Category: News

A federal judge has ruled that a jury must decide whether Delaware County officials retaliated against a local newspaper for its critical coverage, sending the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic’s case on behalf of The Reporter to trial and leaving punitive damages on the table. In her July 21 ruling, Hon. Anne M. Nardacci said the factual record precludes summary judgment.

Heather Murray, associate director of Cornell Law School’s First Amendment Clinic and managing attorney of the Local Journalism Project, said, “We are pleased with the decision and look forward to bringing this case to trial to defend the right of The Reporter—and every news outlet—to report critically on government officials. Importantly, the court also found that The Reporter is eligible to recover punitive damages in the event a jury determines that the evidence presented of county officials’ retaliation violated the First Amendment.”

The Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic filed suit in December 2023 with co-counsel Michael J. Grygiel of Foley Hoag LLP in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York on behalf of Decker Advertising Inc., publisher of The Reporter, against Delaware County, members of its Board of Supervisors, and County Attorney Amy Merklen. The suit alleges that County officials violated The Reporter’s First Amendment rights when the Board revoked the newspaper’s designation as an official county paper in retaliation for its coverage of county government, stripping the paper of critical advertising revenue from government-funded legal notices.

Under New York County Law section 214, counties designate “official” newspapers to publish legal notices. A 1973 amendment to the statute ensures that politically independent newspapers like The Reporter are eligible for designation. Until its de-designation in March 2022, The Reporter had published the County’s public notices virtually since its founding in 1881.

A year after the de-designation, County officials sent an unprecedented letter to the publisher of The Reporter, signed by 39 County officials, demanding that the publisher “make immediate changes” to its coverage of the County.

The Complaint also alleges that The Reporter’s constitutional rights were violated when the County Attorney issued a “gag directive” prohibiting county employees from freely communicating with the newspaper’s staff.

session privilege shielded testimony about the Board’s de-designation deliberations.

The Reporter is seeking, among other things, a permanent injunction reinstating it as an official county newspaper through the calendar year following the court’s order, requiring the Board to award future designations based solely on articulable, content-neutral criteria, and ordering Defendants to immediately rescind the directive that prohibited County employees from speaking to The Reporter’s staff.

In addition to Murray, Clinic Director Mark Jackson, and Grygiel,  Kelly L. McNamee and Christina N. Hernsdorf at Foley Hoag LLP and Cynthia E. Neidl at Greenberg Traurig LLP worked on the summary judgment briefing. Starting in 2023, several generations of Clinic students and summer fellows have worked on the case.

For further background and coverage of the case, see:

Free Speech Test Case Over Newspaper Retaliation Heads Toward Trial Law.com

Catskills newspaper’s case claiming retaliation from county government headed to trial – Times Union

Click the link below to read J. Dale Schoemaker’s Investigative Post article that quotes Associate Director Heather Murray and Local Journalism Fellow Kyle Clauss.

ICE refuses to say who works for them in Buffalo, upstate NY : Investigative Post

OKLAHOMA CITY – This week, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that the Oklahoma Riot Statute’s definition of a “riot” is neither vague nor overbroad in violation of the United States Constitution, due in large part to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals’ recognition of an intent element of “willfulness”.

In May of 2020, a horrifying 10-minute-long eyewitness video of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police sparked the largest protests in U.S. history. And in Oklahoma, communities throughout the state demanded police reform and racial equity. During protests, advocates faced many efforts by the City of Oklahoma City and Oklahoma County to chill their free speech. One such effort included charging protesters with Incitement to Riot, relying on the broad definition of “riot” in Oklahoma statute to criminalize racial justice protesters criticizing the police.

The ACLU of Oklahoma Foundation and Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic challenged the constitutionality of the Riot Statute, arguing that it violated Oklahomans’ free speech and due process rights because it lacked an intent requirement. Without the requirement that the speaker intended to threaten violence, the statute criminalized speech protected by the First Amendment, like the protest speech of Oklahomans standing up against police brutality. With this week’s decision in Terry, et al. v. Dummond, et al., the Tenth Circuit found that the threats provision of the Riot Statute requires the State to prove that a person intended to threaten violence.

