Only the government (its agents, representatives, and entities) can violate someone’s free speech. It is really important to us that our community understands the First Amendment. The reason many of us are concerned about the direction of our local government is that we believe some local government officials acted contrary to the U.S. Constitution in the handling of the library matter specifically, and have acted contrary to the best interests of our community in other circumstances.
On the issue of constitutionally protected free speech, government officials are held to a higher standard for knowing the law and protecting the law.
Someone recently commented to us, “you’re trying to take away the free speech right of the Mass Resistance organization,” and “what about Christians's right to free speech to oppose LGBTQ things?”
It is not a violation of an organization like Mass Resistance’s free speech to explain to them that a stance the organization is taking is violative of the Constitution. If local elected officials had said Mass Resistance was not allowed to speak at meetings, submit comments, or peacefully protest that would be a violation of their rights. Telling Mass Resistance no to a policy decision is not a constitutional violation.
Our local government cannot tell the community we cannot access information (see the comments the library board made about using the weeding process to remove books the board finds objectionable). Freedom to access information is part of freedom of speech. Check out our next article about obscenity to understand this matter in more detail.
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