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A group of legislators is now sponsoring a bill that would allow the state to remove objectionable material from election documents it circulates to voters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But once the state agrees to circulate candidates\u2019 statements in official ballot pamphlets, \u201cit can\u2019t restrict offensive viewpoints or bigoted viewpoints,\u201d Eugene Volokh, a legal scholar at Stanford\u2019s Hoover Institution, said in response to this week\u2019s introduction of AB1853 by Assembly Member Gail Pellerin, D-Santa Cruz.<\/p>\n
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And Matt Coles, a law professor at UC College of Law-San Francisco, said that in a publication submitted to voters in the name of the government, \u201cthe state may limit the content of statements, but not (their) viewpoint.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The bill, supported by the Legislature\u2019s Jewish Caucus and Jewish California, a coalition of Jewish groups, would apply to ballot statements that California Secretary of State Shirley Weber provides to voters from candidates for state office. The law now requires Weber to provide a candidate\u2019s entire statement of up to 250 words, as long as it does not mention other candidates by name, but AB1853 would require her to remove attacks on individuals or groups and any false or misleading claims.<\/p>\n
\u201cHate speech has no place in California\u2019s official voter materials,\u201d Pellerin said in a statement Tuesday. Asked about free-speech concerns, she replied that her bill \u201cdoes not limit a candidate\u2019s ability to speak; it establishes reasonable standards for content included in an official taxpayer-funded voter guide.\u201d<\/p>\n
David Bocarsly. CEO of Jewish California, said the legislation would allow Weber\u2019s office to enforce guidelines that the office has suggested for campaign statements but lacks power to enforce under court rulings.<\/p>\n
\u201cCandidates have the right to share their positions on any number of issues \u2013 whether bigoted or not \u2013 in the public domain,\u201d\u00a0Bocarsly told the Chronicle. \u201cA document approved by the state and sent to 23 million Californians is not the public domain, and the State has every right to bar language from its platform that can foment hate.\u201d<\/p>\n
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But Volokh said the Supreme Court has clearly prohibited any government interference with expressions of viewpoints, by election candidates and other private parties.<\/p>\n
In a 2017 ruling, Matal v. Tam, the court ordered the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to register the name of an Asian rock band, the Slants, which it had refused to do because it found the name to be disparaging. \u201cSpeech may not be banned on the grounds that it expresses ideas that offend,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for an eight-member majority.<\/p>\n
Similarly, in Healy v. James, an eight-member majority led by Justice Lewis Powell ordered Central Connecticut State College in 1972 to recognize a campus chapter of the leftist Students for a Democratic Society without requiring SDS to prove that recognition would not be harmful.<\/p>\n
Weber, a Democrat, was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom as the state\u2019s top elections official in 2021, won a four-year term in 2022 and will be on the November ballot for re-election against Republican Don Wagner. In a May 7 letter to the American Jewish Committee, she said she has \u201ctremendous concern\u201d over statements like Grossmann\u2019s but must preserve freedom of speech.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI condemn antisemitism, just as I condemn all forms of racism, religious intolerance and bigotry,\u201d Weber wrote. But she said the candidate\u2019s statement had been reviewed by experts in her office and the office of state Attorney General Rob Bonta, and they found \u201cno legal basis to reject the statement or remove it from the Voter Information Guide, even taking into account its inflammatory, controversial, or offensive content.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California’s voter guide booklet allows candidates wide leeway in what they are allowed to say to people going…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[50500,7,9,8,204,5551,13,144957],"class_list":["post-355721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-anti-semitism","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-election","tag-legislature","tag-politics","tag-state-voter-guides"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}