The First Amendment may protect citizen access to municipal telecom...
The First Amendment may protect citizen access to municipal telecom networks, said Internet-company attorney Marvin Ammori of the Ammori Group in a Monday post on his blog (http://xrl.us/bogbe9). The law firm represents technology companies, including Google and Prism Skylabs. Judges…
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“might pick and choose the doctrine that protects speech and conforms to our intuitions -- that municipal networks should be free, not censored,” Ammori wrote. Courts could decide municipal networks are designated public forums and that the speech on them is protected, which would affect a judge’s ability to ensure site access, according to the post. Ammori questions how such laws would hold up even if the networks aren’t considered such public forums: “Some laws for a municipal network would be unconstitutional if they suppressed a speaker or site based on its views. Even if a law, on its face, didn’t target a particular view, it could be unconstitutional for being so vague and covering so many activities that it gave the city officials wide discretion to pick on and censor only those speakers whose views they opposed."