{"id":1425821,"date":"2023-09-02T21:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-03T01:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1425821"},"modified":"2023-09-02T21:30:00","modified_gmt":"2023-09-03T01:30:00","slug":"an-important-lesson-from-chicago-on-confronting-the-enemies-of-free-speech-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/an-important-lesson-from-chicago-on-confronting-the-enemies-of-free-speech-2\/1425821\/","title":{"rendered":"An Important Lesson From Chicago On Confronting The Enemies Of Free Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Important Lesson From Chicago On Confronting The Enemies Of Free Speech<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Mark Glennon via Wirepoints.org,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The modern left\u2019s assault on free speech is perhaps the most terrifying element of the madness we have succumbed to for the simple reason that democracy is meaningless without it. The assault has been largely successful. <\/strong>Voices that should be heard are muzzled and, more insidiously, countless other voices are frightened into silence.<\/p>\n

We see that suppression routinely. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Too often, readers here tell us of being intimidated into silence by the cancel mob, a mob now controlling much of our government. The iron boot of government on one\u2019s throat is no small matter: Fear of the cost of litigating against a government intent on suppressing free speech is particularly intimidating.<\/p>\n

That intimidation must come to an end. <\/strong>Help is often available \u2013 a resource you should prize.<\/p>\n

A number of law firms specializing in free speech are now available,\u00a0pro bono<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 free or at reduced cost. And they are winning, thanks to federal courts that still recognize the First Amendment right to free speech.<\/p>\n

A Chicago company\u2019s free speech case is an illustration.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Townstone Financial is a smallish, Chicago-based home mortgage originator. It marketed itself primarily through a weekly one-hour show on AM 560 called\u00a0The Townstone Financial Show<\/em>. They discussed issues of interest to homebuyers and offered advice to listeners and callers, sometimes getting into topics like crime, policing, movies and the like.<\/p>\n

In 2020, the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) sued Townstone claiming that the company violated a fair lending law by discriminating against African-Americans.<\/p>\n

However, the CFPB never alleged any case of Townstone discriminating on mortgage applications.<\/p>\n

Instead, the CFPB said Townstone discriminated through its marketing in its radio show by \u201cdiscouraging\u201d applications from Blacks. The CFPB\u2019s evidence was a handful of comments on the show made over a four-year period representing perhaps 10 minutes of air time out of about 10,000 minutes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some of those comments might be regarded as offensive or in bad taste. They referred to a particular Jewel food store at Clark and Division Streets in Chicago as \u201cJungle Jewel\u201d and included talk of certain Black areas having \u201choodlum weekend\u201d and approaching \u201ca real war zone\u201d or as \u201ccrazy\u201d and places \u201cto be driven through quickly\u201d while avoiding eye contact.<\/p>\n

But the CFPB did not produce even one example of anybody being discouraged from applying with Townstone. Nor, according to Townstone\u2019s lawyers, has the company ever received any complaint about its show.<\/em><\/p>\n

The comments from the show cited by the CFPB were taken out of context and meant little, Townstone believed. For example, the \u201cJungle Jewel\u201d was commonly called that by people in the area, and\u00a0referred to<\/a>\u00a0as such even by a Black blogger, who called it \u201ca socioeconomic nightmare and a haven for street crazies.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Towntone\u2019s lawyers later\u00a0argued<\/a>, if speech like Townstone\u2019s is illegal, what wouldn\u2019t violate the law? \u201cAre creditors permitted to talk about crime at all? Education? Homelessness? Welfare? Poverty? Income distribution? Are they permitted to criticize the Black Lives Matter movement? Support the police? Criticize the Catholic Church about child abuse scandals? Support the BDS movement? Criticize the BDS movement? Support abortion rights? Oppose immigration?\u201d<\/p>\n

The lawsuit threatened to entirely destroy Townstone.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Its owner decided to fight.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But how do you fight against the government, which has unlimited resources?<\/p>\n

Enter the\u00a0Pacific Legal Foundation<\/a>, a nonprofit with free speech expertise, which represented the company.<\/p>\n

A federal court in Chicago\u00a0threw out<\/a>\u00a0the CFPB\u2019s lawsuit in February. <\/strong><\/p>\n

