Latest news with #InstituteforJustice
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Conway won't appeal ruling in favor of Leavitt's Bakery mural
Conway officials will not appeal a federal judge's ruling to halt efforts to take down a bakery's colorful mural. For more than two years, the town argued the painting at Leavitt's Bakery violated the town's sign code. The mural painted by Kennett High School students depicts items sold within the bakery, such as muffins and doughnuts that were imagined as views of the White Mountains and the Mount Washington Valley. 'The town will enforce their sign ordinance going forward in compliance to the court's order,' the town said in a statement. Judge Joseph Laplante ruled that the town's effort to force the bakery's owner, Sean Young, to take down a mural of doughnut mountains painted by high school art students was 'unconstitutional.' The ruling came after a one-day bench trial on Feb. 14. Young, who filed a lawsuit to protect his First Amendment rights, has said he was glad the mural can stay. Young was represented by attorney Cooper Cargill. He also worked with attorneys with the Virginia-based Institute for Justice. The town had argued the mural was an illegal sign because it depicted something Leavitt's sells: baked goods. But if it had depicted real mountains instead, no violation would have occurred, officials said. In the ruling, Judge Laplante wrote that, though the town said it had to regulate the Leavitt's mural to maintain safety and protect the natural beauty of the town, the town allows other murals to stay up unregulated. As Laplante wrote, the town's enforcement has 'no rational connection to any of its stated interests' such as safety and beauty and is therefore unconstitutional. Town Planner Ryan O'Connor said the ordinance itself is legal, but the town needs to be careful in how it goes about its enforcement. 'We need to take caution going forward on how that happens and make sure that every decision is consistent; it is not based on content,' he said at the meeting. 'We are going to work with the lawyers to develop a check list and process going forward to make sure that it aligns with the order and ordinance as written.' The work is needed to avoid any future conflicts, O'Connor said. Town Manager John Eastman said he believes the town's sign ordinance is in 'pretty good shape.' The ruling came down to 'inconsistency with enforcement,' he said. 'It was a really narrow decision,' he said.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Man makes ‘online joke' about Riverview mayor – Now, he's fighting a court order
RIVERVIEW, Mo. – A dispute over an 'online joke' has escalated into a free speech controversy involving an Illinois man and the mayor of Riverview, Missouri. The City of Riverview recently issued a subpoena over the joke, and now the man behind it is fighting back. On Tuesday, the Institute for Justice, a national civil liberties law firm, sent a letter to Riverview city officials, calling on them to retract a subpoena issued against James Carroll. Carroll, a current resident of Collinsville, Illinois, formerly lived near Riverview in north St. Louis County and continues to follow updates on the community. 'Devil in the Ozarks' escapes north Arkansas prison In April, according to the Institute for Justice, Carroll posted a joke on neighborhood-based website Nextdoor that poked fun at Mayor Michael Cornell in response to recent news articles. While the law firm did not disclose the nature or exact content of the joke, it says a subpoena arrived just days later. The subpoena orders Carroll to appear at a Riverview meeting and testify on several allegations, including allegations that he cyberbullied Riverview residents, threatened a city official, and defamed someone's character. The Institute for Justice claims this move violates Carroll's First Amendment Rights, contending that joking about officials is protected by free speech and that the subpoena amounts to unconstitutional retaliation. 'The First Amendment is a bulwark against thin-skinned government officials abusing their authority to punish their critics,' said Institute for Justice attorney Ben Field via a news release. 'You can understand why an elected official would be tempted to retaliate against somebody making a joke at their expense, which is why the Constitution stands in their way.' Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now Carroll formally filed a lawsuit on April 17, 2025, to challenge the city's subpoena. A hearing to decide the validity of the subpoena is scheduled for Wednesday. The City of Riverview is located in the northeast corner of St. Louis County near the Mississippi River with a population of around 2,300 people. Cornell has served as the City's mayor since 2023. FOX 2 has reached out to the City of Riverview for comment, but our request for comment has not been returned as of this story's publication. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Judge Rules in Favor of New Hampshire Bakery in Fight Over Donut Mural
