As a former member-at-large of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco National Lawyers Guild, the former assistant General Counsel of Education Not Incarceration, founder and head of Ethos Pathos Logos, a Pro Bono Environmentalism and Pro-Labor organization, and with successful experience working with environmental justice and conservation groups such as Earthjustice and Communities for a Better Environment, Mr. Aly Ebrahimzadeh, Esq. is a San Francisco, Oakland, and Santa Cruz Civil Rights Lawyer and an aggressive champion of our clients Constitutional rights to Free Speech.
We offer intelligent and affordable legal representation for grassroots activists, civil disobedients, non-profit organizations, outspoken individuals, students at all levels of education, professors and other academics, as well as private corporations, schools, colleges, and public entities, involved as either Plaintiffs or Defendants in Free Speech litigation. Mr. Ebrahimzadeh is a California Constitutional Law attorney licensed to practice in State and Federal Courts, including the Federal District Court for northern California, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the California Supreme Court, and various Superior Courts in central and northern California, including San Francisco County, Santa Clara County, Napa County, Alameda County, San Mateo County, Santa Cruz County, and Monterey County.
Free speech lawsuits are used by Plaintiffs with varying political agenda to further their special interests. As a California law firm fighting for our clients’ civil rights, we support the basic freedom to express oneself that our US Constitution and our California Constitution guarantees to all of us, regardless of the message in particular that is being conveyed. It is this basic right to free speech that makes our nation’s legal system particularly special. We are largely free in the USA to express ourselves in public venues without the prior restraint of censorship laws, especially when it comes to political speech and academic freedom.
Federal and California Free Speech Laws
Our individual free speech rights are balanced against private property rights, public safety, and social welfare by laws that prohibit hate speech, obscenity laws, defamation laws (e.g., libel and slander), laws that curb violent speech that is very likely and intended to incite violence in public or that pose a “clear and present danger” to others, and laws that allow censorship and prohibition of speech on private property or by private persons who are not state actors (i.e., not the police, the city council, Congress, public school teachers, public university professors, or public access television).
In analyzing free speech laws, it is important to remember that the First Amendment only protects free speech from being infringed by state actors. Private persons — with rare exceptions in cases involving very limited private property that has the inherent character of a public community space or city center (e.g., Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74 (1980)), or in cases involving private companies that are carrying out primarily public governmental functions (such as private security guards performing public police functions, or public prisons operated by private companies) — are not bound by the obligations of the Constitution to protect free speech.
It is also key to understand what constitutes “speech” in the First Amendment. All expressive activity, whether it is musical, artistic, verbal, nonverbal, political, written, inflammatory, critical, ugly, or abnormal, is considered to be “speech” according to case law interpreting the First Amendment. Political speech and speech occuring on traditional public venues such as city sidewalks, city hall, Congress, or outside courthouses are the most protected forms of speech. Nevertheless, certain practical restrictions may be placed on even such forms of speech in order to justify important public needs such as the safety and welfare of the public and the smooth and orderly operation of governmental affairs. For example, cities may require permits for public demonstrations and protest marches insofar as such basic restrictions on free expression are required to maintain public order on city streets and other traditionally public venues. Case law has established that a judicial standard of “strict scrutiny” applies to such dearly protected types of speech, placing a strenuous burden on governmental bodies and other state actors to prove that such restrictions on political speech are “narrowly tailored” to achieve a “compelling” governmental interest, and that the mode of restricting such free speech is the “least restrictive means possible” to achieve that governmental interest.
Commercial speech, such as corporate advertisements on billboards, is less protected by the First Amendment, and a lower level of judicial review applies to laws that seek to restrict commercial speech. This lower level of judicial review is called “intermediate scrutiny,” and it requires that the state actor or governmental body restricting the speech prove that they are doing so to further an “important” governmental interest, and that the law restricting such speech is “substantially related” to that interest. For example, a city may restrict commercial related to hard alcohol or cigarettes from being displayed on billboards in school zones in order to further the important city interest of preventing children from using tobacco and alcohol.
Other types of speech and expressive activity are not protected by such rigorous standards. Rather, a “rational basis test” is applied to governmental laws that seek to restrict speech that is not political or commercial. In such instances, the city or state must show that their law restricting such speech serves any “legitimate” governmental interest and that the law is “rationally related” to helping the governmental body to achieve that legitimate public interest. Notably, so long as the governmental body can rationalize any legitimate interest that is served by their law restricting speech, regardless of the actual interest that motivated the law’s creation, the law will pass the rational basis review of the court. For example, a law that outlaws the use of peyote or marijuana even in religious ceremonies will be reviewed by courts employing the “rational basis test.” Very rarely is a law that is reviewed under this most basic standard ever declared unconstitutional.
Free speech law is of course far more complex than this basic summary may make it seem. There are several other factors that influence a court’s decision in determining whether a law barring certain types of speech is legal or not, including the type of restrictions being employed by the government, the place and time of the speech, and the type of speech at issue.
We are a San Francisco Civil Rights law firm offering legal expertise to Plaintiffs and Defendants in complex Free Speech litigation in and around San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, and Santa Cruz, California. As a zealous attorney and activist, a former school and college level teacher and academic, and a longtime performing musician, artist, and writer, our Civil Rights lawyer, Mr. Ebrahimzadeh, is particularly dedicated to Free Speech litigation. We are fully prepared to work with you and a team of expert witnesses, media professionals, and public relations analysts to promote your inalienable rights to Free Speech, as protected by the US Constitution’s First Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, and various provisions of the California Constitution.
To read an informative article about “Political Speech, Activism, and Free Speech in Grade School Lawsuits,” please refer to Our Law Blog.