However, the ruling was based mostly on the court\u2019s conclusion that the CFPB had authority only to regulate actual discrimination in lending, not marketing conduct that might be deemed \u201cdiscouraging.\u201d The court therefore didn\u2019t need to get to the First Amendment defense.<\/p>\n

However, the CFPB has now appealed to the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, so the free speech defense is being raised again, and Townstone is getting still more help.<\/strong> Among the other firms filing\u00a0amicus<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 friend of the court \u2014 briefs are Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, America\u2019s Future, Free Speech Coalition, Free Speech Defense and Education Fund, U.S. Constitutional Rights Legal Defense Fund, and Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund.<\/p>\n

Lawyers from one of those firms, Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, were guests on\u00a0our podcast<\/a>\u00a0last year discussing legal issues with the University of Illinois\u2019 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies and Gov. Pritzker\u2019s gas tax signage law.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s\u00a0amicus brief<\/a><\/em>\u00a0in Townstone\u2019s case summarizes it nicely: \u201cCongress has not deputized CFPB as the \u2018Tasteful Joke Police,\u2019 nor would the First Amendment permit that delegation\u2026. By conflating candid discussions of crime with the disparagement of African-American communities, CFPB seeks to do just that. Under the First Amendment, it cannot.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

If you think Townstone\u2019s case or other First Amendment cases you\u2019ve heard about are isolated examples, you are dangerously uninformed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The assault on free speech is massive. Much of the government, social media and the press are partners in the Censorship Industrial Complex. <\/strong>That term was coined by Michael Shellenberger, who laid out\u00a056 pages of evidence<\/a>\u00a0in congressional testimony last year. The\u00a0Missouri v Biden<\/em>\u00a0case, now on appeal and likely to go to the U.S. Supreme Court, is already blowing the lid off much of the unholy alliance. Read about the massive evidence of record, discussed in the trial court\u2019s\u00a0Independence Day order<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And if you think the assault on free speech isn\u2019t ongoing in Illinois, you are again dangerously uninformed. Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul essentially thumbed his nose at the First Amendment when he personally drafted the Illinois law targeting alleged pro-life \u201cmisinformation\u201d given out by crisis pregnancy groups near abortion clinics. A federal judge\u00a0ridiculed it<\/a>\u00a0and enjoined its enforcement earlier this month. Chalk up that victory to another of the\u00a0pro bono<\/em>\u00a0law firms available to help on First Amendment issues, the\u00a0Thomas More Society<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gov. JB Pritzker \u201cis gaining a reputation as a hard-left culture warrior who is happy to silence political opponents,\u201d <\/strong>as the Wall Street Journal\u00a0recently said<\/a>. \u201cPritzker apparently thinks that invoking the name Trump is a justification to get away with saying or doing anything. Not under the U.S. Constitution,\u201d wrote the Journal.<\/p>\n

He\u00a0told CNN<\/a>, \u201cThere ought to be a private right of action for anybody that\u2019s dissuaded or told something that\u2019s false, that\u2019s the important thing.\u201d That would be flagrantly unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

Under the guise of banning book bans, the General assembly\u00a0passed and Pritzker signed<\/a>\u00a0a bill delegating control over what books libraries carry to a group run by an open Marxist. Most recently, they passed an \u201canti-doxing\u201d law that flies in the face of textbook First Amendment law, as\u00a0we explained here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Illinois Senators Durbin and Duckworth have been among the progressives jawboning tech platforms to do\u00a0more<\/em><\/a>\u00a0censorship. And Illinois Congressman Sean Casten\u00a0introduced a bill<\/a>\u00a0to strip courts of the power of judicial review \u2014 their power to declare laws invalid as violations of the First Amendment, or anything else.<\/p>\n

Do not stand silent when your right to free speech is suppressed. Know that quality legal firms are often available for free. There are more beyond those I\u2019ve mentioned here.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The assault on free speech must be defeated at all cost. Do your part.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nSat, 09\/02\/2023 – 17:30<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/important-lesson-chicago-confronting-enemies-free-speech<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Important Lesson From Chicago On Confronting The Enemies Of Free Speech Authored by Mark Glennon via Wirepoints.org, The modern left\u2019s assault on free speech…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1425821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1425821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1425821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1425821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1425821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}