late conservative activist Charlie Kirk following his murder last month.

    “Plaintiffs represent thousands of people whose speech is chilled by the threat of adverse immigration action if the government disapproves of anything they have expressed or will express,” the lawsuit reads.

    TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TO VET LEGAL IMMIGRANT APPLICANTS FOR ‘ANTI-AMERICANISM’ AND ANTISEMITISM

    Three labor unions sued the Trump administration over alleged First Amendment violations of visa holders. (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

    Administration officials have purported that foreigners do not have the same constitutional rights as U.S. citizens and do not have a right to hold a visa, as the federal government seeks to target them for speech.

    “The United States is under no obligation to allow foreign aliens to come to our country, commit acts of anti-American, pro-terrorist, and antisemitic hate, or incite violence. We will continue to revoke the visas of those who put the safety of our citizens at risk,” State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott said in a statement.

    The lawsuit points to high-profile cases and the comments of federal officials to argue that a government program uses artificial intelligence and other automated tools for surveillance of visa holders’ posts and targets people critical of the Trump administration and what the government considers to be “hateful ideology.”

    The federal government has broadly defined support for terrorism to include criticism of U.S. support for Israel and the Jewish State’s military action, as well as support for Palestinians. The government has used this as a justification to cancel visas.

    FEDERAL JUDGE LAUNCHES SCATHING BROADSIDE OF TRUMP’S EFFORTS TO DEPORT PRO-PALESTINIAN PROTESTERS

    Marco Rubio

    The State Department said it had revoked the visas of at least six people over social media comments made about late conservative activist Charlie Kirk following his murder last month. (Getty Images)

    The unions’ complaint cited the case of green card holder Mahmoud Khalil, who was released in June following months in detention after the government attempted to deport him for participating in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University.

    The lawsuit said the immigration threats over views disapproved by the government have prompted some union members to withdraw from publicly affiliating with their unions at organizing events, step down from leadership roles and “deleted, refrained from, or otherwise altered their social media and online engagement with the unions.”

    “This loss of engagement has harmed the plaintiffs’ ability to further their organizational missions and impeded their ability to carry out their responsibilities, which include recruitment, retention, and organization of union members; advocacy on behalf of union members; and the promotion of civic and political engagement among union members,” the lawsuit said.

    Many union members have stopped expressing their views because “the government has promised and proven that saying the wrong thing can trigger life-altering immigration consequences, particularly for visa holders and Lawful Permanent Residents,” the complaint reads.

    Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks

    The federal government has broadly defined support for terrorism to include criticism of U.S. support for Israel. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

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    Since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, the administration has searched for online posts to target foreigners for the potential rescinding of their visa.

    On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order to ensure visa holders “do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles, and do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.”

    Over the summer, the State Department said it would start requesting that applicants make their social media accounts public for government monitoring and that interviews with applicants would determine who may pose a threat to national security.

    Reuters contributed to this report.

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  • The Pentagon’s new press policy is absurd

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    No one is happy about the Pentagon’s new press policy. Earlier this week, media outlets spanning the political spectrum almost universally declined to sign on to a memorandum issued by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth: It would require defense reporters to promise that they will not seek to obtain unauthorized information.

    “Information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified,” the memorandum states.

    Hegseth is, of course, within his rights to forbid his own employees from leaking stories to journalists, to the extent that’s possible. Federal officials who leak classified documents can be prosecuted under existing law (although it is often in the public’s interest for them to do so anyway). But if anything is to be done, government policy should place constraints on government employees—not on journalists, or the public. Obviously reporters are going to try to induce Pentagon officials to provide information, even if it’s not “approved for public release” by Hegseth’s personal PR department.

    This is so obvious that it’s effectively nonpartisan, which is why conservative news outlets Fox News, Newsmax, The Daily Caller, Real Clear Politics, and The Washington Examiner have joined liberal and mainstream organizations in rejecting the agreement. In fact, the only outlet that has agreed to the Pentagon’s terms is One America News Network (OANN), which is effectively tied to the administration: Kari Lake, overseer of the government-funded broadcaster Voice of America, announced earlier this year that the platform would use content from OANN. (As an aside, this is a very good argument against government-funded media, be it right-leaning or left-leaning.)

    The major broadcast channels issued a joint statement that read in part: “The policy is without precedent and threatens core journalistic protections. We will continue to cover the U.S. military as each of our organizations has done for many decades, upholding the principles of a free and independent press.”

    In response, the department is attempting to split hairs.

    “The policy does not ask for them to agree, just to acknowledge that they understand what our policy is,” said Sean Parnell, a spokesperson for the Pentagon, in a statement. “This has caused reporters to have a full blown meltdown, crying victim online. We stand by our policy because it’s what’s best for our troops and the national security of this country.”

    But whether it’s agreeing to the policy or acknowledging the policy, this comes to the same thing: The Pentagon doesn’t want reporters asking questions and obtaining answers without Hegseth’s approval. That’s self-evidently absurd, and is not in the interests of liberals, or conservatives, or more importantly, the American public.

    Why liberals should reject such a policy is fairly obvious: Trump-critical journalists should feel free to hold the administration to account. But even MAGA-friendly reporters don’t want to feel deterred from doing their jobs. For instance, imagine if a conservative outlet obtained a tip that some Defense sub-department was still using DEI in hiring, or had issued a policy directive that is contrary to America First, or had simply misappropriated taxpayer funds. (This last example is hardly theoretical: the Pentagon has failed seven audits in a row!) It might be embarrassing for Hegseth that this had happened under his watch, and he might wish to suppress a news report on it; his incentive would be to decline to authorize the release of information about the situation, or to release it in a way that is flattering to the administration’s perspective.

