Federal Judge Rules First-Grader Too Young for Protections Guaranteed by the First Amendment
A federal judge in California has ruled that a first-grade student is too young to have free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, prompting the student’s parents to appeal the decision.
According to Just The News, the case stemmed from a female student – identified as B.B. in the lawsuit – who felt bad for her minority classmate after a lesson on Martin Luther King Jr. and Black Lives Matter. B.B. drew a picture for that classmate to help them feel more included.
The picture was captioned “Black Lives Matter” above the phrase “Any Life,” with a picture of four circles of different colors beneath the text. According to B.B., the circles represented her and three classmates holding hands. The minority classmate thanked B.B. for her drawing and took it home.
But the minority classmate’s mother ostensibly saw malice in the otherwise innocent drawing. The mother reported the drawing to Jesus Becerra, principal of the Viejo Elementary School in California’s Capistrano Unified School District (CUSD) where both students were enrolled. She expressed “concern that her daughter was being singled out for her race.”
While acknowledging that B.B.’s motives were innocent, Becerra was quick to conclude that writing “any life” was “inconsistent with values taught in the school.” He also declared the drawing “racist” and “inappropriate” and swiftly punished B.B., despite the minority classmate’s parents also acknowledging the drawing’s innocent motive and wanting no punishment for her.
B.B.’s mother Chelsea Boyle learned of the punishment a year later and requested an explanation and an apology from the school. She then sued CUSD, Becerra and CUSD counselor Cleo Victa. In turn, the school district claimed the principal was operating under qualified immunity against the author’s First Amendment and retaliation claims.
But U.S. District Judge David Carter, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, ruled in favor of the defendants. According to his decision, first-grade students are not protected by the First Amendment.
B.B.’s mother appeals Carter’s ruling
“Giving great weight to the fact that the students involved were in [the] first grade, the court concludes that the drawing is not protected by the First Amendment,” Carter wrote in his decision. He cited a U.S. Supreme Court ruling stating that “schools may restrict speech that ‘might reasonably lead school authorities to forecast substantial disruption of or material interference with school activities’ or that collides ‘with the rights of other students to be secure and let alone.’”
The magistrate added that the phrase “any life” was close to the phrase “All Lives Matter,” which he said is “an inclusive denotation but one that is widely perceived as racially insensitive and belittling when directed at people of color.”
But Boyle wasn’t satisfied with the ruling, approaching the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) for help in filing an appeal – which was filed on July 15 in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
According to the appeal, Becerra’s punishment of B.B. counts as retaliation for actions protected under the First Amendment. It also argued that her speech and that of other first-graders are protected under the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District case. The 1969 decision states that “First Amendment rights … are available to teachers and students [and they don’t] shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
(Related: First Amendment victory: Schools may no longer police students’ social media posts.)
Moreover, PLF’s appeal said the lower court incorrectly found that B.B.’s speech fell under the exemptions for speech at school outlined in the Tinker decision – in particular speech that infringes on another student’s right to be left alone with regards to bullying or causes “substantial disruption.” According to Just The News, the appeal lodged by B.B.’s mother now awaits a hearing and ruling from the appellate court, which should occur within a year.
Check out FirstAmendment.news for similar stories.
Watch this segment from InfoWars about how free speech protected under the First Amendment is under attack.
EXCLUSIVE: Top Sniper Says Assassination Attempt Was Inside Job By Desperate Deep State
Employee Wins Lawsuit Filed by Gov’t Agency After Losing Job for Refusing Covid Shot
(LifeSiteNews) — A former assistant manager who was fired after applying for a religious accommodation to refuse the COVID shot has been awarded a six-figure payout after a federal government agency filed a lawsuit on the employee’s behalf.
Federal Judge M. Casey Rodgers on Thursday ordered the Pensacola, Florida store Hank’s Fine Furniture (HFI) to pay a former manager, identified in the lawsuit as “K.M.O.,” $110,000 for refusing to accommodate her request for exemption from the COVID shot due to her “sincerely held Christian beliefs.”
“HFI is permanently enjoined from discriminating against any employee on the basis of religion in violation of Title VII,” Rodgers wrote, the Pensacola News Journal reported Monday. He further declared that HFI “will reasonably accommodate employee and prospective employee religious beliefs during all hiring, discipline and promotion activities,” and “any activity affecting any other terms and conditions of employment.”
