BBC: US cheerleader wins free speech case against her former school. “The US Supreme Court has ruled in favour of a teenager who was kicked off her school cheerleading squad over a profane social media post. In an 8-1 ruling, it concluded that the Mahanoy Area School District had violated Brandi Levy’s freedom of speech under the First Amendment.”
CityBeat: Court Hands Journalists a Big Freedom of Information Act Win: Gun Data Access. “Reveal, the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), originally sued for records in November 2017. The Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) never responded. ATF’s gun tracing database lists 6.8 million firearms linked to criminal activity. Reveal sought records for any gun traced back to law enforcement ownership. When Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in 1966, modern databases did not exist. ATF argued that a search query exporting the results amounted to a ‘new’ record, which agencies aren’t required to disclose under the FOIA statute. The court disagreed.”
Silicon Republic: Courtsdesk receives £70,000 to build legal database for UK journalists. “Dublin-based Courtsdesk has received £70,000 in funding to build a service supplying listings and outcomes of criminal court cases to journalists in the UK.”
State of Maryland: Appellate court case information now available on Maryland Judiciary Case Search. “The Maryland Judiciary has expanded its public access database, Maryland Judiciary Case Search, to include remote access to case information from the Court of Appeals (COA) and the Court of Special Appeals (COSA), in addition to existing access to cases in the trial courts. The appellate case information is now available online. Case Search now contains COA case information from term year 2015 to present and COSA case information from term year 2016 to present.”
The Verge: As Google heads to the Supreme Court, Oracle takes aim at its industry allies. “For almost 10 years, Google and Oracle have been fighting over a set of Android APIs, and for almost that long, conventional wisdom has been that the tech industry is on Google’s side. But as the case moves to the Supreme Court for the second time, Oracle is taking aim at that idea — and calling out Google’s allies one by one.”
Belta: Public database of Belarusian court rulings to go online in 2021. “A public database of court rulings is supposed to go online in 2021, BelTA learned from First Deputy Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Belarus Valery Kalinkovich.”
CNET: Why the fate of online accessibility may rest with a Domino’s Pizza lawsuit. “Many websites still aren’t designed and coded so that people with disabilities, ranging from visual to auditory to cognitive, can use them. Americans with disabilities are nearly three times as likely to never go online. They’re also around 20% less likely to have home broadband and own a computer, smartphone or tablet, according to Pew Research Center. The issue is coming to a head thanks to a potential Supreme Court case involving a blind customer and an unlikely defendant: Domino’s Pizza.”
BetaNews: Court rules Google need only apply the ‘right to be forgotten’ in Europe, not worldwide. “In a case between Google and Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL ) — a French privacy regulator — the court ruled that Google need only remove links from search results within Europe.”
Devdiscourse: Europe’s top court to rule on ‘right to be forgotten’ Google case on Sept. 24. “Europe’s top court will rule on Sept. 24 whether Alphabet Inc unit Google must remove links to sensitive personal data worldwide or in Europe only in a case that pits privacy rights against the right of free speech.”
Ars Technica: Trump’s Twitter blocks violate First Amendment rights, appeals court affirms. “It’s one thing for most of us to block Twitter users who annoy us, but it’s a violation of those users’ First Amendment rights for the president to do so, a federal appeals court confirmed. The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Tuesday issued an opinion supporting an earlier federal court ruling that as long as Donald Trump is a public official, he cannot block people (which prevents them from reading his feed or responding to his comments) he disagrees with on Twitter.”
The Star (Kenya): New database to help document ‘fight against corruption’ in courts. “Transparency International Kenya recently launched the ‘Rada Database’, which is the most comprehensive and ambitious attempt to track and document all cases on corruption processed through the courts.”
Reason: How Often Has the U.S. Supreme Court Struck Down a Federal Law? Part II. “The Judicial Review of Congress Database is now publicly available. It includes a list of all the cases in which the Court has substantively reviewed the constitutionality of an act of Congress from 1789 through the spring of 2018, as well as a variety of associated information such as identifying information about the statute that was reviewed, a measure of its importance, and the length of time between the passage of the statutory provision and its review by the Supreme Court.”
Madison/AP: Wisconsin court: Judge’s Facebook friendship could show bias. “A Wisconsin judge’s decision to become Facebook friends with a woman whose child custody case he was hearing created at least the appearance of bias, a state appeals court ruled Wednesday in ordering the case to be re-heard by another judge.”
The Verge: Emoji are showing up in court cases exponentially, and courts aren’t prepared. “Bay Area prosecutors were trying to prove that a man arrested during a prostitution sting was guilty of pimping charges, and among the evidence was a series of Instagram DMs he’d allegedly sent to a woman. One read: ‘Teamwork make the dream work’ with high heels and money bag emoji placed at the end. Prosecutors said the message implied a working relationship between the two of them. The defendant said it could mean he was trying to strike up a romantic relationship. Who was right?”