    But conservative news organizations shouldn’t play by those rules: They would be doing their readers, viewers, and subscribers a disservice if they did.

    It’s to the Trump administration’s credit that they have made space for new media, podcasters, and social media influencers in the press pool. President Trump and his comms team understand that more and more Americans are getting news and information from a more diverse array of content providers who make use of all the new platforms available to them: YouTube, X, Spotify, Instagram, Substack, Rumble, and so on. The old world is dead, etc. etc.

    But that doesn’t mean that all the habits of legacy media should be discarded along with it. Too often, the new media folks resort to cheerleading for the administration and fail to ask tough questions. We don’t want that. Old media should learn from new media—in terms of how to communicate with new audiences—and new media should learn from old media concerning the fundamentals of reporting. We don’t want that to disappear entirely.

     

    There was a big story in Politico early this week that has earned considerable attention on social media: “‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat.” The reporter obtained chat logs in which the leaders of various young Republican groups expressed racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, and pro-nazi sentiments—sometimes straddling the line between irony and offensive humor, and other times descending into overt nastiness and prejudice. This has been a big topic of conversation, and since I’m known for defending young people who get canceled over offensive speech, several people have asked for my opinion. Here are my thoughts, in no particular order:

    • The participants in this chat aren’t that young. They’re in their 20s and 30s. I think in the modern era, in which social media and texting—default modes of communication for young people—provide a live transcript of everything that everyone has ever said since birth, it makes sense to practice broad forgiveness up until the age of adulthood. These texts shouldn’t ruin lives if penned by 16-year-olds. But two of the most prominently shamed individuals are aged 24 and 31. That makes it much worse.
    • Many prominent voices on the right, including Vice President J.D. Vance and commentator Matt Walsh, are downplaying the significance of the story. Vance said people who are fixated on attacking these “kids” needed to “grow up,” and Walsh suggested that conservatives turning on each other was a bigger problem. What I would say in response to them is that even if you don’t have a particular moral objection to the offensive language your youth activists are using, it nevertheless would be smart politically to encourage them not to praise Hitler! That’s because most normal people find this weird and off-putting. People don’t want to give money to Hitler apologists, they don’t want to hire Hitler apologists, and they don’t want to vote for Hitler apologists.
    • That said, everybody clutching their pearls extremely aggressively here would probably be surprised if a running transcript of their lives were made public. We all use edgier language in private settings, around friends, and when we feel safe to do so. This is particularly true for young guys. The availability of technology that makes it easier for guys to segregate themselves into single-sex communications spaces is definitely having a kind of radicalizing effect on how far the average Gen-Z or millennial male is willing to push the envelope in terms of crude humor. This chat may have been on the extreme end of that, but I think it is by no means unusual, unfortunately.
    • Nevertheless, there are very solid, practical reasons to develop habits of restraint, especially if you are a political activist working in the domain of communications. Edgy, offensive, ironic humor about “gas chambers” is not going to help elect Republicans. Moreover—and I have to think this is at least part of the story—it’s not going to help these guys in social situations, particularly social situations involving women. They do want wives and families, right? This is often listed as a top concern of young MAGA dudes: finding a woman who shares their values and wants to start a family—a task made more difficult due to increasing gender-based polarization. Many, many women who are otherwise politically conservative will be turned off by the kinds of views expressed in the Young Republicans group chat; Heil Hitler is not a great pickup line.
    • It is inarguably the case that Nick Fuentes—an “America First” podcaster who expresses views that are abjectly anti-Semitic and racist—is enjoying a huge surge in popularity. Conservative personalities who do not want to turn over their movement to a man who doesn’t just joke about being pro-Hitler, but is actually pro-Hitler, need to come up with a better strategy than either ignoring him (does not work) or deplatforming him (also does not work).

     

    I am joined by Amber Duke—and later this week, Andrew Heaton—to discuss the top news stories: John Oliver slamming Bari Weiss, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s turn, and more.

    Subscribe to the Free Media YouTube channel for more coverage.

     

    I have returned to a familiar well: Agatha Christie! I have just begun reading The Secret of Chimneys, and am thoroughly enjoying it. It really feels like a Poirot novel, and so I have to keep reminding myself that the beloved Belgian detective doesn’t turn up in this one, sadly.

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  • Is conversion therapy free speech?

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    Imagine a conservative state bans therapists from talking to gay or transgender minors in a way that affirms their sexual orientation or gender identity. That would cross a line, right? Whatever conservative lawmakers personally think about homosexuality or gender dysphoria, preventing LGBTQ-affirming counseling is an affront to the First Amendment.

    For this same reason, Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy should be opposed.

    It’s one thing to personally oppose counseling practices aimed at suppressing same-sex attraction or someone’s questioning of their gender identity. But it’s quite another to use government power to stop anyone from engaging in this sort of talk therapy—and the latter is incompatible with the U.S. Constitution.

    That’s the crux of Kaley Chiles’ case before the U.S. Supreme Court this week.

    And oral arguments in the case yesterday made clear that more than just Colorado’s conversion therapy ban is at stake here. If allowed to stand, it could pave the way for talk therapy restrictions based on conservative views of sexuality and gender, too.

    Is Therapy Speech or Conduct?

