Here’s a very interesting case in which Bergen County Superior Court Judge Jane Gallina-Mecca issued an order directing the Bergen Dispatch to remove a news article. The newspaper refused the demand. Techdirt reports:
This seems to happen all too often, but a local judge has forgotten about the whole 1st Amendment thing. Last week, Bergen County Superior Court Judge Jane Gallina-Mecca ordered the Bergen Dispatch to take down a news article. The article was about a specific family court case, involving custody of a child. It’s not surprising that there might be some concern over privacy rights in such cases, but even so, that does not allow a judge to flat out order a newspaper to take down an article — even more so when the order came out of a closed hearing where no one from the newspaper was even present. In response, the Bergen Dispatch posted a fairly snarky article that reiterates some of the details from the case, and concludes with this wonderful paragraph:
While the Bergen Dispatch reviews its options we have confirmed that Bergen County does currently remain part of the State of New Jersey and that currently New Jersey is still part of the Union of states that is governed by the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights. As such, Bergen County citizens continue to enjoy the right to freedom of speech and the right to a free press.
Informed of this little tidbit of information, the judge has since vacated the original order, but it’s still astounding that it had to go that far in the first place.
The key takeaway here is a very important one: Know Your Rights. The status quo depends on a mass of ignorant serfs in order to get away with much of what it does. See:
Know Your Rights – How to Respond When Police Tell You to Stop Filming
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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