Significantly, the store also “cannot require proof that an employee’s or applicant’s religious objection to an employer requirement be an official tenet or endorsed teaching of said religious belief,” according to Pensacola News Journal.
Hank’s Furniture must also adopt a written policy, disseminated to all employees, declaring that HFI “will not require any employee to violate sincerely held religious beliefs, including those pertaining to vaccinations, as a condition of his/her employment.”
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sued on behalf of K.M.O. (EEOC v. Hank’s Furniture, Inc., Case No. 3:23-cv-24533-MCR-HTC) in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida after it was unable to reach a pre-litigation settlement “through its administrative conciliation process.”
According to Pensacola News Journal, about two weeks after HFI implemented a policy mandating that its employees receive a COVID shot, K.M.O. told the company she would not get the shot due to her “sincerely held religious beliefs,” and then requested a religious exemption.
According to the lawsuit, HFI ignored her request and asked if she would comply with their COVID shot policy, and K.M.O. then told HFI she planned to submit a written religious accommodation request, asking “whether HFI had a particular form she should use.”
HFI reportedly did not respond to her request. When K.M.O. complained that HFI’s unwillingness to grant her a religious exemption was “unjust,” her new supervisor reportedly told her that “HFI did not care why she would not take” the COVID shot and that HFI “would never grant an accommodation.”
On August 20, 2021, HFI announced that any employee who did not take the COVID shot would be fired on October 31, 2021. On August 26, K.M.O. submitted a written religious exemption request, citing Title VII as well as her “sincerely held Christian beliefs.”
When K.M.O. emailed HMI on September 6, 2021, asking for the status of her religious exemption request, HFI informed her that her religious exemption request was “severely lacking,” and then denied it.
K.M.O. then “asked for help to submit an acceptable religious exemption request,” but HFI refused to discuss any accommodation, according to the lawsuit. Then on October 31, she was fired by HFI because she did not comply with their COVID “vaccination” policy.
Birmingham District Director Bradley Anderson remarked regarding the case for an EEOC press release, “Employees should not have to renounce their religious beliefs in order to remain employed. Let this case serve as a reminder that employers should afford accommodation for religious beliefs unless doing so would cause an undue hardship.”
EXCLUSIVE: Top Sniper Says Assassination Attempt Was Inside Job By Desperate Deep State
Unwoke: Microsoft Ditches its “Business Critical” DEI Team as the Woke Wave Begins to Unravel
Tech giant Microsoft reportedly fired a team imposing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies in the company because “DEI programs are no longer seen as business critical” – a direct contrast to their perceived importance in 2020 and after the firm poured millions of dollars into the initiative.
The Big Tech firm disbanded the DEI team at the beginning of the month due to “changing business needs,” according to a July 1 email obtained by Business Insider and corroborated by IGN. The said correspondence was met with blowback from an unnamed DEI team leader at the company, who fired off a missive to thousands of fellow employees the same day.
“True systems-change work associated with DEI programs everywhere are no longer business critical or smart as they were in 2020,” the leader of the team wrote in an email sent to thousands of employees. It is still unclear as to how many employees were affected.
Tech companies, including Microsoft, started to improve diversity efforts after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and the historic protests that followed. Back then, the technology firm pledged to invest $150 million into its DEI push and to double the number of Black and Hispanic leaders within the company by 2025.
Microsoft spokesman Jeff Jones claims the company’s dedication to DEI, which has been rebranded to “D&I,” or “Diversity and Inclusion,” is still ongoing. He said: “Our D&I commitments remain unchanged. Our focus on diversity and inclusion is unwavering and we are holding firm on our expectations, prioritizing accountability and continuing to focus on this work.”
In total, Microsoft, which employs 221,000 people worldwide, said women comprise 31.2 percent of all employees globally – a 3.6 percent increase since 2019. The Windows maker said that black employees represent 6.7 percent of its global workforce – up 2.2 percent from 2019, while Hispanic employees comprise eight percent of the company’s workforce. But earlier this year, the company laid off 1,900 staff from its video game divisions and closed both Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin. Last year, the wider company laid off over 10,000 individuals.
