Earlier this year, Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder filed a defamation suit against the alternative weekly Washington City Paper that many thought was frivolous. The City Paper filed a motion to dismiss under the District of Columbia’s Anti-SLAPP statute, which offers relief against abusive lawsuits by providing for accelerated dismissal and requiring losing plaintiffs to pay defendants’ attorney’s fees. ASNE joined several other media organizations in an amicus brief filed this week (PDF) by the American Civil Liberties Union because it will be the first test of the District’s Anti-SLAPP statute. The brief discusses Anti-SLAPP laws in general — in addition to the District, 26 states and Guam have one — and urges the Superior Court to broadly interpret the statute.

We told you last week that ASNE and 46 other media organizations filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Baker v. Goldman Sachs. The brief supported the right of Wall Street Journal reporter Jesse Eisinger to invoke the reporters’ privilege and refuse to testify in the civil case. To our disappointment, the plaintiff’s attorneys filed a motion opposing the filing of the brief, which the court granted, without explanation. Mr. Eisinger will still get his day in court, but he’ll have to make his case without any help from ASNE and the other organizations that filed the brief.

Phone bills listing calls made by former Gov. Bill Ritter on his personal cell phone are not public records under Colorado’s open-records law, the state’s Supreme Court ruled last week in a 4-2 decision that left ASNE on the losing end of a case it had joined via amicus. According to the Denver Post, which filed the original suit in 2008, Ritter used his personal cell phone for “nearly all” the cell phone calls he made for state business. “Whether or not disclosure of the governor’s personal cell phone bills might be desirable as a matter of public policy,” Justice Gregory Hobbs wrote for the majority (PDF), “the complaint simply fails to state a claim that is cognizable under the current governing statutes. ...” Like the amicus in which ASNE participated, the dissenting opinion noted that the majority ruling will allow public officials to circumvent the Colorado Open Records Act simply by using personal communication devices.

Corporations do not have "personal property" rights, and even hateful rhetoric is protected by the First Amendment, the court ruled in two cases in which ASNE participated as amicus. FCC v. AT&T will prevent corporations from blocking the release of information by government agencies under the Freedom of Information Act in certain cases, while Snyder v. Phelps will ensure that political speech is given the highest level of protection.

In Milner v. Department of the Navy, the Court pared a FOIA exemption that had expanded beyond its plain language in a series of federal court decisions going back three decades. Milner is the third case in this term in which the Court sided with an amicus brief joined by ASNE.

In Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, the Supreme Court turned back a longstanding effort to designate depictions of violence as a new category of unprotected speech. “No doubt a state possesses legitimate power to protect children from harm,” said Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion striking down a California law banning the sale of violent video games to minors. “But that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.” The majority supported arguments that had been raised by the amicus brief ASNE joined in the case. Immediately following the decision, ASNE and First Amendment Center President Ken Paulson wrote an overview of the case published by Yahoo! News.

The clause in question prevents non-citizens from filing FOI requests. No matter how important the record or issue involved, out-of-state journalists cannot access Virginia records, even if they affect residents of other states. ASNE joined more than twenty media companies and organizations in challenging the unconstitutional restriction.

Orange County recently denied the Sierra Club's request for basemaps -- government-generated geographical data that helps news organizations and other requesters determine the impact of government initiatives and the allocation of public resources. Last week, ASNE joined 23 other media organizations in a brief supporting the Sierra Club's request.