    In Chiles v. Salazar, the Court is being asked to consider whether Colorado’s conversion therapy ban violates the First Amendment. The state bans licensed therapists and counselors from engaging in “any practice or treatment” that “attempts or purports to change” a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity or any “behaviors or gender expressions” associated with it. It also bans treatments aimed at “eliminat[ing] or reduc[ing] sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”

    Chiles, a licensed counselor, sued over the law, alleging that it is a form of “viewpoint-based censorship.” Chiles is “a practicing Christian who views her career as an outgrowth of her faith,” her lawyers wrote in their petition to the Supreme Court. “Many of Chiles’s clients are also Christian and specifically seek her help because of their shared faith-based convictions and biblical worldview.”

    Chiles doesn’t seek to impose her beliefs on unsympathetic patients, but “after discussing a client’s objectives, desires, and religious or spiritual values,” she will sometimes engage with them in counseling designed to suppress same-sex attraction or gender discontent, said her lawyer.

    Colorado argued that the conversion therapy law bans conduct, not speech, and this is permitted by the First Amendment. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit agreed with Colorado. 

    Because other federal appeals courts have held that counseling conversations are speech, not therapy, the case was prime fodder for Supreme Court review.

    Justices Seem Skeptical of Colorado Claims

    During oral arguments yesterday, Chiles’ lawyer argued that if there were medical conduct involved—things “like administering drugs, performing procedures, conducting examinations”—then “that would take it outside of the arguments we’re making.” But because Chiles’ work only involves speech and yet would fall into the purview of the ban, that makes the ban an unconstitutional viewpoint-based restriction on speech and subject to a standard of review known as strict scrutiny.

    But “a healthcare provider cannot be free to violate the standard of care just because they are using words,” lawyer Shannon W. Stevenson argued on behalf of the state of Colorado. Stevenson also noted that the law only banned conversion therapy by state-licensed professionals, not by unlicensed church counselors or life coaches. 

    Stevenson also argued, somewhat nonsensically, that counseling a teen who wanted to reduce his feelings of attraction for another male would only be banned “if the therapist told him, or he asked, ‘Can you help me become straight?’” But “if it was, ‘Can you help me cope with my feelings as to how I am and how I want to live my life?’ that’s permitted.” That seems like something of an unworkable legal distinction, and also at odds with the plain text of Colorado’s statute, which also bans attempts to change “behaviors” associated with sexual orientation. 

    In any event, several Supreme Court justices seemed skeptical of Colorado’s claim that the regulation doesn’t illegally censor speech. And it wasn’t just conservative justices who appeared unconvinced that the conversion therapy ban was legal.

    “If a doctor says, ‘I know you identify as gay, and I’m going to help you accept that,’ and another doctor says, ‘I know you identify is gay, and I’m going to help you to change that,’ and one of those is permissible, and the other is not, that seems like viewpoint discrimination in the way we would normally understand viewpoint discrimination,” liberal Justice Elena Kagan said.

    “Can a State Pick a Side?”

    Taking on the state’s argument that the ban was OK because it was consistent with prevailing standards of care, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch asked if a state “could forbid a regulated licensed professional from affirming homosexuality if that were consistent with the then-prevailing standard of care?” Or, if current prevailing standards of care were to change, “then a state could pass a mirror image statute to Colorado’s that prohibits any attempt to affirm changes of gender identity or sexual orientation?”

    As this and multiple other lines of questioning from the justices made clear, Colorado’s arguments could open the door to states banning talk therapy that doesn’t uphold a conservative viewpoint. And this seems like an important consideration at a time when Republicans—from local school board officers up to the president—have been increasingly aggressive about the idea that “gender ideology” is harmful to children.

    “It’s pretty important that we think about how this would apply to cases down the road,” suggested conservative Justice Amy Comey Barrett. “So let me describe medical uncertainty as competing medical views, and let’s say that you have some medical experts that think gender-affirming care should be—is dangerous to children and some that say that this kind of conversion talk therapy is dangerous. Can a state pick a side?”

    Under Colorado’s line of argument, it would seem that they could.

    Or, as Chiles’ lawyer put it in court yesterday, Colorado’s rationale “would allow states to silence all kinds of speech in the counseling room, such as disfavored views on divorce or abortion.”

    Regulations like Colorado’s also make it difficult for the sort of broad and nuanced discussions that are crucial to therapy to take place. After all, not everyone who seeks counseling for issues related to gender will wind up identifying as transgender or nonbinary or anything of the sort. Some will just be uncomfortable with gender roles and norms placed upon them; others will be exploring their identities. A broad but also somewhat vague ban like Colorado’s, makes it hard for counselors to really explore the root causes of discomfort. And that’s not helpful.

    Missouri Attempts to Mislead Voters About Abortion Amendment

    In 2024, Missourians passed Amendment 3, a constitutional amendment protecting abortion access. It specified that “the Government shall not deny or infringe upon a person’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom, which is the right to make and carry out decisions about all matters relating to reproductive health care, including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion care, miscarriage care, and respectful birthing conditions.”

    Now, Missouri Republicans are trying to reverse this with a new ballot measure—also called Amendment 3—that would repeal the previous amendment and also enshrine in the state’s constitution a ban on “sex-change procedures for children.”

    But they’re also obscuring the true nature of the amendment in voter information about the measure. An initial ballot summary “was so blatantly biased that a judge has already forced Secretary of State Denny Hoskins to rewrite it—twice,” write Jessica Valenti and Kylie Cheung. “The third version finally passed legal muster, but that doesn’t mean it’s anywhere close to unbiased.”

    Here’s what the summary language now approved by a judge says the new Amendment 3 would do:

    • Guarantee women’s medical care for emergencies, ectopic pregnancies, and
    miscarriages.
    • Ensure women’s safety during abortions.
    • Ensure parental consent for minors.
    • Repeal Article I, section 36, approved in 2024; allow abortions for medical
    emergencies, fetal anomalies, rape, and incest.
    • Prohibit sex-change procedures for children.

