Latest news with #Chiarello
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Appeals court rules libraries have right to ‘government speech', can remove books based on content
AUSTIN (KXAN) — The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that libraries can take books off shelves based on their content, reversing a district court's decision in a case involving the Llano County Library. KXAN reached out to the parties in the case, and will update this story if we receive responses. Katherine P. Chiarello, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told KXAN in an email that their team is considering its next steps. 'It is very disappointing that, today, the Fifth Circuit has regressed from its long standing protection of a citizen's right to receive information under the First Amendment and that it has attempted to create a circuit split by dramatically expanding the scope of the government speech doctrine,' Chiarello said. In Friday's ruling, Circuit Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan wrote that the First Amendment of the US Constitution does not grant a right to receive information. 'Yes, Supreme Court precedent sometimes protects one's right to receive someone else's speech. But plaintiffs would transform that precedent into a brave new right to receive information from the government in the form of taxpayer-funded library books. The First Amendment acknowledges no such right,' Duncan wrote. 2024: Texas county removed 17 books from its libraries. An appeals court says eight must be returned The ruling calls this a relief, and that application of such a right 'would be a nightmare.' 'How would judges decide when removing a book is forbidden? No one in this case—not plaintiffs, nor the district court, nor the panel—can agree on a standard,' the ruling reads. The appeals court also said court precedence holds that collection decisions are speech. In this case, a decision would be 'government speech' protected by the First Amendment. 'From the moment they emerged in the mid-19th century, public libraries have shaped their collections to present what they held to be worthwhile literature. What is considered worthwhile, of course, evolves over the years,' said the court. 'But what has not changed is the fact, as true today as it was in 1850, that libraries curate their collections for expressive purposes. Their collection decisions are therefore government speech.' The justices also took aim at what it called 'unusually over-caffeinated arguments' made by the case's plaintiffs. 'Judging from the rhetoric in the briefs, one would think Llano County had planned to stage a book burning in front of the library. One amicus intones: 'Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people,'' the ruling reads. 'All Llano County has done here is what libraries have been doing for two centuries: decide which books they want in their collections.' It said that readers who can't find a book are allowed to seek the book out elsewhere. The plaintiffs in the case could also try to look elsewhere, specifically to the US Supreme Court, for a potentially favorable ruling. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- Yahoo
$7K reward for info on R train bandits as rogue riders' photos are released
The NYPD and the transit union alike are asking for any information that could lead to the arrest of six suspects thought to be behind the wild late-night joyride of two stolen R trains last weekend. John Chiarello, interim president of Transport Workers Union Local 100 — which represents more than 40,000 subway and bus workers — said it would match the NYPD's $3,500 bounty on the young train hijackers, after the NYPD released surveillance photos of the group late Wednesday. 'A bunch of reckless teens took a $20 million piece of equipment out of a secure transit layup area, endangering themselves, transit property and transit workers who may well have been working on the tracks,' Chiarello said in a statement. 'I'm outraged that this theft occurred and [we are] determined to stop copycats.' The combined $7,000 reward comes as police issued an update with surveillance camera footage showing the teens getting off a Manhattan-bound R train early Sunday morning at the 36th St. and Fourth Ave. stop in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Unlike in previously released footage, five of the six suspects have their faces uncovered in the station surveillance tape. One teen has a digital camera hung around his neck. Still photos released by police show at least one suspect jumping a turnstile. As previously reported by The News, the crooks are suspected of having broken into at least two sets of R160 subway cars while they were being stored overnight on the express track of Brooklyn's Fourth Ave. line. Cellphone video taken by one of the subway-stealing suspects and posted on Instagram shows they traveled through at least one local station on the express track and went through at least one signal. The video shows several of the illicit straphangers at the controls of one R160 subway car traveling at speeds upward of 30 mph. They may have passed at least one in-service train during their joyride, with one of them shouting, 'Train!' before telling another, 'Check [the] radio now,' apparently to see if they'd been spotted. One of the rogue riders appears to be sitting outside on the front of the lead subway car, his feet dangling over the tracks. Transit workers preparing to put the trains into service Sunday morning discovered them out of place, with paint covering the onboard security cameras and damage to the door locks on at least one train.
