Digital Media and Data Privacy Law Blog

A bill that would generally allow electronic media coverage of U.S. Supreme Court proceedings passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 29. 

The bill, S. 446, provides:

The Supreme Court shall permit television coverage of all open sessions of the Court unless the Court decides, by a vote of the majority of justices, that allowing such coverage in a particular case would constitute a violation of the due process rights of 1 or more of the parties before the Court.

The bill as currently drafted would presumptively allow electronic media coverage of Supreme Court proceedings unless ... Read More 

The United States Supreme Court's recent decision  in U.S. v. Stevens, which invalidated on First Amendment grounds a federal statute criminalizing the commercial creation, sale, or possession of a "depiction of animal cruelty," has been widely discussed in the media and blogosphere.  In Stevens, the Court held 8-1 that the so-called "dog-fighting" statute was, on its face, unconstitutionally overbroad.  In so holding, the Court declined the government's invitation to create a new category of speech that did not enjoy First Amendment protection.

Our purpose here ... Read More 

Pursuant to the terms of a recent settlement between the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina Legal Foundation (ACLU-NCLF) and the N.C. Department of Correction (DOC), prison inmates in North Carolina may now write novels and other manuscripts and send them to publishers, even if those written materials portray criminal activity.  The ACLU-NCLF reported the settlement in a press release.

The ACLU-NCLF had filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Victor L. Martin, a habitual felon with several theft-related convictions and whose “urban fiction” authored ... Read More 

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina recently handed a victory to a former marine, now a civilian worker at Camp Lejuene, who had several anti-Islamic decals pasted to the vehicle he drove and parked on base. Senior Judge Malcolm Howard ruled that the U.S. Marine Corps base’s commanding officer and traffic court officer enforced an otherwise viewpoint-neutral regulation in an unconstitutional, viewpoint discriminatory manner when, in response to complaints from others on base, the officers forced the plaintiff to remove the decals from his car ... Read More