Free Speech

Maryland's highest court yesterday struck down a state law banning racially motivated cross burnings, saying they are a form of free speech protected by the Constitution.The law's backers sought to ban cross burnings through restrictions that skirted the free speech issue. Under the 27-year-old law, it was illegal to burn a cross on private property without getting the landowner's permission and notifying the local fire department.But the seven-member Court of Appeals said the restrictions were designed specifically to outlaw cross burning, which it said was a protected form of free expression.

WASHINGTON - In the age of the celebrity trial, the staid U.S. Supreme Court had its own brush with fame yesterday, courtesy of showman lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. and a case with broad implications for free speech rights. As the legal travails of the rich and famous go, it wasn't much to see. There were no satellite trucks, no Court TV commentators or late night re-enactments on E! Entertainment Television. There was not even an appearance by Cochran himself, the flashy lawyer to the stars who gained infamy in the O.J. Simpson murder trial with the simple catch phrase: "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."

A Supreme Court free speech case over a protest at a Marine's funeral and a college student's suicide were among the topics at the third annual civility symposium in Columbia. More than 220 people turned out to hear the panel discussion on civility in democracy lead by P.M. Forni, the author of "Choosing Civility," the 2003 book of 25 rules that inspired the county libraries' "Choose Civility in Howard County" campaign. Forni, a Johns Hopkins University professor of Romance languages and literature, told the audience Wednesday at the Bain Center in Harper's Choice that he happened to be at Rutgers University to launch "the most ambitious civility project in the U.S. " at the time police discovered the body of Tyler Clementi.

COLLEGE PARK - More than 100 students cheered swashbuckling and sex-crazed pirates in a pornographic film that screened at the University of Maryland on Monday night - a film that, at various points in the past week, state lawmakers and the university tried to suppress. University administrators, who canceled a planned showing of Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge last week after lawmakers threatened to withhold funding, reversed their position Monday and allowed the screening as long as it included an educational component.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to decide whether the nation's colleges and universities may bar military recruiters from their campuses without losing federal funding. The case, to be heard in the fall, poses a clash between government funding and free speech. A coalition of law schools won an appellate court ruling last year that said their right to free speech includes the right to refuse to associate with military recruiters. The law schools argued that the Pentagon's policies on gays and lesbians in the military were discriminatory.

WASHINGTON -- Hoping to shrink the rising heaps of unwanted clutter in everyone's electronic in-boxes, the House has overwhelmingly approved legislation to crack down on unsolicited commercial e-mail known as spam. The measure, which passed 427-1 last week, would help halt repeated electronic solicitations from advertisers, permitting consumers and Internet service providers (ISPs) to sue advertisers for as much as $500 per unwanted e-mail, up to $50,000. Courts could triple that amount in certain cases and award attorneys' fees.

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide on the outer limits of free-speech protection for public protests and to rule on whether the family of a dead Maryland Marine can sue religious protesters who picketed near his funeral with signs that said, "Thank God for dead soldiers." The court's action is the latest twist in a long legal battle that arose out of a funeral in Westminster. The case triggered a multimillion-dollar damage award and attracted national media attention. A federal jury in Baltimore awarded $11 million to Albert Snyder, whose son Matthew was killed in Iraq in March 2006.

TO: All Television and Print MediaFM: The CommissionRE: Express Advocacy CommunicationsThis is to advise you that, pursuant to Section 406(b)(20)(A)(iii) of the Act, from this date until 60 days from the date hereof, any political communication which refers to any clearly identified candidate, or which a reasonable person would understand as advocating the election or defeat of any such candidate, is unlawful, and any telecast, broadcast or publication of such communication will subject the party in violation to the penalties specified in the Act.A mandate from the mullahs in Iran?

A spray-paint artist arrested last year was found not guilty Friday of peddling without a permit at Baltimore's Inner Harbor, a ruling that left the defendant without an opportunity to argue the free-speech issues he says are at the heart of the case. District Judge George M. Lipman said prosecutors failed to prove their allegations because police officers never saw Mark Chase sell his paintings. In effect, the judge ruled the officers arrested the artist too soon, while he was setting up and before he had made a sale.

Congress refused last week to amend the Constitution to allow the banning of flag-burning. That was an attempt to amend the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. How do such things as flag-burning, campaign finance, nude dancing, organizing a parade and trying to keep homosexuals out of the Boy Scouts get to be free-speech issues? Lyle Denniston, of The Sun's Washington Bureau, provides some answers. What does the free-speech clause say? The entire clause reads: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech."