The First Amendment Clinic’s 2023-2024 academic year was a tremendous success! Students have provided exceptional client counseling, briefing, and oral advocacy before courts across the country. Student attorneys worked on cases implicating all aspects of the First Amendment—from protecting the right of a citizen to access government social media accounts to advocating against retaliatory litigation for critical speech.
For example, students have worked diligently on briefing and discovery in a matter currently pending before the federal court in the Middle District of Tennessee. Students worked to vindicate their client’s First Amendment protections against viewpoint discrimination on public forums, which protects an individual’s right to post comments on and otherwise engage on a government official’s social page. The Clinic authored an amicus brief before the U.S. Supreme Court to highlight the issues in this case, including the significant ways public officials share policy positions, discuss legislation, and offer services of their office through social media. The brief also underscored the important function social media plays in facilitating discourse amongst users.
The Clinic also worked on a records access case that also implicates the sealing of court records and plaintiff pseudonymity. This spring, two students represented their client, a Maryland records requester, in a hearing on motions regarding the scope of redactions to public-facing records in the proceeding and the use of a Doe pseudonym for one of the litigants. At argument, the team emphasized the vital importance of transparency in the legal process.
The Clinic also filed or joined amicus briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, as well as the Supreme Court of Maine.
In one case, the Clinic joined with the American Civil Liberties Union to advocate for robust speech protections at the collegiate level in the Sixth Circuit. The case involved a Tennessee graduate student who brought a legal challenge after she was investigated and punished for pseudonymous speech posted online, off-campus, and about matters unrelated to her school coursework or peers.
In another matter, students authored a brief submitted on behalf of the First Amendment clinics at the Duke, University of Illinois, University of Nebraska, and Southern Methodist law schools, legal scholars, and several organizations, including Alabama Appleseed, Alabama Arise, One Roof, and Alabama Justice Initiative, which joined together to advocate for the First Amendment right to solicit financial support in public places. “The Clinic is recognizing that, here, the State of Alabama is singling out this category of speech for its content . . . [and are] left without the ability to speak openly about their circumstance without fear of imprisonment, citation, or fine,” explained Madeline Knight (JD ’24).
The Clinic looks forward to continuing to advance speech, press, assembly, and petition rights in semesters to come!
