Justia Communications Law Opinion Summaries

Indiana Code 35-42-4-12 prohibits certain individuals required to register as sex offenders (Ind. Code 11-8-8) from knowingly using a social networking web site, an instant messaging, or chat room program that the offender knows allows access or use by a person who is less than 18 years of age. Violation constitutes a Class A misdemeanor; subsequent violations constitute Class D felonies. The law does not differentiate based on the age of victim, the manner in which the crime was committed, or the time since the predicate offense. It provides a defense if the individual did not know the website allowed minors or upon discovering it does, immediately ceased use, and exempts persons convicted of consensual “Romeo and Juliet relationships” where the victim and perpetrator are close in age. In 2000, Doe was convicted of child exploitation. He challenged the law on First Amendment grounds on behalf of a class of similarly-situated sex offenders. The district court rejected the challenge. The Seventh Circuit reversed, finding the law unconstitutional. Though content neutral, it is not narrowly tailored to serve the state’s interest. It broadly prohibits substantial protected speech rather than specifically targeting the evil of improper communications to minors.View "Doe v. Prosecutor, Marion County" on Justia Law

PG sued under 42 U.S.C. 1983, challenging the constitutionality of 25 Pa. Stat. 3060(d), a portion of the Pennsylvania Election Code mandating that all persons, except election officers, clerks, machine inspectors, overseers, watchers, persons in the course of voting, persons lawfully giving assistance to voters, and peace and police officers, when permitted by the provisions of this act, must remain at least ten (10) feet distant from the polling place during the progress of the voting. PG claimed that the statute infringed on its First Amendment “right to access and gather news at polling places” and that selective enforcement violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The district court dismissed. The Third Circuit affirmed. There is no protected First Amendment right of access to a polling place for news-gathering purposes and there was no evidence of “invidious intent” or intentional discrimination. View "PG Publ'g Co. v. Aichele" on Justia Law

In 2008, Dixon, an African-American woman and then-interim Associate Vice President for Human Resources at the University of Toledo, wrote an op-ed column in the Toledo Free Press rebuking comparisons drawn between the civil-rights and gay-rights movements. Shortly thereafter, Dixon was fired. Claiming violations of her First and Fourteenth Amendment rights, Dixon filed a 42 U.S.C. 1983. The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants on all claims. The Sixth Circuit affirmed. The speech of a high-level Human Resources official who writes publicly against the very policies that her government employer charges her with creating, promoting, and enforcing is not protected speech. View "Dixon v. Univ. of Toledo" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs Gayen Hancock, David Cross, Montez Mutzig, and James Bollinger sought to represent a class of customers dissatisfied with "U-verse," a digital telecommunications service offered by Defendants AT&T and several of its subsidiaries. The Oklahoma federal district court dismissed their claims based on forum selection and arbitration clauses in the U-verse terms of service. Plaintiffs appealed the dismissal of their claims. Finding no error in the district court's interpretation of the terms of service, and finding no abuse of the court's discretion, the Tenth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of Plaintiffs' claims. View "Hancock v. American Telephone & Telegraph Company, Inc." on Justia Law

Defendants contested a summary judgment holding that the Mississippi Caller ID Anti-Spoofing Act (ASA), Miss. Code Ann. 77-3-805, violated the Commerce Clause. Plaintiffs provide nationwide third-party spoofing services to individuals and entities. In light of the carefully-drafted language in section 227(e)(1) of the Truth in Caller ID Act of 2009 (TCIA), 47 U.S.C. 227(e)(1), and legislative history, and in spite of the presumption against preemption that attached to a state's exercise of its police power, there was an inherent federal objective in the TCIA to protect non-harmful spoofing. The ASA's proscription of non-harmful spoofing frustrated this federal objective and was, therefore, conflict preempted. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Teltech Systems, Inc., et al v. Bryant, et al" on Justia Law

Recognizing the growing importance of mobile data in a wireless market in which smartphones are increasingly common, the FCC adopted a rule requiring mobile-data providers to offer roaming agreements to other such providers on "commercially reasonable" terms. Verizon challenged the data roaming rule on multiple grounds. The court held that Title III of the Communications Act of 1934, 47 U.S.C. 151 et seq., plainly empowered the FCC to promulgate the data roaming rule. And although the rule bears some marks of common carriage, the court deferred to the FCC's determination that the rule imposed no common carrier obligations on mobile-internet providers. In response to Verizon's remaining arguments, the court concluded that the rule did not effect an unconstitutional taking and was neither arbitrary nor capricious. View "Cellco Partnership v. FCC" on Justia Law

