The News Journal of Wilmington, Del., reports that U.S. District Judge Leonard P. Stark’s opinion issuing a temporary injunction supports four county residents who say the practice violates the First Amendment.

“The fact that The Lord’s Prayer has been the only prayer recited at the beginning of Council meetings for over six years is likely to be found to demonstrate that the Council gives Christianity an unconstitutionally preferred status,” Stark wrote in Mullin v. Sussex County.

Stark’s injunction takes effect June 15 but doesn’t end the lawsuit.

Sussex officials had sought to have the lawsuit dismissed. They say the prayer is a call for spiritual guidance and does not favor any religion.

The judge has ordered both sides to hold a conference call with him tomorrow to discuss the next steps in the case.

ABC News reports the medical records were part of evidence released yesterday that prosecutors have in the second-degree murder case against Zimmerman.

News organizations in Florida, including the Associated Press, had challenged the sealing of records.

Zimmerman has entered a plea of not guilty and claims self-defense in the Feb. 26 shooting. A message left yesterday evening with Zimmerman’s attorney was not returned. Zimmerman was treated Feb. 27 at Altamonte Family Practice. A phone call made yesterday evening to the practice rang unanswered.

The Associated Press previously reported some of the injuries on the basis of a video of Zimmerman at a jail entrance.

A similar previous law was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge, so lawmakers rewrote the provision, hoping tightened language could withstand judicial scrutiny.

The House gave final passage to the rewrite yesterday on a 93-0 vote that sent it to Gov. Bobby Jindal, who supports the measure.

The bill (H.B. 620 at www.legis.la.gov) sponsored by Rep. Ledricka Thierry, D-Opelousas, will more narrowly define which sites are prohibited. News websites, e-mail pages and online shopping sites aren’t included in the ban.

Banned will be websites having a primary purpose of “facilitating social interaction with other users of the website” and that allow users “to create web pages or profiles about themselves that are available to the public or other users.”

The prohibition will apply to anyone convicted of a sex offense against a minor or of video voyeurism. Conviction of the crime of unlawful use or access of social media would carry a prison sentence of up to 10 years. A second conviction would mandate a prison sentence of at least five years and up to 20 years.

A federal judge threw out in February a law passed last year that made it a crime for the same list of sex offenders to use networking websites, chat rooms and peer-to-peer networks. The Baton Rouge-based judge said the law was too broad and would effectively ban those sex offenders from the Internet.

In an order issued on May 14, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the groups provided no evidence their contributors would face threats if their names were disclosed. The three-judge panel ruled 2-1 against issuing a stay. The merits of the case are scheduled to be argued before the appeals court in September.

The disclosure issue involves broadcast ads that don’t expressly advocate for or against a candidate running for office.

A federal judge ruled in March that the Federal Election Commission overstepped its bounds in allowing groups that fund the ads to keep their financiers anonymous. The funding groups had sought to have that ruling put on hold.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., filed the original lawsuit to overturn the FEC regulation. One of his attorneys, Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer, says the case is part of a concerted effort to end secrecy in the campaign-finance arena.

Other efforts include legislation sponsored by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Van Hollen to require more detailed disclosure requirements for campaign finance.

In addition, Democracy 21 and another organization, the Campaign Legal Center, are challenging the tax-exempt status of several funding groups classified as social welfare organizations, a designation which allows the groups to keep their donors’ contributions secret. One of the social welfare organizations, American Crossroads GPS, is an arm of American Crossroads, a super PAC with ties to President George W. Bush’s longtime political director, Karl Rove.

Another social welfare organization, Priorities USA, is backing President Barack Obama.

William R. Couch is a Sunni Muslim and an inmate housed at the Augusta Correctional Center in Craigsville, Va. Incarcerated since 1990 and serving multiple life sentences, Couch continuously maintained a beard for religious purposes until 1999.

That year, the Virginia Department of Corrections instituted a no-beards rule to aid in quick inmate identification and promote safety, security and sanitation. Inmates suffering a skin condition caused by shaving were given medical exemptions.

In December 2009, Couch requested permission to grow a 1/8-inch beard to comply with religious obligations. Apparently Couch complied with the policy from 1999 until 2009.

After his request was denied, Couch filed an appeal with the prison administration. When that failed, he filed a federal civil rights lawsuit, alleging a violation of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and the free-exercise clause of the First Amendment.

RLUIPA is a federal law passed in 2000 that requires prison officials to have a compelling government interest advanced in the least-restrictive way before they can substantially burden an inmate’s religious-liberty rights.  For inmates, RLUIPA often serves as a better litigation vehicle than the free-exercise clause, because RLUIPA imposes a higher burden of proof on prison officials than the U.S. Supreme Court requires under the free-exercise clause in cases that don’t target a specific religious faith.

A federal district court ruled in favor of prison officials, granting summary judgment. Couch then appealed to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He appealed only the denial of the RLUIPA claim. In its May 11 opinion in Couch v. Jabe, the three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit reversed the lower court and reinstated Couch’s claim.

The appeals panel, in an opinion written by Chief Judge William Traxler, found that prison officials were able to identify a compelling interest for the grooming policy. They relied on an affidavit from John M. Jabe, deputy director of operations for the Virginia Department of Corrections. Jabe wrote that inmates could hide contraband in beards, promote identification with gangs, create a health or safety problem or significantly impair prison officials’ ability to identify inmates quickly.

However, the panel then determined that the grooming policy was not advanced in the least-restrictive way possible. Couch contended that he should have a religious exemption from the policy to grow a 1/8-inch beard. According to him, this short beard would not hinder prison officials from identifying him and would not cause any security or safety problems.

The appeals court sided with Couch, noting that prison officials had “failed to indicate any consideration of whether Couch’s proposed alternative might be equally as successful as the Policy in furthering the identified compelling interests, and they failed to provide any acknowledgment that a religious exemption for a one-eighth-inch beard would implicate the identified compelling interests.”

Traxler noted that prison officials are owed deference by the courts concerning the handling of prisons and inmates. But he concluded: “Prison Officials simply failed to provide any explanation to which this court could defer.”

Couch’s case now goes back to the district court for reconsideration.

The legislation updates Arizona’s harassment and stalking laws to include smart phones and cyber communication.

A provision that free-speech advocates said could lead to people being criminally charged for constitutionally protected comments online was dropped.

The measure now focuses on behavior intended to intimidate or threaten. It also states the law would not apply to constitutionally protected speech. Other changes include specifications that a threat be directed at a specific individual or group.

Supporters say the legislation helps victims whose cases have been dismissed in court because state law hasn’t keep up with technology changes.

Also see: Effort to combat bullying would punish too much speech

Ruth Mosholder says her free-speech rights were violated. On May 11, the 6^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sent the lawsuit back to a Detroit federal judge, saying Mosholder’s letter raised concerns “about matters of public importance.”

In 2008, Mosholder was a school officer at the state prison in Lapeer. She wrote a letter to lawmakers, complaining about prison-sponsored rap contests. Mosholder said there were gang signs, sagging pants and other dress-code violations. She said the prison lacked overall discipline.

Mosholder sued after she was reassigned as a general prison officer and required to work weekends and holidays. She says it was retaliation.

“On balance, Mosholder’s letter did not undermine or threaten to undermine the prison’s interests so substantially as to justify prohibiting or punishing her speech,” the 6^th Circuit wrote in Mosholder v. Barnhardt. “Mosholder’s speech did not interfere with her duties, advocate any disruption or defiance on the part of employees, prevent discipline by superiors, and she is not, in this regard, a confidential employee breaking a confidence.”

The May 11 order by Senior U.S. District Judge Orinda Evans rejected 69 copyright claims against the university filed by Oxford University Press, SAGE Publications and Cambridge University Press. The publishers claimed the school allowed “massive” copyright violations by allowing professors to download and reproduce excerpts from course materials.

The ruling by Evans found that the “fair use doctrine” protected a professor’s decision to allow students to access an excerpt through the university’s online system. The doctrine allows the publication of material without the consent of the copyright’s owner as long as the amount of the material used is limited.