A New Hampshire bakery has won a crucial victory in its fight to preserve a mural of donuts and other baked goods above its storefront. While town officials have attempted to force the bakery to remove the mural, citing zoning regulations, a federal court ruled on Monday that the city cannot enforce its sign rules against the bakery. In 2022, Sean Young, the owner of Leavitt's Country Bakery, a popular bakery in Conway, New Hampshire, collaborated with a local high school art class to paint a mural for the bakery's storefront. The students' mural depicted baked goods forming the shape of a mountain range, with a multicolored sunrise in the background. Initially, the mural didn't cause any controversy—and it was even covered positively by local media. However, about a week after being installed, Conway's Code Enforcement Officer Jeremy Gibbs told Young that the mural violated town zoning rules. According to the town, the mural violated local laws that regulate signs. Because the mural depicted baked goods—which the bakery obviously sells—it was deemed a "sign," not a mural, and signs are subject to rules limiting their size. While the town's rules define a sign incredibly broadly, in practice, the town only enforces its sign regulations on speech it perceives as commercial in nature. If Leavitt's Country Bakery had erected a mural of just a sunrise, for example, the town would have no problem with it, even though the rules on the books would apply to both. "Imposing different burdens on speech depending on who is speaking and what is being said is content based and speaker based restriction on free speech," reads a 2023 complaint from the Institute for Justice, a public interest law group, which represented the bakery in its lawsuit against Conway. On Monday, a judge agreed. While the judge noted that the town's sign rules, as written, don't necessarily violate the Constitution, the selective nature of the town's enforcement does. "The court rules only that Conway's application of its sign code, and specifically its enforcement of the sign code to the Leavitt's sign in the particular manner it employed in this case, does not withstand any level of constitutional scrutiny," reads a ruling from District Judge Joseph N. Laplante enjoining the town from forcing Young to remove the mural. "Although the display may have violated the sign code because of its size, Gibbs' determination was based on a rationale with no textual basis in the sign code, which does not distinguish between displays based on content." The ruling is a major victory for the bakery's ability to paint a mural on its own property—without government meddling. "Towns can certainly regulate signs. They can regulate the size of signs or the number of signs permitted, but what they can't do is pick and choose what signs to regulate based on what they depict," Institute for Justice Attorney Betsy Sanz said in a Monday press release. "Today's ruling makes it clear that what Conway was doing was discriminating against certain signs based on what officials thought they depicted. And that's a clear First Amendment violation." The post Judge Rules in Favor of New Hampshire Bakery in Fight Over Donut Mural appeared first on
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Yahoo
Judge rules town's attempts to force bakery to take down pastry mural 'unconstitutional'
A federal judge ruled Monday that the town of Conway's attempt to force a local bakery to take down a mural of doughnut mountains painted by high school art students was 'unconstitutional,' and he ordered local officials to stop any efforts at enforcement. Monday's ruling followed a one-day trial on Feb. 14, during which Judge Joseph Laplante heard testimony from Leavitt's Country Bakery owner Sean Young, along with several town zoning officials regarding the town's enforcement of its sign code against Leavitt's. 'Conway's enforcement is unconstitutional as applied to the plaintiffs' display,' Judge Laplante wrote in his ruling. 'Conway is enjoined from enforcing its ordinance against Leavitt's bakery in the operationally illogical, textually unsupportable manner it employed in this instance.' 'I'm thrilled that the students' artwork can remain up. I'm thrilled that my First Amendment rights have been vindicated, and I'm thrilled that the community can continue to enjoy the beautiful piece of art,' Young said. 'I think our mural is a wonderful depiction of everything that makes the Mount Washington Valley such a great place to live.' Young was represented by attorney Cooper Cargill. He also worked with attorneys with the Virginia-based Institute for Justice. The mural vs. sign debate was first raised in 2022 after a group of art students at Kennett High School painted the front of the store with bright colors depicting items sold within the bakery, such as muffins and doughnuts that were imagined as views of the White Mountains and the Mount Washington Valley. Leavitt's was found to be in violation of the town's maximum sign size regulations. According to town officials, the mural was an illegal sign because it depicted something Leavitt's sells: baked goods. But if it had depicted real mountains instead, no violation would have occurred, officials said. Young tried to apply for a variance to keep the mural up. When he did so in September 2022, he had the backing of Conway residents with more than 1,000 people commenting positively on Leavitt's Facebook page, and letters to the editor published in the Conway Daily Sun arguing that the mural should stay. The Conway Zoning Board of Adjustment (ZBA) voted unanimously against granting the bakery a variance, and doubled down on that decision in Nov. 2022, again denying the variance. Voters have since decided at Town Meeting to adopt a public art ordinance to regulate 'the installation of murals and also permits other art visible to the public on commercial and public property such as sculptures, street art, or other types of permanent artwork.' The Institute for Justice heard about Young's fight and sent Conway a letter in December 2022 urging officials to back off and to work with the institute to reform the town's unconstitutional sign code. When the town refused, Young and institute attorneys filed a federal lawsuit to protect his First Amendment rights. The mural has remained up while the suit was pending after a judge granted a temporary restraining order. 