    This summary “doesn’t explicitly state that the amendment, if passed by voters, would again ban most abortions in Missouri,” notes St. Louis public radio. It also gives the (false) impression that the amendment would newly allow abortions for medical emergencies and so on.

    “The ACLU of Missouri said in a statement it intends to appeal not only the ballot summary and fair ballot language, but also for a violation of the state’s single subject clause,” St Louis public radio reports.

    “Despite three attempts, the state’s ballot summary still fails to give voters a clear and honest understanding that Amendment 3 would end Missourians’ fundamental right to reproductive freedom, a right we approved just last November,” Tori Schafer, director of policy and campaigns for the ACLU of Missouri, said.

    More Sex & Tech News

    IDs compromised on Discord: As age verification laws proliferate, we’re seeing more and more examples of the kinds of security breaches that I and many other opponents of these laws have warned about. The latest comes from Discord, where some users may have had their driver’s license or passport images compromised. “Recently, we discovered an incident where an unauthorized party compromised one of Discord’s third-party customer service providers,” the company revealed on October 3. Breached data may have included Discord usernames, real names, email addresses, IP addresses, and some “government‑ID images (e.g., driver’s license, passport) from users who had appealed an age determination.”

    Rich schools more likely to have cell phone bans: A new study looks at cell phone policies in U.S. public schools. In the representative sample studied, almost all—96.68 percent—had some sort of official cell phone policy. But these policies varied widely. Overall, “bans were less strict in high schools,” note the study authors. “Bans were also less strict in low-poverty and medium-poverty neighborhoods compared with high-poverty neighborhoods; the reasons for this pattern warrant further investigation.”

    A robot tax? Senate Democrats are pushing a “robot tax” that would fine companies for using artificial intelligence to “expand automation.” Such a tax “would hobble American innovation,” Kevin Frazier writes.

    Today’s Image

    Virginia Beach | 2019 (ENB/Reason)

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  • Supreme Court hears arguments on whether states can ban conversion therapy for LBGTQ+ kids

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    The Supreme Court will hear arguments in its latest LGBTQ+ rights case Tuesday, weighing the constitutionality of bans passed by nearly half of U.S. states on the practice known as conversion therapy for children.The justices are hearing a lawsuit from a Christian counselor challenging a Colorado law that prohibits therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation or gender identity. Kaley Chiles, with support from President Donald Trump’s Republican administration, argues the law violates her freedom of speech by barring her from offering voluntary, faith-based therapy for kids.Colorado, on the other hand, says the measure simply regulates licensed therapists by barring a practice that’s been scientifically discredited and linked to serious harm.The arguments come months after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority found states can ban transition-related health care for transgender youths, a setback for LGBTQ rights. The justices are also expected to hear a case about sports participation by transgender players this term.State says therapy is health care and subject to regulationColorado has not sanctioned anyone under the 2019 law, which exempts religious ministries. State attorneys say it still allows any therapist to have wide-ranging, faith-based conversations with young patients about gender and sexuality.“The only thing that the law prohibits therapists from doing is performing a treatment that seeks the predetermined outcome of changing a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity because that treatment is unsafe and ineffective,” Colorado state attorneys wrote.Therapy isn’t just speech, they said — it’s health care that governments have a responsibility to regulate. Violating the law carries potential fines of $5,000 and license suspension or even revocation.Linda Robertson is a Christian mom of four from Washington state whose son Ryan underwent therapy that promised to change his sexual orientation after he came out to her at age 12. The techniques led him to blame himself when it didn’t work, leaving him ashamed and depressed. He died in 2009, after multiple suicide attempts and a drug overdose at age 20.“What happened in conversion therapy, it devastated Ryan’s bond with me and my husband,” she said. “And it absolutely destroyed his confidence he could ever be loved or accepted by God.”Chiles contends her approach is different from the kind of conversion therapy once associated with practices like shock therapy decades ago. She said she believes “people flourish when they live consistently with God’s design, including their biological sex,” and she argues evidence of harm from her approach is lacking.Chiles says Colorado is discriminating because it allows counselors to affirm minors coming out as gay or identifying as transgender but bans counseling like hers for young patients who may want to change their behavior or feelings. “We’re not saying this counseling should be mandatory, but if someone wants the counseling they should be able to get it,” said one of her attorneys, Jonathan Scruggs.The Trump administration said there are First Amendment issues with Colorado’s law that should make the law subject to a higher legal standard that few measures pass.Similar laws also face court challengesChiles is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal organization that has appeared frequently at the court in recent years. The group also represented a Christian website designer who doesn’t want to work with same-sex couples and successfully challenged a Colorado anti-discrimination law in 2023.The group’s argument in the conversion therapy case also builds on another victory from 2018: A Supreme Court decision found California could not force state-licensed anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers to provide information about abortion. Chiles should also be free from that kind of state regulation, the group argued.Still, the Supreme Court has also found that regulations that only “incidentally” burden speech are permissible, and the state argues that striking down its law against conversion therapy would undercut states’ ability to regulate discredited health care of all kinds.The high court agreed to hear the case after the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld the law. Another appeals court, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, has struck down similar bans in Florida.Legal wrangling has continued elsewhere as well. In Wisconsin, the state’s highest court recently cleared the way for the state to enforce its ban. Virginia officials, by contrast, have agreed to scale back the enforcement of its law as part of an agreement with a faith-based conservative group that sued.

    WASHINGTON —

    The Supreme Court will hear arguments in its latest LGBTQ+ rights case Tuesday, weighing the constitutionality of bans passed by nearly half of U.S. states on the practice known as conversion therapy for children.