She wrote that making limited excerpts freely available to students would “further the spread of knowledge.”

Legal experts closely watched the outcome of the lawsuit, which some said was the first of its kind in the nation.

“The judge’s ruling is significant not only for Georgia State University, but for all educational fair use in general,” said Mark Becker, the university’s president. “While the broader implications of this case will be analyzed for weeks and months to come, Georgia State is very pleased to have been a trailblazer in this increasingly complex digital copyright environment.”

Kerry Heyward, who represented the school, said the verdict could help colleges develop policies for electronic access.

“This case highlights the importance of fair use in providing academic faculty a cost effective, legal way to spread important knowledge to their students,” said Heyward. “We appreciate Judge Evans’ careful consideration of this complicated issue, and greatly value her understanding and appreciation of higher education.”

An attorney for the publishers didn’t return a call seeking comment in time for this story.

The university didn’t win on every challenge. Evans ruled against the university in five claims that took place when the publication lost money because students had free access to entire textbook chapters.

Posner, a long-time judge on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, is one of the most prolific and influential jurists in the country. An intellectual leader of the law-and-economics school of thought, he is a frequent author, lecturer and blogger on a wide range of topics. His narrow view of the First Amendment, however, has perhaps never been clearer than in his recent dissent in American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois v. Alvarez.

In Alvarez, the ACLU of Illinois challenged in federal court the constitutionality of the Illinois eavesdropping statute, which makes it a felony to audio record any conversation unless all parties to the conversation consent. The statute requires an enhanced penalty — with a possible prison term of up to 15 years — if at least one of the non-consenting recorded persons is a law enforcement officer performing his or her official duties.

The statute has been the subject of much discussion and litigation in recent years, as prosecutors have stepped up enforcement of the law against individuals recording police activity with hand-held cameras and cell phones. Despite the fact that a state judge in March found the statute unconstitutional, legislative efforts since then to modify the law have been unsuccessful.

In its suit, the ACLU sought a declaratory judgment that the statute could not be constitutionally enforced against the organization’s “police accountability program,” which includes a plan to make audio-visual recordings of police officers performing their duties in public places. Of special interest to the ACLU is the recording how officers handle protesters.

The trial judge denied the ACLU’s request, finding the statute did not threaten to cause the organization a First Amendment injury, because the officers and civilians who would be recorded were not “willing speakers.”

But on appeal, the majority of the 7th Circuit’s three-judge panel reversed the trial court’s decision and ordered that a preliminary injunction be entered prohibiting enforcement of the statute against the ACLU pending further proceedings.

In reversing the trial court, the majority had little difficulty concluding that making “an audio or audiovisual recording is necessarily included within the First Amendment’s guarantee of speech and press rights as a corollary of the right to disseminate the resulting recording.”

“By way of a simple analogy,” the majority continued, “banning photography or note-taking at a public event would raise serious First Amendment concerns; a law of that sort would obviously affect the right to publish the resulting photograph or disseminate a report derived from the notes. The same is true of a ban on audio and audiovisual recording.”

Because the statute does not punish audio recording of only certain political or other views, the majority held that the test for whether the statute could survive was whether its burden on First Amendment rights was no greater than necessary to further an important governmental interest. The statute failed that test, the majority said, because the state could not identify any important interest in prohibiting the recording of law enforcement officers performing duties in public places.

In dissent, Posner disagreed with almost every element of the majority’s holding and used his dissent to express his frustration with the current state of First Amendment jurisprudence, which he believes is far from the moorings of the framers’ original intent.

“[T]he constitutional right of free speech, as construed nowadays, is nowhere to be found in the Constitution,” Posner wrote. “The relevant provision of the First Amendment merely forbids Congress to abridge free speech, which as understood in the eighteenth century meant freedom only from censorship (that is, suppressing speech, rather than just punishing the speaker after the fact).”

“The limitation of the amendment to Congress, and thus to federal restrictions on free speech (the First Amendment does not apply to state action), and to censorship is the original understanding,” Posner continued, though failing to note that the U.S. Supreme Court in 1868 interpreted the 14^th Amendment as applying the First Amendment to the states.  “Judges have strayed so far from it that further departures should be undertaken with caution. Even today, with the right to free speech expanding in all directions, it remains a partial, a qualified, right.”(Parenthetical material and italics are Posner’s.)

