Overview:
Someone needs to remind Hinds County Chancellor Crystal Wise Martin of this fundamental of American democracy. And of a few points of law.
Note: This editorial is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a fresh platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution
In the United States of America, we are free to criticize government, from city hall to the White House.
This somewhat peculiar freedom enshrined in the First Amendment is the bedrock of our republic, and many have argued it’s the wellhead from which all our other freedoms flow. The British Crown’s utilize of “sedition” laws to put down dissent is a key reason we rose up and threw that yoke, and have a First Amendment, and a country.
Someone needs to remind Hinds County Chancellor Crystal Wise Martin of this fundamental of American democracy. And of a few points of law.
Martin has issued a ruling that appears so unconstitutional, so anathema to accepted jurisprudence and so un-American that she’s drawing attention and criticism nationwide and abroad.
Without even granting the newspaper a hearing, Martin issued a fleeting restraining order against the Clarksdale Press Register after city officials sued. She ordered the newspaper to take down a Feb. 8 editorial “Secrecy, Deception Erode Public Trust” from its online site and make it inaccessible to readers.
Without. A. Hearing.
The editorial criticized city of Clarksdale officials for not providing the paper notice of a meeting, and it questioned city leaders’ motives in asking the state Legislature to allow creation of a local tax on alcohol, marijuana and tobacco.
Will they add tea?
City leaders did not like the editorial and sued, claiming it was libelous and hindered their efforts to lobby lawmakers for the tax.
Prior restraint of speech before adjudication that it is not protected has long been held unconstitutional, dating back early in U.S. law.
And besides the inherent wrongness of a Soviet-style censorship order without granting due process to the newspaper, it has also been long and widely held in U.S. law that a government cannot sue for defamation or libel.
As was noted in the case of the City of Chicago v. Tribune Co. in the early 1920s, “no court of last resort in this country has ever held, or even suggested, that prosecutions for libel on government have any place in the American system of jurisprudence.”
But even more astounding, even if the city of Clarksdale did have the right to sue for libel, the city clerk admitted in court filings that she failed to notify the newspaper as required of the meeting.
As longtime Mississippi editor, columnist and attorney Charlie Mitchell said, there are so many things wrong with this ruling, it’s difficult to know where to start.
Our nation’s founders despised and feared tyrannical government that brooks no redress from those governed or from a free press. And the people and the free press have the right to criticize government be it at Clarksdale City Hall or in Washington, D.C.
