first amendment

Federal Court Allows Protesters’ First Amendment Suit Against Violent Boston Cops To Continue 18 July 2022 A lawsuit filed by four protesters against three Boston police officers can move forward, following a federal judge’s determination that the cops’ counterarguments were too ridiculous to...

Florida Judge Dissolves Injunction Blocking Paper From Publishing Names Of Officers Who Killed A Man 19 July 2022 About a week ago, a Florida judge decided a local law superseded the First Amendment. The judge granted an injunction to law enforcement officers, barring a Florida newspaper from...

He Was Arrested for Promoting Jury Nullification. A Federal Court Says That Was Illegal. Michael Picard's free speech rights were violated when he was booked for telling passersby to "Google Jury Nullification." 5 August 2022 A man was wrongfully arrested for standing outside a Bronx...

New Arizona Law Will Make it Illegal to Film Within Eight Feet of Police Civil liberties groups oppose the law, saying it will impede First Amendment–protected activity and protect bad cops. 8 July 2022 Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed a bill into law Wednesday that will make it...

Reverse Keyword Warrant Challenged After Cops Asked Google To Search Millions Of People’s Data Multiple Times 11 July 2022 Cops have been running to Google for years, warrants and subpoenas in hand, asking the data behemoth to give them info they can sift through to find criminal suspects...

Inside D.C. police's sprawling network of surveillance From protesters to everyday residents, recently revealed documents provide a first-of-its-kind look into the invasive eye of Washington police. 18 June 2022 It was the early days of the Black Lives Matter movement. Protesters gathered in...

US Postal Service Sued For Seizing ‘Defund Police’ Facemasks 6 June 2022 Two years ago, just as the COVID pandemic was beginning to radically transform day-to-day life for nearly everyone on the planet, the United States Postal Service decided to protect cops from passive criticism. One month...

Appeals Court Hands Qualified Immunity To Cops Who Arrested Someone Over Satirical Facebook Posts 20 May 2022 Back in early 2016, Parma, Ohio resident Anthony Novak decided to have a little fun. He created a parody of the Parma Police Department’s Facebook page and began posting obviously...

The FBI Wants To Be Your Facebook Friend 14 April 2022 Undoubtedly, the FBI has always surveilled the open web, looking for persons or phrases of interest. It’s just going to get a whole lot better at doing it. And it’s going to spend millions of your tax dollars to make it easier to place...

FBI provides Chicago police with fake online identities for "Social Media Exploration" team Internal documents also reveal that police can take over informants’ social media accounts and pose as them online. 20 May 2022 Brian Campbell couldn’t sleep. It was May 31, 2020, and demonstrations...

Postal Inspectors Have Been Illegally Spying on Americans The Post Office's inspector general uncovers unrestricted online snooping by postal cops without any legal authority. 1 April 2022 The U.S. Postal Service has a "U.S. Postal Inspection Service's Analytics and Cybercrime Program"—of...

Fresno Bans Journalists—and Everyone Else—From Filming Cops Clearing Out Homeless Camps The ACLU of Northern California is suing to overturn the ordinance. 6 April 2022 The city of Fresno, California, has been trying to prevent citizens from documenting sweeps of homeless encampments in town...

A Federal Judge Says a Victim of Retaliatory Prosecution Can Sue a Cop Who Treated Criticism As a Crime An Arkansas police officer used trumped-up charges to punish a man who criticized him for violating the Constitution. 31 March 2022 Four years ago, Grant Long, a resident of Forrest City...

The spineless wimp cop is suing as "John Doe": https://www.aclu.org/cases/doe-v-mckesson Louisiana Supreme Court Allows Police Officer's Lawsuit Against Black Lives Matter Organizer DeRay Mckesson didn’t cause or encourage violence against police in Baton Rouge in 2016. The court says he can...

State Passes Bill That Could Jail People for 30 Days for Filming the Police 29 March 2022 Frequent readers of the Free Thought Project know that filming the cops is not a crime. Despite this being a widely known provision — held up with multiple court precedents — cops continue to violate the...

Faith Under Fire: A Pastor’s Legal Fight Against CBP Exposes a Reckless Surveillance Operation 6 March 2022 The sun was beginning to set as Kaji Dousa neared the border. It was two days into 2019, and the line she was about to cross separating San Diego and Tijuana was the site of a...

Cops Who Sued Journalist For Reporting On Their Poor Handling Of A Rape Case Lose Their Defamation Lawsuit 18 March 2022 As Omar (RIP, Michael K. Williams) pointed out, using only his whistling and his sawed-off shotgun, “If you come at the king, you’d best not miss.” The “king” of First...

Video Shows California Cops Arresting Mom and Grandma for Filming Them Mariah Herefored says police in Hemet, California, smacked cell phone cameras out of her and her mother's hands and violently arrested them 8 March 2022 Police officers in Hemet, California, arrested a mother and...

Beneficiary Of First Amendment Protections Says Fourth Amendment Shouldn’t Be Respected By Cops, Courts 15 March 2022 The New York Post editorial team has apparently decided some rights are more important than others. The Post has the First Amendment right to publish its opinion on other...

First Amendment Group Tells Appeals Court University Officials Shouldn’t Have Access To Qualified Immunity 10 March 2022 Qualified immunity has been heavily criticized for what it allows law enforcement officers to get away with. The Supreme Court-created doctrine excuses officers from civil...