Oregon High School Athletes File First Amendment Lawsuit Over Podium Protest
Alexa Anderson and Reese Eckard earned medals in the women's high jump at the 2025 Oregon State high school track and field championships.
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New York Post
19 hours ago
- New York Post
LA City Council bans N-word at public meetings, triggering legal threats
Watch your mouth! The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to ban the use of the N-word and C-word at public meetings — triggering free speech backlash and the threat of a $400 million lawsuit. The controversial vote by the body allows council leadership to issue a warning for any use or variation of the slurs. Repeat offenders can be booted from the chamber and barred from future sessions. Advertisement Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who is black and introduced the measure, said the use of slurs during public comments has made residents hesitant to attend meetings. 3 The council chamber where a 14–0 vote Wednesday banned use of the N-word and C-word during meetings, citing years of disruptive outbursts. Los Angeles Times via Getty Images 'It is language that, anywhere outside this building where there aren't four armed guards, would get you hurt if you said these things in public,' Harris-Dawson told the Los Angeles Times earlier this year. Advertisement He added that public comment has become 'rank, cantankerous, and rude and demeaning and insulting' since Donald Trump's election in 2016, according to the LAist. The Wednesday ban is already drawing legal threats. Wayne Spindler, an attorney and longtime City Hall commenter, said Wednesday he intends to sue. 3 Critics of the new rule, including frequent City Hall speakers, claimed the city was infringing on free speech and promised legal challenges. Getty Images Advertisement 'I'm going to file my $400-million lawsuit that I already have prepared and ready to file,' Spindler said during public comment, adding he plans to read explicit Tupac Shakur lyrics until he's banned from a meeting. Spindler was arrested in 2016 after submitting a public comment card showing a burning cross, a man hanging from a tree and the phrase 'Herb = [N-word],' referring to then-Council President Herb Wesson. Prosecutors declined to bring charges. David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, warned the council's policy likely won't survive in court. 3 Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said offensive speech has surged since 2016, creating a chilling effect on civic engagement. Los Angeles Times via Getty Images Advertisement 'The First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring speech because it disapproves of that speech,' Loy wrote in a letter to the City Council. The city has lost similar battles before. In 2014, it paid $215,000 to a black man who was removed from a meeting for wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood and a T-shirt with the N-word. The new rule took effect immediately.
New York Post
21 hours ago
- New York Post
Queen's ‘Garden of Hate' taking case to federal court, rips judge and ‘scurrilous' NY Post coverage
The fight over a community garden in Queens is getting thornier. The attorney for the anti-Israel leaders of Sunset Community Garden in Ridgewood withdrew their state lawsuit against the city and the Parks Department — to make a federal case out of the issue. Since last fall, Jewish Ridgewood residents haven't felt welcome at Sunset Community Garden, thanks to the garden group's pro-Palestinian rhetoric, which included a special section labeled 'Poppies for Palestine.' 4 Some local residents said they do not feel welcome in the community garden, whose leaders asked incoming members to pledge 'solidarity' with the people of Palestine. Instagram @sunsetgardenridgewood Incoming members are also made to pledge 'solidarity with the oppressed and marginalized people' of Palestine' by the garden's management. The Parks Department wanted the group out by June 6 for 'violat[ing] the terms of their license' with the 'unconstitutional wording' of their 'ideological litmus test' for membership, according to court documents. The group responded with a state lawsuit in early June to block the eviction, and The Post was in the courtroom when attorneys for both sides met in court this month. But Jonathan Wallace, the garden leaders' attorney, withdrew the state lawsuit Monday, and told the city he plans to refile the case in federal court, a source said. In a letter this week, the lawyer accused Judge Hasa Kingo of allowing the 'scurrilous' New York Post's coverage to guide his rulings in court. 'The plaintiffs in this case are a community group composed largely of trans people of color, many of whom are immigrants, and who share a powerfully-rooted moral opposition to the horrifying violence committed by a political entity, the nation-state Israel, against the people of Gaza,' the letter read. 4 Attorney Jonathan Wallace objected to coverage from The Post. Michael Nagle 4 The garden's leaders are fighting the city's efforts to oust them. Helayne Seidman 'We could not be further from the ideals and goals stated by Justices Holmes and Brandeis when the Post appears to be influencing outcomes in judicial proceedings,' he added. 'As an old white, proudly Jewish attorney (something that in a 43-year career I never thought until now I would need to mention) I like and am content to be associated with' the garden leaders, Wallace concluded in his letter to Kingo. Christina Wilkinson — a Ridgewood resident who worked to secure funding for the green space, but is now one of its most vocal critics — said the switch to federal court a 'stall tactic,' and believes 'Parks must now remove the violators and find a community partner that will make Sunset Garden an open and inclusive place for all.' 4 Members planting in the garden in June 2024. Instagram @sunsetgardenridgewood She added, 'You have to love the irony of an attorney arguing that the City violated his clients' First Amendment rights, then turning around and complaining about [a Post reporter] being present in the courtroom.' Wallace did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The Parks Department refused to respond to requests for comment.