Meanwhile, other tech giants and big enterprises such as Zoom, Snap, Tesla, DoorDash, Lyft, Home Depot and Wayfair have also downsized their DEI teams. Zoom laid off a DEI-focused team earlier this year, Bloomberg reported. Google and Meta also cut DEI programs last year, according to CNBC.
Microsoft suffers tech meltdown, affecting airports, banks and hospitals worldwide
Meanwhile, Microsoft suffered a massive global IT outage involving disruptions in thousands of Windows personal computers, starting Thursday evening, July 18, and continuing the next day, which hit airports, banks, hospitals, broadcasting networks and other critical infrastructure as well as 911 emergency call centers as they rely on the said operating system.
Microsoft said it was aware of an issue affecting people’s ability to access 365 services. In an update issued around 1:00 a.m. PT (4:00 a.m. ET), the company said, “Multiple services are continuing to see improvements in availability as our mitigation actions progress.”
The outage, which also took down the London Stock Exchange, has been linked to problems with Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing system, causing users to lose access to Office products and Windows systems more broadly. Widely used cybersecurity platform CrowdStrike pointed to a defect in an update it had delivered for the customers, while other operating systems including Mac were unaffected. In a statement on Friday morning, July 19, CrowdStrike said the issue had been “identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
“This is not a security incident or cyberattack,” CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz also wrote on X.
Among the businesses and institutions around the world that the outage knocked offline were Britain’s biggest train company, the parent company of Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Great Northern. Ryanair was among the major British airlines saying its flights were being disrupted by the outage, while Sky News was knocked off-air on Friday morning. Meanwhile, all flights from several major American airlines, including Delta, United and American Airlines, were grounded due to a “communication issue.”
Banks, supermarkets and other major institutions across the globe also reported computer issues, with thousands of general practitioner practices across England struggling to book appointments and issue prescriptions.
The disruption also prevented some television stations from airing shows. Several affiliates for Scripps News could not air local news reports, the Associated Press reported. By Friday, though, roughly 90 percent were operational. And anchors for an NBC affiliate in San Francisco turned to YouTube to tell viewers that “massive technical difficulties” were behind Thursday’s programming disruptions.
The Canadian Broadcast Corp. was able to broadcast but said its own IT systems had been affected. Sky News in the United Kingdom was knocked off the air in the early morning but was still able to deliver updates on its app and website during the broadcast outage. ABC News in Australia was unable to deliver its usual evening news update, instead showing a special report on the disruption at Sydney airports.
Head over to TechGiants.news for similar stories.
EXCLUSIVE: Top Sniper Says Assassination Attempt Was Inside Job By Desperate Deep State
With Biden Out of the 2024 Race, What’s the Deep State’s Next Move?
The 81-year-old US head of state has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to be picked as the Democratic Party nominee for the upcoming elections. Will this controversial shift drive a wedge between liberals long into the future?
Joe Biden’s eleventh-hour decision not to run marks a history-making change in the 2024 presidential race less than a month before the Democratic National Convention, which will kick off on August 19. Just after announcing that he would not be seeking the party’s nomination, Biden, who has said he would remain in the Oval Office until after a new leader is sworn in, announced in a tweet that Harris, 59, has his “full support and endorsement” to be the Democratic presidential nominee. This is where things promise to get ugly.
While Biden finally displayed the necessary amount of self-awareness to understand he is not physically and mentally fit to remain in office for another four years, Harris continues to delude herself that she is presidential material. The past four years have clearly and painfully proven that she is not. Not only did the vice president demonstrate her inability to perform simple functions, like effectually addressing a group of schoolchildren in what just might be the most cringe-worthy moment of her career, her own staff has raised serious questions about her office management skills. Meanwhile, Harris’s political instincts continually come up short at the most critical moments.
For example, one of her first major jobs as vice president was to oversee the crisis at the southern border, where millions of illegal immigrants are flooding into the US every year. Yet Harris waited over 100 days before paying a visit to the US-Mexico frontier. When pressed on the matter in an interview, she brushed off the oversight when she said, bafflingly, “And I haven’t been to Europe. And I mean, I don’t understand the point that you’re making. I’m not discounting the importance of the border.” It’s those sorts of uncomfortable exchanges that have kept the vice president’s likability and trustworthiness in the basement among voters.
