Year: 2024

The chipmaker, which has fallen behind competitors, is slashing 15 percent of its workforce.

The US District Court for the District of Oregon has granted a preliminary injunction in the Gilley v Stabin case, involving Portland State University political scientist Bruce Gilley, and the University of Oregon (UO) Division of Equity and Inclusion.

We obtained a copy of the order for you here.

It was Tova Stabin, at that time, June 2022, UO’s communications manager – who is named as a defendant in Gilley’s First Amendment-based lawsuit filed after he was blocked on Twitter by Stabin.

Stabin’s decision to block Gilley and thus have his posts removed from the UO Equity account, came as he responded to her asking Twitter to “interrupt racism.” Gilley’s post read, “All men are created equal.”

The latest decision came after the motion for a preliminary injunction was first denied as moot (because UO Equity lifted the block one day after Gilley filed, and ceased activity on its Twitter account) – but then the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back to the lower court.

The decision means that UO Equity can no longer block Gilley, or hide, mute, or delete his posts.

According to Just The News, Stabin retired from UO shortly after Gilley was censored, but returned this year as a consultant for the school, in order to organize “a couple of fighting antisemitism workshops.”

When the blocking incident originally happened, Gilley wanted to know which policy allowed UO to do what it did and filed a request for public records to reveal this. Stabin was then cited in the response to the request as telling a colleague Gilley was “obnoxious” – and not only that but was “bringing obnoxious people to the site.”

The 9th Circuit’s decision back in March noted that UO first said it had no formal policy on social media, but that when Gilley sued, it suddenly changed this position by revealing guidelines that gave it the right to remove any comments it considered racist, hateful, otherwise inappropriate or offensive.

And to make the “rules” as broad as possible – also comments that are “out of context, off-topic or not relevant to the topic at hand.” That would be one way of saying, “obnoxious.”

However the appellate court was not impressed, stating that the case was not moot because of the policy’s “lack of formality and relative novelty, how easily (it) can be reversed, and the lack of procedural safeguards to protect from arbitrary action.”

For that reason, the 9th Circuit found, “Gilley has standing to seek prospective relief for his as-applied challenge,” and now the district court granted an injunction.

The post Political Scientist Wins Injunction Against University of Oregon Officials Over Social Media Censorship appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

The District Court for the Eastern District of New York has ruled that the US government must reverse course on its policy of warrantless searches of US (and foreign) nationals’ electronic devices as they enter the country.

We obtained a copy of the ruling for you here.

This is not the only court decision on this issue, while this particular outcome, requiring that border agents obtain court-issued orders before performing such searches, concerns the district that is the court’s seat – therefore also a major port of entry, JFK International Airport.

It was precisely at this airport that an event unfolded which set in motion a legal case. In 2022, US citizen Kurbonali Sultanov was coerced (he was told he “had no choice”) into surrendering his phone’s passport to border officers.

Sultanov later became a defendant in a criminal case but argued that evidence from the phone should not be admitted because the device was accessed in violation of the Fourth Amendment (which protects Americans against unreasonable and warrantless searches).

Of course, all these envisaged protections refer to US citizens, and even there prove to be sketchy in many instances. Foreign travelers (even though entering the country legally) are effectively left without any protections regarding their privacy.

Sultanov’s argument was supported in an amicus brief filed the following year by the Knight First Amendment Institute and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, who said that the First Amendment is violated as well when law enforcement gains access to phones without a warrant since it invalidates constitutional protections of speech, freedom of the press, religion, and association.

The New York Eastern District Court’s decision is by and large based precisely on that amicus brief. One of the arguments from it is that journalists entering the US are often forced to hand over their devices.

The court agreed that “letting border agents freely rifle through journalists’ work product and communications whenever they cross the border would pose an intolerable risk to press freedom,” said Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press attorney Grayson Clary in a press statement.

Meanwhile, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said they were reviewing this ruling – and would not comment on what the agency said are “pending criminal cases.”

The post Landmark Ruling Strikes Down Warrantless Device Searches of US Citizens Borders appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Imane Khelif has always defined herself as a woman, and has every right to compete.