"Press access is a privilege, not a right." This is the most common objection to the argument that the Trump administration violated the First Amendment by banning news outlets it doesn't like from the White House. But the fact that you don't have a right to something in the first place doesn't mean the government can take it away to punish you for exercising your First Amendment rights. Federal courts have reaffirmed this principle many times. Nobody has an automatic right to a property tax exemption. But in Speiser v. Randall (1958), the Supreme Court held that California could not deny one to residents who refused to sign a loyalty oath. Nobody has a right to a government contract. But in Board of County Commissioners v. Umbehr (1996), the Supreme Court held that a Kansas county could not cancel a trash-hauling contract just because the contractor wrote editorials criticizing the county government. The same principle applies in other contexts. Nobody has a right to be a professor at a public university. But firing a professor over his liberal or conservative beliefs would violate the First Amendment. A driver's license may be a privilege. That doesn't mean the state can revoke your license just because you criticized the governor. If the rule were otherwise, the government would have enormous power to do exactly what the First Amendment forbids it from doing: punish Americans for saying things the government doesn't like.

The First Circuit sides with parents punished for wearing pink “XX” wristbands to their daughters’ soccer game to protest transgender athletes’ participation in girls’ sports. It was a silent protest. There was no evidence of disruption or harassment of any player. As the court recognized, school officials sought to suppress a viewpoint on a contested issue. But “administrators cannot favor one side of a debate involving parental speech on an issue of prominent public concern, and which, in those parents’ views, concerned the safety of their children.” That violates the First Amendment. Great win by @InstFreeSpeech.

The Center for American Progress says the administration's National Guard deployments didn't reduce urban crime. President Trump says they did. OK. That's what political debate is for. But Trump is now threatening to sue CAP over its conclusion about the effectiveness of a government policy. Whether you agree with CAP's analysis or not, that's heartland First Amendment-protected speech. There's no viable legal claim here. Just another attempt by the president to silence and punish political opponents by tying them up with frivolous litigation.

"Hate speech" is not a magic phrase that lets the government sidestep the First Amendment. Yet the Columbia Police Department in South Carolina posted this image on its Facebook page and maintains a policy banning "inappropriate" and "offensive" comments. Government officials can't censor speech, online or off, just because they dislike or are offended by it. Period. FIRE is calling on @ColumbiaPDSC to take down the post and bring its social media policies and practices into compliance with the First Amendment.

An NJ town council refused to pay its bill for ads in a local news outlet, not because of any problem with the ads, but because council members are mad about "false" reporting. Wildly unconstitutional and an apparent breach of contract. All on video: