California Governor Jerry Brown disappointed privacy advocates with his October 9 veto of a bill which would have required law enforcement officers to have a warrant before searching cell phones incident to an arrest. The bill, Senate Bill 914, sailed through the Legislature with a 32-4 Senate vote and unanimous…
The Occupy movement is raising some thorny First Amendment issues. Protesters have First Amendment rights to demonstrate and march, and they’ve raised important issues about the rising income inequality in this country. On the other hand, governments traditionally have been able to impose so-called “time, place and manner” restrictions, so…
Is Mortal Kombat the highest form of free speech? Maybe not. But it is protected by the First Amendment, according to a majority of the U. S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court’s ruling on June 27 in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association struck down a California law restricting the sale…
There’s an old saying: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. Add to that: transparency may not always be convenient, but it’s important to government. This occurred to me recently in a case I am handling for…
I must confess I haven’t been following the Amanda Knox saga closely. But something caught my eye in the story about her return to the States. She was convicted — not of murder, but of defamation — by an Italian jury. Some states in the U. S. may still have…
The Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) stepped into a touchy First Amendment issue when it shut off cell-phone service this summer in response to protests over a police action. The decision sparked protests from First Amendment advocates and even criticism from BART board members who thought the agency overreacted…
A San Francisco appellate court on August 26 handed a third victory to open government advocates wanting to know who’s receiving county pensions. The decision from California’s First District Court of Appeal in Sonoma County Employees’ Retirement Association v. Superior Court comes on the heels of earlier rulings from Courts…
Two California Courts of Appeal have shed light on a hot issue, ruling that county pension agencies must disclose the names and pension amounts of members receiving generous pension amounts. Both courts, in rulings a month apart, rejected privacy arguments raised by by the agencies and the pension recipients, and…
California is broke. There’s plenty of blame to go around, but one of the prime culprits is a lack of transparency. If people don’t know how public money is being spent, it’s hard to ensure that public money is being spent wisely. One especially troublesome area is public employee pensions,…
Why is transparency and openness important? Think about Bernard Madoff. People invested millions in Madoff on the promise of 14 or 15 percent returns, even though they had no idea what he was investing in or how he was pulling it off. Likewise, poorly-regulated and opaque investment vehicles like securitized…