    The justices are hearing a lawsuit from a Christian counselor challenging a Colorado law that prohibits therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation or gender identity. Kaley Chiles, with support from President Donald Trump’s Republican administration, argues the law violates her freedom of speech by barring her from offering voluntary, faith-based therapy for kids.

    Colorado, on the other hand, says the measure simply regulates licensed therapists by barring a practice that’s been scientifically discredited and linked to serious harm.

    The arguments come months after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority found states can ban transition-related health care for transgender youths, a setback for LGBTQ rights. The justices are also expected to hear a case about sports participation by transgender players this term.

    State says therapy is health care and subject to regulation

    Colorado has not sanctioned anyone under the 2019 law, which exempts religious ministries. State attorneys say it still allows any therapist to have wide-ranging, faith-based conversations with young patients about gender and sexuality.

    “The only thing that the law prohibits therapists from doing is performing a treatment that seeks the predetermined outcome of changing a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity because that treatment is unsafe and ineffective,” Colorado state attorneys wrote.

    Therapy isn’t just speech, they said — it’s health care that governments have a responsibility to regulate. Violating the law carries potential fines of $5,000 and license suspension or even revocation.

    Linda Robertson is a Christian mom of four from Washington state whose son Ryan underwent therapy that promised to change his sexual orientation after he came out to her at age 12. The techniques led him to blame himself when it didn’t work, leaving him ashamed and depressed. He died in 2009, after multiple suicide attempts and a drug overdose at age 20.

    “What happened in conversion therapy, it devastated Ryan’s bond with me and my husband,” she said. “And it absolutely destroyed his confidence he could ever be loved or accepted by God.”

    Chiles contends her approach is different from the kind of conversion therapy once associated with practices like shock therapy decades ago. She said she believes “people flourish when they live consistently with God’s design, including their biological sex,” and she argues evidence of harm from her approach is lacking.

    Chiles says Colorado is discriminating because it allows counselors to affirm minors coming out as gay or identifying as transgender but bans counseling like hers for young patients who may want to change their behavior or feelings. “We’re not saying this counseling should be mandatory, but if someone wants the counseling they should be able to get it,” said one of her attorneys, Jonathan Scruggs.

    The Trump administration said there are First Amendment issues with Colorado’s law that should make the law subject to a higher legal standard that few measures pass.

    Similar laws also face court challenges

    Chiles is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal organization that has appeared frequently at the court in recent years. The group also represented a Christian website designer who doesn’t want to work with same-sex couples and successfully challenged a Colorado anti-discrimination law in 2023.

    The group’s argument in the conversion therapy case also builds on another victory from 2018: A Supreme Court decision found California could not force state-licensed anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers to provide information about abortion. Chiles should also be free from that kind of state regulation, the group argued.

    Still, the Supreme Court has also found that regulations that only “incidentally” burden speech are permissible, and the state argues that striking down its law against conversion therapy would undercut states’ ability to regulate discredited health care of all kinds.

    The high court agreed to hear the case after the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld the law. Another appeals court, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, has struck down similar bans in Florida.

    Legal wrangling has continued elsewhere as well. In Wisconsin, the state’s highest court recently cleared the way for the state to enforce its ban. Virginia officials, by contrast, have agreed to scale back the enforcement of its law as part of an agreement with a faith-based conservative group that sued.

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  • Trump’s presidency faces crucial tests as Supreme Court begins pivotal term

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    The Supreme Court will launch its new term Monday with a focus on controversial prior rulings and a review of President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive agenda.

    After a three-month recess, the nine justices met together for the first time this week to reset their docket, and discuss appeals that have piled up over the summer. The high court will resume oral arguments to confront issues like gender identity, election redistricting, and free speech.

    But looming over the federal judiciary is the return of Trump-era legal battles. The administration has been winning most of the emergency appeals at the Supreme Court since January, that dealt only with whether challenged policies could go into effect temporarily, while the issues play out in the lower courts — including immigration, federal spending cuts, workforce reductions and transgender people in the military.

    In doing so, the 6-3 conservative majority has reversed about two dozen preliminary nationwide injunctions imposed by lower federal courts, leading to frustration and confusion among many judges.

    FEDERAL JUDGES ANONYMOUSLY CRITICIZE SUPREME COURT FOR OVERTURNING DECISIONS WITH EMERGENCY RULINGS

    The nine Supreme Court justices pose for their official portrait inside the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 7, 2022. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images )

    Now those percolating petitions are starting to reach the Supreme Court for final review — and legal analysts say the bench may be poised to grant broad unilateral powers to the president.

    The justices fast-tracked the administration’s appeal over tariffs on dozens of countries that were blocked by lower courts. Oral arguments will be held in November.

    In December, the justices will decide whether to overturn a 90-year precedent dealing with the president’s ability to fire members of some federal regulatory agencies like the Federal Trade Commission. 

    And in January, the power of President Trump to remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors will be tested in a major constitutional showdown. For now, the Biden-appointed Cook will remain on the job.

    “A big fraction of the Supreme Court’s docket will present the question: ‘can President Trump do?’— then fill in the blank. And that could be imposing tariffs; firing independent board members; removing illegal aliens; sending the military into cities like Los Angeles,” said Thomas Dupree, a prominent appellate attorney and constitutional law expert. “So, much of what the Supreme Court is deciding this term is whether the president has acted within or has exceeded his authority.” 

    The tariffs dispute will be the court’s first major constitutional test on the merits over how broadly the conservative majority high court views Trump’s muscular view of presidential power, a template for almost certain future appeals of his executive agenda.