'Towns can certainly regulate signs. They can regulate the size of signs or the number of signs permitted, but what they can't do is pick and choose what signs to regulate based on what they depict,' institute attorney Betsy Sanz said in a statement. 'Today's ruling makes it clear that what Conway was doing was discriminating against certain signs based on what officials thought they depicted. And that's a clear First Amendment violation.' In the ruling, Judge Laplante wrote that, though the town said it had to regulate the Leavitt's mural to maintain safety and protect the natural beauty of the town, the town allows other murals to stay up unregulated. As Laplante wrote, the town's enforcement has 'no rational connection to any of its stated interests' such as safety and beauty and is therefore unconstitutional. An attempt to reach Conway officials for comment Monday was unsuccessful.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Federal court rule in Middle TN barring lawyers from speaking publicly on cases scrapped
Lawyers trying cases before Middle Tennessee's federal district court can now speak on social media and to news media about their cases without fear, thanks to a May 15 ruling ending a lengthy court battle. Judges from the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee removed a local court rule that previously prevented attorneys from discussing their cases with the media and the public. The change was the result of a lengthy federal lawsuit filed by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm on behalf of Nashville civil rights attorney Daniel Horwitz in October 2024. 'This is a huge win for the First Amendment in Middle Tennessee,' Institute for Justice Attorney Jared McClain said. 'Attorneys have a right to discuss their cases, and the public has a right to know what the government and its contractors are doing wrong.' Horwitz filed the lawsuit after U.S. District Court Judge Jeffery Frensley issued a 2022 gag order barring Horwitz from speaking on social media and to news media against Brentwood-based private prison company CoreCivic. At the time the gag order was put in place, Horwitz served as the attorney for the family of Terry Childress, an inmate who died in February 2021 after his cellmate assaulted him in CoreCivic's Trousdale Turner Correctional Center in Hartsville. The case was later settled. Since the order, Horwitz filed numerous lawsuits against the company, but was unable to discuss any of them with news media because of the rule. In January 2025, Horwitz's case was dismissed for lack of standing. But in April, amid an appeal, the court proposed a change to the administrative rule that would have expanded the circumstances in which a judge could restrict a lawyer's speech. More: Speech rights of lawyers in Nashville federal court could change amid gag order fight While the appeal decision is still before the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the rule itself has been scrapped after the Institute for Justice submitted a public comment outlining the ways the proposed rule still violated the First Amendment. Now, the rule simply states that attorneys are bound by Tennessee's rules of professional conduct, which the Institute for Justice said 'was always the case.' 'I'm thrilled that my First Amendment rights have been vindicated, but more importantly, I'm thrilled that I can resume informing the public about civil rights abuses across Middle Tennessee,' Horwitz said. 'This important victory also would not have been possible without the dedicated civil rights lawyers at the Institute for Justice and Southeastern Legal Foundation, to whom I will always be grateful.' Ryan Gustin, senior director of public affairs at CoreCivic, said the company respects 'the judicial process in which amendments to local rules are reviewed and modified." "We also stand by our belief that matters involving litigation, and legal rules, policies and procedures should be decided within the court system and not in the press or social media,' he said. The ruling comes as a federal investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice continues into the conditions at CoreCivic's Trousdale Turner Correctional Center, due to allegations of extensive understaffing, violence, contraband and sexual misconduct, according to officials. The USA TODAY Network - Tennessee's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. Have a story to tell? Reach Angele Latham by email at alatham@ by phone at 931-623-9485, or follow her on Twitter at @angele_latham This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Middle Tennessee federal court rule on lawyers speaking out scrapped