The following is a joint statement by ACLU of Oklahoma Foundation and Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic:

“The murder of George Floyd by police ignited nation-wide protests and renewed demands for racial justice and law enforcement accountability. We see the same demands made today, as law enforcement attempts to silence and criminalize protesters demanding accountability for our immigrant communities. This ruling helps protect the safety of Oklahomans as they take to the streets to demand better from our government, as the State may no longer leverage the Riot Statute against speakers with whom it disagrees. The threats provision of “riot” now requires the State to prove that a person intended to threaten violence, an even higher standard than required by the First Amendment. The right to protest is fundamental to our democracy and enshrined in the Constitution. The ACLU of Oklahoma and our partners will continue to fight against any attempts to violate the First Amendment rights of all people. Dissent is patriotic.”

View more about the case here.

Clinic’s Local Journalism Attorney Adam Tragone’s letter raising concerns about Ligonier Township’s practice of holding committee and subcommittee meetings in private is detailed in this July 31, 2026, Latrobe Bulletin article: Ligonier Township supervisors discuss Bulletin letter about Sunshine Act concerns | News | latrobebulletinnews.com.

The Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic scored an important win last week on behalf of its client Rockland County Business Journal. On July 9, the New York Supreme Court granted the Business Journal’s Freedom of Information Petition for the release of documents related to the county’s award of an $18 million contract for the construction of a new county animal shelter – a recognition that the public has the right to know how its tax dollars are being spent by its own government.

Judge John P. Collins, Jr., wrote a strong and stirring Decision underscoring the vital importance of the press in the functioning of our democracy:

“A free press is not an ornament of democratic government; it is one of its load-bearing walls. The First Amendment’s guarantee of a free press was written into our Constitution precisely so that an independent Fourth Estate could stand between the citizenry and the government that citizenry funds, watching, questioning, and, when necessary, exposing. …  A local journalist tracking how a public authority spends eighteen (18) million taxpayer dollars is engaged in exactly the work the First Amendment was written to protect — unglamorous, granular, and indispensable.”

The suit was brought in December 2024 after the Authority produced heavily redacted documents, withheld an entire category of records outright, and denied Traster’s administrative appeals. Judge Collins ruled that the Authority’s redactions and withholdings — justified only by boilerplate recitations of statutory language — “do not withstand scrutiny,” and ordered the records released within 30 days, with any continued redaction requiring a particularized, fact-specific justification submitted for the Court’s in camera review. Finding the Authority had no reasonable basis for denying the request, the court also granted Traster’s application for attorney’s fees and litigation costs, with the amount to be determined once production is complete.

From the Business Journal’s coverage of its win:“This ruling is a gift to the people of Rockland and to those living in New York, where FOIL laws are designed to hold government accountable. …Too often those seeking information give up because they are frustrated by a Goliath. Today was a win for every David that stays engaged in civic life and understands why it’s so important to have an open and transparent government.

Read the Rockland County Business Journal article here.

View case documents here.

The Cornell First Amendment Clinic represents journalist Chris Bragg and nonprofit news outlet New York Focus in a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) case seeking New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s schedule and calendars, which the Clinic filed in Albany County Supreme Court on June 30, 2026.

The FOIL requests seek the governor’s daily schedules from October 1, 2024, to present, and the governor’s Outlook calendar and fundraising schedule from October 1 through November 1, 2025. Gov. Hochul’s office, the Executive Chamber, issued a blanket denial of the FOIL requests, claiming that all the records are shielded from public disclosure because they are intra-agency records until the Chamber posts sanitized versions on its website. These web versions of the governor’s calendars contain selected information and are subject to considerable delay — the most recent schedule available on the site is from September 2024, one year and nine months ago. 

“The public shouldn’t have to settle for a hand-picked highlight reel published nearly two years after the fact. New Yorkers have a right to know how their governor spends her days — who she meets with, what she prioritizes, and what she doesn’t,” said Clinic local journalism attorney Michael Linhorst. “Democracy depends on voters being able to see their government at work, not just the parts it chooses to show them.”

In its initial denial and subsequent appeal denial, the Chamber also cited four additional exemptions, claiming that some unspecified portions were attorney-client privileged, their disclosure would be an unwarranted invasion of personal property or could endanger the life or safety of the governor and her staff, and that they had to be withheld to guarantee the security of technology assets. The Chamber made the same arguments in 2014 when it sought to withhold Gov. Cuomo’s calendars, but it was unsuccessful.