    Presidential prerogative or power push?

    In earlier disputes over temporary enforcement of those policies, the court’s left-leaning justices warned against the judiciary becoming a rubber stamp, ceding its power in favor of this president.

    After a late August high court order granting the government the power to temporarily terminate nearly $800 million in already-approved health research grants, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said her conservative colleagues had “ben[t] over backward to accommodate” the Trump administration. “Right when the Judiciary should be hunkering down to do all it can to preserve the law’s constraints, the Court opts instead to make vindicating the rule of law and preventing manifestly injurious Government action as difficult as possible. This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins.”

    But some of Jackson’s colleagues have denied they are paving the way for Trump’s aggressive efforts to redo the federal government.

    FEDERAL APPEALS COURT WEIGHS TRUMP BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP ORDER AS ADMIN OUTLINES ENFORCEMENT DETAILS

    Ketanji Brown Jackson

    Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stands as she and members of the Supreme Court pose for a new group portrait following her addition, at the Supreme Court building in Washington, Oct. 7, 2022.  (J. Scott Applewhite, File/AP Photo)

    “The framers recognized, in a way that I think is brilliant, that preserving liberty requires separating the power,” said Justice Brett Kavanaugh earlier this month at a Texas event. “No one person or group of people should have too much power in our system.”

    And Justice Amy Coney Barrett told Fox News’ Bret Baier three weeks ago that she and her colleagues “don’t wear red and blue, we all wear black because judges are nonpartisan … We’re all trying to get it right. We’re not playing for a team.”

    Barrett, who is promoting her new book, “Listening to the Law,” said her court takes a long-term view, and is not reflexively on Trump’s side.

    “We’re not deciding cases just for today. And we’re not deciding cases based on the president, as in the current occupant of the office,” Barrett told Fox News. “I think the judiciary needs to stay in its lane … we’re taking each case and we’re looking at the question of presidential power as it comes. And the cases that we decide today are going to matter, four presidencies from now, six presidencies from now.”

    KAVANAUGH CITES 3 PRESIDENTS IN EXPLAINING SUPREME COURT’S BALLOONING EMERGENCY DOCKET

    U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett is seen at the White House shortly after her Senate confirmation in October 2020. Justice Barrett delivered remarks at the 2025 Seventh Circuit Judicial Conference at the Swissotel hotel in Chicago, Illinois, on August 18, 2025. (Getty Images)

    Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Seventh Circuit Judicial Conference in Chicago on Aug. 18, 2025. (Getty Images)

    These sharp court fractures between competing ideologies will likely escalate, as the justices begin a more robust look at a president’s power, and by dint, their own.

    Divisive decisions

    “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Trump cryptically posted on social media a month after retaking office.

    Federal courts have since been trying to navigate and articulate the limits of the executive branch, while managing their own powers.

    Yet several federal judges — appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents — have expressed concern that the Supreme Court has been regularly overturning rulings by lower courts dealing with challenges to Trump administration policies — mostly with little or no explanation in its decisions.

    Those judges — who all requested anonymity to speak candidly — tell Fox News those orders blocking enforcement have left the impression they are not doing their jobs or are biased against the President.

    TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TORPEDOES SCOTUS WITH EMERGENCY REQUESTS AND SEES SURPRISING SUCCESS

    President Donald Trump takes press questions.

    President Donald Trump speaks during a White House press conference on Supreme Court rulings in Washington, D.C. on June 27, 2025.  (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

    Those frustrations have spilled into open court.

    “They’re leaving the circuit courts, the district courts out in limbo,” said federal appeals Judge James Wynn about the high court, during oral arguments this month over the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to Social Security data.

    “We’re out here flailing,” said Wynn, an Obama bench appointee. “I’m not criticizing the justices. They’re using a vehicle that’s there, but they are telling us nothing. They could easily just give us direction, and we would follow it.”

    Courting controversy

    The president may be winning short-term victories in a court where he has appointed a third of its members, but that has not stopped him or his associates from criticizing federal judges, even calling for their removal from office when preliminary rulings have gone against the administration.

    “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” Trump posted on social media, after a March court ruling temporarily halting the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members.

    The target of the attack was DC-based Chief Judge James Boasberg, appointed to the bench by President Obama.

     Top Trump White House policy advisor Stephen Miller, in interviews, has warned against some unaccountable and “communist crazy judges” “trying to subvert the presidency.” 

    TRUMP TURNS TO SUPREME COURT IN FIGHT TO OUST BIDEN-ERA CONSUMER SAFETY OFFICIALS

    Stephen Miller gesturing at the podium

    White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller speaks during a press briefing at the White House, Thursday, May 1, 2025, in Washington, D.C.  (Alex Brandon/AP Photo)

    According to an analysis by Stanford University’s Adam Bonica, federal district judges ruled against the administration 94.3% of the time between May and June. 

    But the Supreme Court has in turn reversed those injunctions more than 90% of the time, giving the president temporary authority to move ahead with his sweeping reform agenda.

    As for the rhetoric, the high court has walked a delicate path, reluctant to criticize Trump directly, at least for now.

    “The fact that some of our public leaders are lawyers advocating or making statements challenging the rule of law tells me that, fundamentally, our law schools are failing,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor at a recent Georgetown University Law Center event, without naming Trump by name. “Once we lose our common norms, we’ve lost the rule of law completely.”

    Chief Justice John Roberts in March offered a rare public statement criticizing impeachment calls from the right.

    But several federal judges who spoke to Fox News also wish Roberts would do more to assert his authority and to temper what one judge called “disturbing” rhetoric.

