Have you ever received heavily redacted records from a public agency? If something seems off about the redactions in a fulfilled request, don’t just sit on your hands. Sometimes, it is worth challenging them. In Monmouth County, NJ, a school district parent filed a...
How should you proceed if your city appears to be stonewalling public records requests? Is this a sign of corruption? Mismanagement? Overwhelmed public employees? Where public records accountability is concerned, there’s no single answer. For instance, in San Josè,...
Public records lawsuits—do they aid or undermine democracy? Sometimes government says public records plaintiffs “have an agenda.” Requestors say, yes, their agenda is to shed light on government operations and at times shed light on government malfeasance. ...
Consider this from First Amendment history: In August 1977, Deborah Lipp won a First and Fourteenth Amendment case against the principal of her New Jersey public school and the state attorney general arising from her refusal to stand during the Pledge of...
If speech makes people uncomfortable, should it be restricted? Would such a restriction be a violation of First Amendment law? Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s Individual Freedom Act (IFA), also known as the “Stop WOKE Act,” provoked these questions with its enactment...
Congratulations to First Amendment attorney Edward Birk for being named to the Florida First Amendment Foundation's Board of Trustees! The First Amendment Foundation believes that government openness and transparency are critical to citizen trust and involvement in...
While our courts continue to apply and set precedents for free speech liberties in the digital age, Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is receiving accolades for her handling of the First Amendment violation suit against her for blocking a critic on...
In 2017, the New York Times published an article regarding a printed map Sarah Palin’s political action committee distributed. It included superimposed images of crosshairs over Democratic congressional districts to be challenged in future elections. As I wrote then,...