The Clinic seeks a court order requiring the release of the documents.

Watch Chris Bragg discuss the case with Spectrum News here.

Read more about the case and view the filings here.

The Cornell First Amendment Clinic is featured in a Cornell Chronicle article written by Susan Kelley, “How Cornell is educating the next generation of citizens about democracy.”

Read the full article here.

Clinic director Mark H. Jackson and Heather Murray, associate director of the Clinic and the managing attorney of its Local Journalism Project, led a discussion about their efforts to protect, defend and enable a free and vibrant press on June 24 at the Tompkins County Library in Ithaca, New York. The event was the second of four in The Ithaca Voice’s Conversation Series.

Mark and Heather spoke about their experience before being joined by Ithaca Voice managing editor Jimmy Jordan, senior reporter Megan Zerez and news reporter Hailea Potter for a panel discussion.

Watch the discussion here.

New York City’s media landscape is changing fast. As legacy outlets shrink and independent, nonprofit newsrooms step in to fill the gaps, a host of unsettled legal questions are coming to the fore — about press freedom, protecting sources, newsgathering rights, and even who counts as a journalist in the first place.

Attorneys and clients of the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic discussed local journalism during an eCornell Keynote on Thursday, June 25. Panelists explored the state of local journalism and what the shifting media landscape means for public accountability. The Clinic’s Local Journalism Project sits at the center of these challenges, representing journalists and newsrooms across New York and beyond.

The moderated panel featured:

• Heather Murray, associate director of the First Amendment Clinic and managing attorney of its Local Journalism Project
• Michael Linhorst, the Clinic’s local journalism attorney
• Mazin Sidahmed, co-founder and executive director of Documented
• Gersh Kuntzman, editor-in-chief of Streetsblog

This is the first in a series of eCornell programs featuring the Clinic’s work — links to the rest of the series will be available soon.

Watch the eCornell Keynote here.

Have you ever sent someone a text message to find out if they’re getting our text messages?

Sometimes you send the “test” to find out if there’s something wrong with their text messaging. Other times, you do it to send that person a message that they’re not returning your texts.

If you understand that scenario, then you’ll understand the method and message being sent by two open government advocates, who announced Tuesday that they are filing Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests with Gov. Kathy Hochul and the heads of 72 state agencies.

The advocates — Rachael Fauss, senior policy adviser to the government watchdog group Reinvent Albany, and Heather Murray, associate director of the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic and managing attorney of the Clinic’s Local Journalism Project — are seeking access to certain records maintained by agencies regarding FOIL requests submitted to them and/or responded to through a software program called GovQA.

These records are designed to let the public know how responsive state agencies are being to the hundreds of requests for information they receive each year from citizens. The FOIL requests also will serve to illustrate that many agencies are not taking full advantage the software program, which is costing taxpayers $650,000 a year to assist these agencies in responding to the public.

These 72 agencies cover virtually all state government functions. They maintain vital public information on government spending programs, policies, statistics, regulations and compliance with laws. In addition to your information they’re holding, that’s your tax money they’re spending and your life and your money and your communities that their decisions
are affecting.

Filing a FOIL request for FOIL responsiveness records isn’t just a clever stunt. The advocates want to reiterate a point Reinvent Albany reported in May that many state agencies are not using, or are failing to make full use of, GovQA.

GovQA — already used by California, Oregon and the city of Dallas to manage their public records access — enables New York’s state agencies to easily create searchable logs, accessible to the public, documenting FOIL requests and each agency’s response to them. It also can help reduce duplicative requests – if the agencies use it.The logs are essentially report cards on how well or how poorly the agencies are sharing information with public.

What all this means for the citizens of New York is that the state is not living up to its responsibility to be as transparent as it should be.

If Gov. Hochul is as serious about transparency as she has said she is, she’ll make sure that not only is this FOIL request honored quickly and completely, but that state agencies start being more responsive to the people’s right to know what their government is doing on
their behalf.

Reprinted with permission of The Daily Gazette. All rights reserved, ©Gazette News Group, Inc.

View the June 16, 2026, editorial here.