American Freedom Defense Initiative is a nonprofit corporation that wanted to place an advertisement on the side of city buses in Michigan. The advertisement read: “Fatwa on your head? Is your family or community threatening you? Leaving Islam? Got Questions? Get Answers! RefugefromIslam.com”. Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART), refused to display the advertisement. AFDI sued, claiming a First Amendment violation. The district court granted a preliminary injunction, holding that plaintiffs likely could show that SMART’s decision was arbitrary. The Sixth Circuit reversed. SMART’s policy prohibits: political or political campaign advertising; advertising promoting the sale of alcohol or tobacco; advertising that is false, misleading, or deceptive; advertising that is clearly defamatory or likely to hold up to scorn or ridicule any person or group of persons; and advertising that is obscene or pornographic; or in advocacy of imminent lawlessness or unlawful violent action. The restrictions, which concern a nonpublic forum are reasonable, viewpoint-neutral limits that do not deny AFDI’s First Amendment rights. The injunction would cause substantial harm to others, compelling SMART to post on its buses messages that have strong potential to alienate people and decrease ridership; the public interest would not be served by this preliminary injunction. View "Am. Freedom Def. Initiative v. Suburban Mobility Auth. for Reg'l Transp." on Justia Law

Chicago police officers arrested plaintiffs for disorderly conduct at a 2005 antiwar demonstration. The plaintiffs brought claims for First Amendment retaliation, Fourth Amendment false arrest, Fourteenth Amendment class-of-one equal protection violations, and state law malicious prosecution. They also brought facial challenges against Chicago’s disorderly conduct ordinance, as overbroad and unconstitutionally vague. The district court granted summary judgment. The Seventh Circuit affirmed on the basis of qualified immunity. The facial attack on the ordinance was rendered moot by an earlier decision, which partially invalidated the subsection on overbreadth and vagueness grounds. The court acknowledged that the plaintiffs’ arrests under a now-invalid ordinance may have affected their free speech rights, but that they did not bring an as-applied challenge to redress such an injury. View "Thayer v. Chiczewski" on Justia Law

The Center broadcasts advertisements, maintains a website, publishes a weekly e-mail newsletter, produces a bi-weekly radio show, and engages in other forms of mass media communications. Its tax exempt status under section 501(c)(4) is incompatible with partisan political activity, so the Center cannot endorse candidates. During election seasons, the Center runs advertisements that refer to the positions of candidates or to ballot issues and call for actions such as contacting candidates. The Center claims that it feared that Illinois’s new campaign finance laws (10 ILCS 5/9) would require it to register as a “political committee” and to disclose election-related expenditures and significant contributors and that its donors require assurances that their identities will not be disclosed. The Center argued that the law was vague and overbroad. The district court dismissed. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, noting that the Illinois law is modeled on federal law. The Center did not establish that the statute “prohibits a substantial amount of protected speech,” or that its “deterrent effect on legitimate expression is ... real and substantial.”View "Ctr, for Individual Freedom v. Madigan" on Justia Law

Federal officers applied for a warrant to search the offices of Fair Finance in Akron, as part of an investigation into its owner, Durham, who was suspected of employing the company to engage in a Ponzi scheme. A Magistrate granted a warrant and, at the government’s request, sealed the file. Officers executed the search. The warrant and inventory of seized items were placed in the sealed file. Newspapers requested an order unsealing the files, arguing that they had a right of access under common law and the First Amendment. The district court denied the motion. After an indictment issued, the court granted the government’s motion to unseal the face sheet of the warrant, the form application (excluding the affidavit in support of the application), the inventory, two attachments to the warrant and application, the motion to seal the documents, and the order granting that motion. The affidavit filed in support of the warrant application and the docket sheet remained sealed. The newspapers are no longer contesting the sealing of the affidavit. The Sixth Circuit affirmed. The First Amendment right of access does not permit the newspapers to obtain the documents filed in connection with these warrant proceedings.View "In re: Search of Fair Finance " on Justia Law