Image 01 Image 03

1st Amendment Tag

We have followed several court cases involving bans on drive-in church services, including on in Louisville, Kentucky, and another in Greenville, Mississippi. We addressed likely litigation in the age of pandemic at our April 26, 2020, live event, Constitutional Rights in the Age of Government Overreach. To the extent there is a pattern emerging, it is that the state cannot bar religious services where CDC social distancing and related precautions are followed, if the state also allows drive-up and drive-through practices for secular institutions like fast food and liquor stores.

CNN has settled the lawsuit brought by Nicholas Sandmann over coverage of the incident in which Sandmann falsely was accused of trying to intimidate a Native American activist, according to local TV reports. Sandmann filed lawsuits against CNN, The Washington Post, and NBC. Initially the lawsuits were dismissed, but recently a portion of the lawsuits were reopened by the court and all three lawsuits were reactivated.

Two students from the University of Connecticut are currently under arrest because they used racial slurs. That may be tasteless and inappropriate, but at the end of the day, they're just words. These students were arrested for saying words.

Every time I think the media-Democrat frenzy could not get any more frenzied, it gets more frenzied. How seamlessly they have transitioned from almost three years of Russia-collusion-mania to the current frenzy claiming that anyone and everyone who supports Donald Trump is a white supremacist.

Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann sued The Washington Post for defamation related to its coverage of the incident in which Sandmann was portrayed as the perpetrator of the harassment of a Native American 'elder' after the March for Life in D.C. Sandmann also sued CNN in a separate lawsuit, and other lawsuits may follow.

A few weeks ago, a viral article by Think Progress accused Chick-fil-A's foundation of actively supporting anti-LGBTQ organizations. The article was cited and reposted by news networks and individual blogs alike, and for the gazillionth time, calls to boycott the world's best chicken sandwich bounced around progressive spheres of the web.

The second attempt by the State of Colorado to punish Jack Phillips and his Masterpiece Cakeshop has come to an end, once again, with a victory for the baker. Round 1 was the baker's refusal to create a custom cake for a same-sex marriage, on the ground that it violated the baker's Christian faith to create a message celebrating same-sex marriage.

You know the story of the Covington Catholic High School kids who were maligned by the media when Native American activist Nathan Phillips, accompanied by a phalanx of videographers, approached them to create a confrontation. Nicholas Sandmann did nothing other than stand there as Phillips invaded his personal space and banged a drum inches from Sandmann's face. The fact that Sandmann was wearing a MAGA hat infuriated liberal media and social media. That Sandmann smiled during the encounter was called a "white privileged" smirk, and led to taunts from some famous people that he should be punched in the face.