USA Today
a day ago
- USA Today
From marginal religious groups to mainstream Christians: Why some see a shift in Supreme Court cases
The court's first case involving a Rastafarian highlights the role smaller religious groups have played in the court's history, even as more cases come from mainstream Christian groups. WASHINGTON – There have been no shortage of religious groups seeking help from the Supreme Court in recent years, including three cases last term that involved the Catholic Church. But the religion at the center of a case set for after the summer is not nearly as well represented in the population - or in the courtroom. In fact, it appears to be the first time the Supreme Court will hear an appeal from a Rastafarian. Damon Landor said his religious rights were violated when his dreadlocks were forcibly shaved by Louisiana prison guards. More: Supreme Court to decide if prison officials can be sued over inmates' religious rights Handcuffed to a chair while his dreadlocks were shaved off Landor had shown prison officials a copy of a court ruling that dreadlocks grown for religious reasons should be accommodated. But an intake guard threw the ruling in the trash and Landor was handcuffed to a chair while his knee-length locks were shaved off. The justices will decide whether Landor can sue the guards for compensation under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. Landor – whose appeal was backed by more than 30 religious groups and the Justice Department − argues that monetary damages are often the only way to hold prison officials accountable when religious rights are violated. Legal experts on religion cases expect the court will side with the Rastafarian. That would be consistent not just with the high success rate of appeals the court agrees to hear from religious people, but also with the role smaller religious groups have played in the court's history. Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-day Adventists Most of the religious cases Richard Garnett teaches in his classes at the University of Notre Dame Law School involve smaller religious communities, including Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-day Adventists. 'The story of religious freedom in America has developed through cases involving members of minority religions,' Garnett said. Other court watchers, however, say that was more true in the past than it is now. 'That's kind of a legacy view,' said Carl Esbeck, an expert on religious liberty at the University of Missouri School of Law. In fact, a 2022 study found that; since 2005, the winning religion in most Supreme Court religious cases was a mainstream Christian organization. In the past, by contrast, pro-religion outcomes more frequently favored minority or marginal religious organizations, according to the analysis by Lee Epstein at Washington University in St. Louis and Eric Posner of the University of Chicago Law School. 'The religion clauses of the First Amendment were once understood to provide modest but meaningful protection for non-mainstream religions from discrimination by governments that favored mainstream Christian organizations, practices, or values,' they wrote. Similarly, traditionalist Christians – such as orthodox Catholics and Baptists – had been significantly less successful than other religious groups in getting accommodations from lower federal courts from 1986 to 1995, according to a study by Michael Heise of Cornell Law School and Gregory Sisk of the University of St. Thomas School of Law. But from 2006 to 2015, their disadvantage 'appeared to fade into statistical insignificance,' they wrote in 2022. The Supreme Court, they said, 'appears to be setting the stage for a more equitable and expansive protection of religious liberty.' Colorado and the gay wedding cake debate Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, agrees that the court has taken an expansive view of religious liberty protections. But he says it hasn't always been equitable. In 2018, the court said Colorado had shown "religious hostility" to a baker who didn't want to make a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple. More: How a Supreme Court case about a gay couple's wedding cake got caught up in Israeli judicial reform But that same month, Mach said, the court upheld President Donald Trump's travel ban 'even in the face of Trump's repeated unambiguous statements condemning Islam and Muslims.' More broadly, he said, the court's 'general hostility to the separation of church and state' erodes protections for minority groups promised by the First Amendment's prohibition against the government favoring a specific religion or favoring religion in general. 'Built into that structure is necessarily a protection against the imposition by the majority of its favored religious doctrine,' he said. In February, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at 'Eradicating anti-Christian Bias' and calling on agencies to eliminate the "anti-Christian weaponization of government." The administration cited that order when telling federal employees in a July 28 memo they may discuss and promote their religious beliefs in the workplace. More: Supreme Court blocks Catholic charter school in big setback for religion advocates Ruling for Amish built on to benefit other religions In June, the Supreme Court built upon a 1972 ruling for the Amish as it affirmed the religious rights of parents to remove their elementary school children from class when storybooks with LGBTQ+ characters are being used. When deciding more than 50 years ago that Amish parents did not have to keep their children in school until age 16 as Wisconsin required, the court said those parents had an argument 'that probably few other religious groups or sects could make.' But Justice Samuel Alito left no doubt about the broader significance of Wisconsin v. Yoder in the 6-3 opinion he authored in June that sided with parents from a variety of religious backgrounds − including Roman Catholic but also Muslim, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and other faiths − who objected to the LGBTQ+ storybooks used in Maryland school district. 'Yoder is an important precedent of this Court, and it cannot be breezily dismissed as a special exception granted to one particular religious minority,' Alito wrote. More: Supreme Court sides with Maryland parents who want to avoid LGBTQ+ books in public schools In a 2020 speech to the conservative Federalist Society, Alito had warned that 'religious liberty is in danger of becoming a second-class right.' He listed examples of cases he'd judged about religious minorities, including the rights of Muslim police officers to have beards, of a Jewish prisoner to organize a Torah study group and whether a Native American could keep a bear for religious services. The baker who didn't want to make a cake for a same-sex wedding and Catholic nuns who objected to insurance coverage for contraceptives 'deserve no less protection,' Alito said about more recent cases. More: Supreme Court sides with Catholic Charities in case about tax exemptions and religion `Clear pattern of preference for religious groups' Cornell Law School Professor Nelson Tebbe said more of the claims about religious freedom started to come from mainstream majority Christian groups as political polarization increased and as the gay rights movement picked up speed. 'Suddenly, civil libertarian groups who had been on the side of minority religions…started to realize that civil rights laws could be vulnerable to religious attacks by conservative Christians and they started to get worried,' Tebbe said. As the court has shifted its approach, he said, the justices have both granted exemptions from regulations that burden religion as well as said government must treat religious groups no differently than secular organizations when providing public benefits − such as school vouchers. 'While both of those could be seen as understandable on their own terms, when you put them together, there's a clear pattern of preference for religious groups,' he said. 'It's a pretty dramatic moment in constitutional law in this area.' Garnett, the religious freedom expert at the University of Notre Dame Law School, said the court's decisions are a reflection of the ongoing debate over how much accommodation should be given in a country with diverse religious views. 'So the fact that those cases are coming up isn't because the court sort of shifted to protecting majority groups,' he said. 'It's because events on the ground shifted. And the nature of the controversies that are served up are different.'