Pointing to a long list of circumstances in which regulation of speech is permitted — including child pornography, securities fraud and laws making medical records confidential — Posner argued that Illinois should be allowed to add to that list a prohibition against recording conversations between police officers and members of the public in public places.

“The constitutional right that the majority creates is likely to impair the ability of police both to extract information relevant to police duties and to communicate effectively with persons whom they speak with in the line of duty,” Posner said. “A fine line separates ‘mere’ recording of a police-citizen encounter (whether friendly or hostile) from obstructing police operations by distracting the officers and upsetting the citizens they are speaking with.”

Given the extent to which law enforcement agencies record civilians during investigations, arrests and interviews, it seems somewhat ironic to claim that recording police personnel in public places will somehow adversely affect personal privacy and public safety. In any event, the notion that reporters and others have a First Amendment right to film and write down what they see in public places but not the right to record what they hear in those same places is difficult to understand and justify.

No one alive today, of course, knows what the Framers intended or what they would think about audio and visual recording, much less about the Internet, Facebook and YouTube. Something tells me, though, that if we could bring them here, give them cell phones and place them in the midst of a public demonstration featuring police and protesters, most of them would be smiling as they recorded everything they could see — and hear.

Two former team ball boys, Bobby Davis and Michael Lang, accused Fine of sexually abusing them more than 20 years ago.

When the allegations surfaced in November, Boeheim vehemently supported Fine, a friend for more than 40 years and his assistant for 35-plus seasons. Boeheim told ESPN that Davis was telling “a bunch of a thousand lies” and called him an opportunist looking to cash in on the publicity surrounding the Penn State sex-abuse scandal.

Supreme Court Justice Brian DeJoseph, a graduate of Syracuse University and its law school, ruled May 11 that Boeheim’s comments were not statements of fact but were opinions that are protected from defamation suits.

“The content, tone and purpose of Boeheim’s statements would clearly signal to the reasonable reader that what was being said in the articles published in the days after the initial ESPN report were likely to be an opinion — a biased, passionate, and defensive point of view of a basketball coach — rather than objective fact,” DeJoseph wrote in his 30-page decision. “It is clear to this court that Boeheim provided a factual basis for his opinion. He provided a … reasonably accurate version of those facts.”

Davis, 40, and Lang, 45, hired high-profile attorney Gloria Allred and filed the lawsuit in late December. Late Friday, Allred vowed to appeal the ruling.

“When Bobby Davis came forward years ago and complained about sexual abuse he was ignored,” Allred said in an e-mail statement. “When the allegations were made public he was attacked. It is difficult enough for victims of childhood sexual abuse to come forward. This decision sends the message that you can attack the alleged victim and call him a liar with impunity. It makes it even harder for victims to come forward.”

A call seeking comment from Davis was not returned.

“We are gratified by the court’s decision dismissing this lawsuit,” university spokesman Kevin Quinn said.

Boeheim, who was out of town attending meetings in Indianapolis, refused to comment through the university’s sports information office. A call to his attorney, Timothy Murphy, was not returned.

Victims’ advocates reacted angrily to Boeheim’s initial comments and called for him to resign or be fired. He apologized twice within a week of Fine’s firing on Nov. 27, saying he was wrong to question the motives of the accusers. He said he based his initial comments on a 2005 university investigation that failed to corroborate Davis’ claims.

The claims by Davis and his stepbrother happened too long ago to be investigated because the statute of limitations has expired. The U.S. attorney’s office began an investigation after a third man, 23-year-old Zachary Tomaselli of Lewiston, Maine, came forward and said he had been abused by Fine. Tomaselli has since admitted he was lying and been jailed on his own sexual-abuse conviction. There has been no announcement about the status of that investigation.

Fine, 66, hasn’t been charged and has denied wrongdoing. He was hired two weeks ago as a U.S.-based consultant for a team in the Israeli Basketball Super League.