Read more Biden drops out of US presidential race
A YouGov poll of 1,582 American adults conducted between July 13 and 16 revealed that 39 percent of respondents would vote for Harris if she was the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate, against 44 percent for Trump. This places Harris behind bumbling Biden, who the survey found would lose to Trump by 41 percent of the vote against 43 percent.
This is where the question about the future trajectory of the Democratic Party comes down to who is really in charge in Washington, DC at the moment. For those who believe that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been calling the shots for the past several years, I’ve got some hot property in Virginia Beach to sell you. The real powerbrokers behind the throne – the Deep State, if you will – who give Biden and Harris their marching orders, are comprised of the likes of the Clintons, Obamas, Pelosis, Schumers, and many others. While this may sound like a grand conspiracy theory, it’s not difficult to imagine that some of the most powerful and influential Democratic dynasties of the last century have serious sway over policy in Washington. Donald Trump, who knows a thing or two about how things work in DC, has suggested as much.
“You’ve been ripped off by everybody and betrayed by the globalists, Washington, Wall Street people, those combinations of Washington, Wall Street, they’re the worst of all,” Trump said last year at a New Hampshire event. “And it’s never been worse than it is now under crooked Joe Biden, and frankly, his boss, Barack Hussein Obama. I think it’s his boss.”
For the disbelievers, Obama fueled the speculation himself in 2020 when he told the late-night comedian Stephen Colbert, just before Biden was sworn in as president, that people would often ask him, “knowing what you know now, do you wish you had a third term?”
To which two-term Obama famously said, “If I could make an arrangement where I had a stand-in, a front-man or front-woman and they had an earpiece in and I was in my basement or sweats looking through the stuff and I could deliver the lines but somebody else was doing all the talking and ceremony, I would be fine with that because I found the work fascinating.”
Some might call that a quaint description of how the ‘Deep State’ actually works behind the scenes, pulling the strings on puppet politicians they firmly control.
Read more Musk thanks Soros for unveiling ‘next puppet’
“The Deep State is real,” wrote Jason Chaffetz, the former chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “They don’t like exposure, accountability, or responsibility. They fight back, outlast, and work the system to their advantage.”
Whether or not the American political system has been victimized by such an operation is of the utmost importance for all Americans. But whether or not a person believes it to be true, they cannot deny that the most powerful names in Washington have one goal, and that is to prevent The Orange Man from getting anywhere near the Oval Office again. The question they are certainly asking themselves today is: can the first female, black and South Asian vice-president in US history pull off the task? My personal hunch is that they do not have much faith in Kamala winning a fair (and fair is the crucial word) no-holds-barred slugfest against the indefatigable Donald. Kamala simply lacks the composure and charm necessary for survival in the political jungle, as was clearly demonstrated in her 2000 run for the presidency when her polling numbers never escaped the basement, forcing her to leave the field before the primaries even began.
Unless. Yes, there is an unless. Unless the wily Democrats have ascertained beforehand that mail-in ballots, together with the millions of migrant voters anxious to support their benefactors, could guarantee victory to even the likes of Kamala Harris in a showdown against Trump. In that case, we could be looking at the first female US president (together with the possibility of a female VP, for example, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, or maybe a male in the form of California Governor Gavin Newsom, whose super ego would probably preclude him taking the inferior role). Such a combination of factors could guarantee the Obama-run (?) Deep State at least another four years of calling the shots in Washington, DC from the shadows, with a weak and submissive leader formally in power. Stranger things have happened.
EXCLUSIVE: Top Sniper Says Assassination Attempt Was Inside Job By Desperate Deep State
Donald Trump Jr. says Assassination Attempt Changed His Father
Narrowly avoiding death has a way of inspiring people to take a closer look at their life and their priorities, and Donald Trump Jr. told the media that his father has been “changed permanently” by the assassination attempt on him this weekend at a rally in Pennsylvania.
Trump is certainly feeling very lucky to be alive after the assassin’s bullet merely grazed his ear in a shooting that some experts say could have been fatal had he not moved his head slightly at the exact moment the bullet was about to strike.
At the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin, Trump Jr. said that he thinks it has mellowed him somewhat, although he expects him to remain tough when it comes to the issues closest to his heart.
He stated: “You know, I think it lasts. There are events that change you for a couple minutes and there’s events that change you permanently.”
He added: “Now again, it’s Trump so [he’s] still going to be reactionary. [Trump will] always be a fighter, that’s never gonna change, but he’s gonna do, I think, his best to moderate that where it needs to be.”