    The U.S. Marshals Service — responsible for court security — reports more than 500 threats against federal judges since last October, more than in previous years. Law enforcement sources say that includes Boasberg, who, along with his family, has received physical threats and intimidating social media posts.

    TURLEY: JUSTICE JACKSON SHOWS ‘JUDICIAL ABANDON’ IN LONE DISSENT ON TRUMP LAYOFF RULING

    Charlie Kirk in October 2024.

    Charlie Kirk was a conservative activist who led Turning Point USA. (Alex Brandon/The Associated Press)

    “I think it is a sign of a culture that has, where political discourse has soured beyond control,” said Justice Barrett in recent days.

    “The attacks are not random. They seem designed to intimidate those of us who serve in this critical capacity,” said Justice Jackson in May. “The threats and harassment are attacks on our democracy, on our system of government.”

    The administration in recent days asked Congress for $58 million more in security for executive branch officials and judges, following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist who led Turning Point USA. 

    Testy term awaits

    A Fox News poll from this summer found 47% of voters approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing, a 9-point jump since last year when a record low 38% approved.

    “Over the past decade, public confidence in our major institutions has declined,” says Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who helps conduct the Fox News survey with Democrat Chris Anderson. “The Court’s rebound could reflect its attempts to steer a middle course on politically polarizing questions or indicate an uptick in positive attitudes toward our more venerable institutions.”

    Still, by more than 2-to-1, more voters think the court is too conservative (43%) than too liberal in its decisions (18%, a low), while 36% think the court’s rulings are about right. That continues a seven-year trend.

    FEDERAL JUDGES ANONYMOUSLY CRITICIZE SUPREME COURT FOR OVERTURNING DECISIONS WITH EMERGENCY RULINGS

    Supreme Court building

    The U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., on June 20, 2024. ( Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

    The public’s views of the court’s ability to steer clear of politics will be tested this term.

    Besides the two Trump-related appeals, the justices are already scheduled to decide:

    • At least two appeals involving LGBTQ+ rights: which public school sports teams transgender students can join; and state laws banning so-called “conversion therapy” for minors who may have gender identity or sexual orientation issues.
    • Two election-related disputes involving partisan gerrymandering and federal campaign spending coordination that each could have major impacts on the 2026 midterms and beyond.

    Precedent on a precipice

    But court watchers are pointing to several hot-button pending appeals where “stare decisis” or respect for established landmark court rulings will be tested:  same-sex marriage and communal school prayer.   

    The high court is expected to decide in coming weeks whether to put those petitions on its argument calendar, with possible rulings on the merits by June 2026.

    But other cases are already awaiting a final ruling: the use of race in redistricting under the Voting Rights Act; and independent government boards.

    “I think the likeliest candidates for being revisited are the ones that involve the power of the president to fire the heads of federal agencies,” said attorney Dupree. “This is an old precedent that’s been on the books really back since the New Deal, and it’s come into question in recent years. There’s been a long shadow hanging over these decisions, and I think the Supreme Court is poised to revisit those this term and in all likelihood overrule that.”

    The court may have already set the stage, by using the emergency docket in recent weeks to allow Trump to temporarily fire members of several other independent federal agencies without cause. The court’s liberal wing complained that giving the president that power without explanation effectively unravels the 1935 precedent known as “Humphrey’s Executor.”

    KAVANAUGH CITES 3 PRESIDENTS IN EXPLAINING SUPREME COURT’S BALLOONING EMERGENCY DOCKET

    “Today’s order favors the president over our precedent,” said Justice Elena Kagan in a blistering dissent against Trump’s removal of Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board.

    The court’s “impatience to get on with things — to now hand the President the most unitary, meaning also the most subservient, administration since Herbert Hoover (and maybe ever) — must reveal how that eventual decision will go” on the merits, added Kagan.

    Sotomayor said recent overturned precedents were “really bad” for certain groups of people.

    “And that’s what’s at risk, is in each time we change precedent, we are changing the contours of a right that people thought they had,” she said this month. “Once you take that away, think of how much more is at risk later. Not just in this situation.”

    The conservative justices in recent years have not been shy about revisiting cases that had been settled for decades but now have been overturned: the nationwide right to abortion, affirmative action in education and the discretionary power of federal agencies.

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    Other pending issues the justices may soon be forced to confront which could upset longstanding precedent include libel lawsuits from public officials, flag burning and Ten Commandments displays in public schools.

    One justice who has been more willing than his benchmates to overrule precedents may be its most influential: Justice Clarence Thomas.

    “I don’t think that any of these cases that have been decided are the gospel,” Thomas said last week at a Catholic University event. If it is “totally stupid, and that’s what they’ve decided, you don’t go along with it just because it’s decided” already.

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  • Trump says American flag burners will be ‘immediately arrested’ under executive order

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    NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

    President Donald Trump said Friday that anyone who burns the American flag “will be immediately arrested” and face a one-year prison term, citing his Aug. 25 executive order on flag desecration.

    “To ICE, Border Patrol, Law Enforcement, and all U.S. Military: As per my August 25, 2025 Executive Order, please be advised that, from this point forward, anybody burning the American Flag will be subject to one year in prison,” Trump posted on Truth Social Friday evening.

    “You will be immediately arrested. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

    VETERAN BURNS AMERICAN FLAG IN FRONT OF WHITE HOUSE ON DAY OF CONTROVERSIAL TRUMP EXECUTIVE ORDER

    Members of the Communist Party USA and other anti-fascist groups burn an American flag on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol on Jan. 20, 2021, in Denver, Colorado. (Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)

    The executive order itself stopped short of creating new penalties, directing the Justice Department to prioritize cases under existing laws “to the maximum extent permitted by the Constitution.”

