Recent News
ATLANTA – Americans for Prosperity – Georgia (AFP-GA) today applauded House passage of HB 1, the Forming Open and Robust University Minds (FORUM) Act. AFP-GA Deputy State Director Tony West released the following statement: “Free speech is a fundamental right, and nowhere is that right as crucial as on college campuses. According to research, there are at least […]
Government employs a veritable army of teachers, professors, graduate students, undergraduate work-study students, as well as coaches, teachers’ aides, tutors, and administrators. To what degree can government, as an employer, punish the people it hires for their own personal expression? That’s a live question. The First Amendment protects citizens from the government. The government doesn’t […]
In the home of the brave, more say they are afraid to speak up than ever before. About 40 percent of Americans today report keeping quiet — holding back from expressing their true beliefs for fear of reprisal. This figure is particularly astounding when compared to the 1950s during McCarthyism: Back then, only 13 percent […]
When most people hear “free speech,” topics like protest, press, and prayer come to mind. Paying membership dues? It likely doesn’t rank near the top. But it has significant First Amendment implications. To practice law, many states require lawyers to join a bar association and pay dues. These mandatory bar associations typically use member dues […]
Dear Representatives: On behalf of Americans for Prosperity activists in all 50 states, I urge you to vote “NO” on Rep. Kilmer’s Amendment #17 to H.R. 5314, the Protecting Our Democracy Act. The so-called “Honest Ads Act” creates unconstitutional restrictions on people’s ability to make their voices heard and hold politicians accountable. Its provisions would […]
On Friday night, a Southwest Airlines flight took off from Houston to Albuquerque. It arrived on time. I was not on that plane, and odds are neither were you. However, you may still have heard about it because a journalist on the flight reported that she heard the pilot say “Let’s go, Brandon” over the […]
People want to know what the law is. It’s a fundamental part of any free society—we should know exactly what rules apply to us, and what rules apply to the government. That is why the idea of having a body of “secret law” is offensive to our constitutional system of government. But what if I […]
Public accommodations laws “help ensure a free and open economy.” Traditionally, public accommodations laws have been applied to, well, public accommodations, such as hotels, or “what the old common law promised to any member of the public wanting a meal at the inn, that accepting the usual terms of service, they will not be turned […]
Which one of these signs merits full First Amendment protection: a billboard providing the address of the nearest 24-hour urgent care provider or a billboard exhorting the reader to “Vote No on 15”? If you answered “both” then you’ve identified an anomaly in First Amendment jurisprudence, which would categorize the first example as “commercial speech” […]