“He’s going to be tough when he has to be,” he went on to say. “We’ve seen that, he’s never gonna change. But I think there will be something. I think these are momentous occasions that change people permanently.”
The former president told the New York Post over the weekend that he had originally composed “an extremely tough speech… all about the corrupt, horrible administration” to deliver at the Republican National Convention this week. However, the assassination attempt inspired him to discard it in favor of something that would “unite our country.”
Trump, Jr. added that he helped his father with the original version of the speech and characterized it as “hot,” which he felt was needed at the time.
“But again, a lot changes once you’ve got shot in the face,” Trump Jr. added.
The new speech is expected to be delivered when the former president addresses the convention on Thursday.
Trump’s reaction to shooting demonstrated why he’s a good leader, son says
Trump Jr. also explained how his father’s defiant reaction to the shooting demonstrated that he is the exact type of leader America needs right now, at a time when a lot of people like to talk up their strengths, but few are willing to take action.
“Everyone these days is a tough guy on the internet or on a keyboard, but when you’ve actually been shot, and you can get up, defiant, fist in the air, telling people to stay in the game, to fight — That’s exactly the kind of leadership we need. That’s actually a man who has been tested,” he said.
Major news outlet editor tells media to stop showing photo because it’s “free PR” for Trump
The iconic photo of Trump raising his fist to the crowd of supporters just after the shooting with blood still dripping down his face and an American flag flying over his head has been shown by media around the world in recent days, and an unnamed photo editor working for a “major news outlet” has warned the media that it’s “dangerous” to keep showing it, calling it “free PR” for the Trump campaign.
It makes sense that liberals would be having a fit about this. While the Trump campaign has photos depicting a strong leader who immediately bounced back from chaos with authority and vigor, all they have are images of a confused and weak man with a blank look on his face.
EXCLUSIVE: Top Sniper Says Assassination Attempt Was Inside Job By Desperate Deep State
Democrats Push Google to Promote ‘Authoritative’ Sources, Collaborate with Government on AI Overviews for Election & Health Topics
Congressman Adam Schiff of California has intensified his scrutiny of Google’s management of AI technologies, particularly its AI Overview, which summarizes top web pages but has been prone to errors, raising concerns about its tendency to spread “misinformation.”
While it’s true that Google’s AI has been known to output bizarre and false information, and many have been alarmed about the potential implications of unreliable AI outputs, there’s a broader skepticism about the idea of government intervention, given that it involves the regulation of information and speech.
The AI Overview aims to provide succinct information to users, but Schiff’s inquiries to Google CEO Sundar Pichai suggest it may often use questionable sources. It shouldn’t fall to the government to be the ones who can choose which sources are reliable.
They argue for prioritizing “authoritative” sources, traditionally recognized media outlets, to mitigate the spread of misinformation. Additionally, there’s a call for collaboration between Google and government agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), despite concerns that CISA has previously been involved in flagging online content, which critics argue borders on censorship.
“Given the rising threat of misinformation and disinformation online, it is critical that Americans are directed to authoritative, accurate resources when using Google’s platform,” the letter reads.
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
These demands extend specifically to areas such as voting and election information, where Democrats urge that only verified and accurate information be propagated through AI Overviews.
“How is Google working with relevant government entities, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), to ensure that only accurate information is provided through AI Overviews, particularly with respect to information about voting and elections?” the letter asks.
Similar standards are sought for health-related content, advocating that such information must be clinically accurate and scientifically sound. This push can be seen as an attempt to limit criticism of vaccine efficacy and other COVID-19 measures, which have been contentious topics.
Other representatives, including Henry C. Johnson, Jr., Donald S. Beyer Jr., Pramila Jayapal, and Lori Trahan, have joined Schiff in requesting more details from Google about how it ensures the accuracy of AI-generated summaries, error notification mechanisms, and methodologies for generating health-related information.
Instances cited by Schiff include the AI erroneously suggesting harmful actions or misrepresenting public figures, which underscores the technology’s flaws. But now, the question of what to do about it, alongside pressure from Congress to restrict which sources get to be used for the next content revolution, will likely raise First Amendment arguments.
EXCLUSIVE: Top Sniper Says Assassination Attempt Was Inside Job By Desperate Deep State