    Supreme Court rulings in Texas v. Johnson (1989) and United States v. Eichman (1990) held that flag burning is protected speech. Trump’s statement goes further, setting up potential legal battles if arrests are pursued.

    JONATHAN TURLEY: TRUMP’S BOLD FLAG-BURNING CRACKDOWN SETS UP BIG FIGHT DOWN THE ROAD

    Antifa, communists burning American flag

    Members of the Communist Party USA and other anti-fascist groups burn an American flag on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol on Jan. 20, 2021, in Denver, Colorado. (Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)

    Trump has long pushed to punish flag desecration, and the latest post sharpens his law-and-order message as the government shutdown continues.

    “President Trump will not allow the American Flag, a special symbol of our country’s greatness, to be used as a tool to incite violence and riots that jeopardize the safety of everyday Americans,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Fox News Digital. “President Trump will always protect the First Amendment, while simultaneously implementing commonsense, tough-on-crime policies to prevent violence and chaos.”

    Protesters burn an American flag

    Agitators burn an American flag during a DNC protest in Chicago, Illinois, on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024. (Fox News Digital)

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    The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

    Jasmine Baehr is a Breaking News Writer for Fox News Digital, where she covers politics, the military, faith and culture.

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  • Can the Democrats Take Free Speech Back from the Right?

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    This is my first column since going on book leave in May. (Thank you to Jon Allsop for filling in admirably and expanding the mission of Fault Lines while he was at it.) Every restart comes with a bit of looking back, and, this week, I want to revisit a series of columns from the past few years which concern the First Amendment. I am a free-speech absolutist—an admittedly mostly useless and conditional term that tends to fall apart at the gentlest touch. What it means, in my case, is that I believe that all forms of nonviolent speech should be protected; that the government should not have any power to regulate media outlets, individual speakers, or online platforms; and that, on a broader, nonlegal, and even spiritual level, people should regard any type of censorship, even when done by private actors operating within their rights, with skepticism and worry. I’m convinced that most Americans agree with this view, at least in theory, and one of the arguments that I’ve made during the past few years is that the Democratic Party and people on the left should return to their historical position as the defenders of the First Amendment, not only because it’s the right thing to do—and utterly essential in a moment when the Trump Administration seems to be gearing up for a crackdown on dissent in the government, the media, and the academy—but also because it’s one of those things, like football and underdog stories, that fill Americans with warm, familiar feelings.

    Needless to say, this writing campaign has been almost entirely in vain. The liberal side of American politics has, in the past few decades, essentially ceded the cause of free speech to the right. Pick any losing battle you want: the debate about trigger warnings and safe spaces, which became popular on college campuses and elsewhere in the early twenty-tens; or the fights over deplatforming allegedly harmful speakers about ten years ago; or the shutting down of “disinformation” on social media during the early Biden Administration. These little acts of censorship had the net effect of helping people on the right make the case that they were and are having their speech suppressed. The rise of Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, for example, depended on his correct assessment that there were conservative students on every campus who felt like they couldn’t speak their minds in class without facing social consequences. He also understood that the emotional unrest among these kids could be harnessed with just a little prodding and organizing.

    Can liberals do something similar now? Free speech, for obvious reasons, has always been an opposition-party issue—it’s a lot harder to claim that the government is suppressing you when your preferred party is in power. Two weeks ago, Democratic Representative Jason Crow, of Colorado, talked about the No Political Enemies Act, which, in its own words, reaffirms “the constitutionally protected right to free speech and establishes clear and enforceable protections to deter abuse, empower individuals and organizations to defend themselves, and create meaningful accountability.” The bill is known by the rather unfortunate acronym NOPE. In practice, NOPE would “prohibit the use of federal funds for any investigations or regulatory action that would suppress protected speech” and provide “tools” for people who find themselves on the wrong side of censors. A companion measure was introduced in the Senate, by Chris Murphy, of Connecticut, and Chris Van Hollen, of Maryland, with support from the Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer. The chances that the Republican-controlled House or the Republican-controlled Senate bring the bill to the floor are basically zero. Still, NOPE allowed Democrats, in the wake of Jimmy Kimmel’s brief suspension from the air, to do a little First Amendment sabre-rattling and to show that they, too, care about free speech.

    Will it work? If you believe that politics obeys a kind of thermodynamics, it would stand to reason that the Democrats, now expressing growing concerns over censorship—especially with this past week’s unveiling of National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, which would effectively classify many speech acts as domestic terrorism—would be able to seize the mantle of free speech and build up a degree of activist energy, particularly at colleges and universities, where cuts to federal funding and threats from the Trump Administration have led to the dissolution of entire fields of study.

    But I don’t think this will happen. For one thing, the cultural shift that led to safe spaces and trigger warnings was more powerful than some of us may want to admit. It’s true that we are in the waning days of the concept that speech is violence—due in part to a marked algorithmic shift in social media, from peak woke to peak reactionary, as well as the plummeting faith the public has in the academy, the crucible for this idea. But people who had adopted that position and supported what was broadly labelled “cancel culture” still occupy roles in the infrastructure of the Democratic Party, of major nonprofits, and of academia. It’s hard to imagine that the individuals who mostly rolled their eyes at free-speech claims just a few years ago will suddenly transform into Mario Savio-style culture warriors, urging their audiences to throw themselves onto the gears of government. These same people, for better or worse, are the gears. Crow, Van Hollen, and Murphy should be applauded for introducing NOPE and at least trying to reclaim free speech, but I suspect even they know that their party currently has little standing on the issue.

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    Jay Caspian Kang

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