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School Board shows bias in public speaking time limits

Just last Friday I entered a memorandum contra to the defendants motion to dismiss my case against Dayton Public Schools and the City of Dayton for their illegal secretive meeting on the bus tour of schools to close.

I added an argument about “viewpoint discrimination.” Saying that since they let the mainstream media on the bus, but excluded me, they had violated my first amendment rights. It takes the case into Federal court jurisdiction if need be.

And, lo and behold, in the very next meeting- the board allows almost every other speaker to go WAY over the three minute time limit. Not a minute or two- which if I was speaking, the security would be called, but 5, 6, 10 minutes…

They also had their treasurer try to count votes to not rehire Darren Powell- and she came up with 3 against and 5 for. There are only 7 board votes- and she’s the treasurer.

Watch the video:

I had to leave before it finished to run over to the county building to speak about the coming sales tax increase. It screws the little people. Just like DPS.

There is no reason for them to continue their losing case other than to make their hired lawyer wealthy. They also voted to allocate another $100K to Subashi and Wildermuth- and $9200 to the Ohio High School Athletic Association as reimbursement for the case about the Dunbar basketball fiasco- which Wildermuth “won” before it became obvious that Bailiff Chuck Taylor lied in court [1]– and they had to apologize.  Note- Chuck is still the basketball coach as far as we can tell. Total bill for the original Dunbar basketball court case to Wildemuth- $10,500. Total they’d given him to beat up on me was $12,500 and he’s filed a ton of stupid briefs since.

For those interested in “viewpoint discrimination”- here’s the part from my brief (remember- I’m not a lawyer and having to do all this research myself):

That some of the mainstream media was allowed in, and the plaintiff was not makes this a case of viewpoint discrimination, a violation of his first amendment rights and the violations of the OMA.

“Only by uninhibited publication can the flow of information be secured and the people informed concerning men, measures, and the conduct of government. . . . Only by freedom of speech, of the press, and of association can people build and assert political power, including the power to change the men who govern them.”

Archibald Cox, The Supreme Court, 1979 Term—Foreword: Freedom of Expression in the Burger Court, 94 HARV. L. REV. 1, 3(1980).

Moreover, the idea of having a public body decide who constitutes “worthy journalist” vs unworthy journalist would be a slippery slope.

In the decision O’GRADY v. Superior Court, 44 Cal. Rptr. 3d 72 (Cal. Ct. App. 2006)

“The shield law is intended to protect the gathering and dissemination of news, and that is what petitioners did here. We can think of no workable test or principle that would distinguish “legitimate” from “illegitimate” news. Any attempt by courts to draw such a distinction would imperil a fundamental purpose of the First Amendment, which is to identify the best, most important, and most valuable ideas not by any sociological or economic formula, rule of law, or process of government, but through the rough and tumble competition of the memetic marketplace.”

There is a case to be made that Dayton Public Schools also violated the Plaintiff’s First Amendment rights in their action of barring him from a public meeting:

From this decision: Nichols v The City Of NY et al, US DC SD of NY 15-CV-9592 (JPO)

“[O] nce there is a public function, public comment, and participation by some of the media, the First Amendment requires equal access to all of the media or the rights of the First Amendment would no longer be tenable.” Am. Broad. Cos. v. Cuomo, 570 F.2d 1080, 1083 (2d Cir. 1977) see also WPIX, 595 F. Supp. at1489 (“[I]n order to maximize diversity of coverage, individual news-gatherers also have a limited right of equal access to important public events.”).

For example, it has been held impermissible to exclude a single television news network from live coverage of mayoral candidates’ headquarters and to withhold White House press passes in a content-based or arbitrary fashion. See Huminski v. Corsones, 396 F.3d 53, 84 (2d Cir. 2005) (citing Am. Broad. Cos., 570 F.2d at 1083; Sherrill v. Knight, 569 F.2d 124, 129-30 (D.C. Cir. 1977)). Equal press access is critical because “[e] xclusion of an individual reporter . . . carries with it ‘the danger that granting favorable treatment to certain members of the media allows the government to influence the type of substantive media coverage that public events will receive,’ which effectively harms the public.” Id. (internal alterations omitted) (quoting Anderson v. Cryovac, Inc., 805 F.2d 1, 9 (1st Cir. 1986)); see also Sherrill, 569 F.2d at 129-30 (“Not only newsmen and the publications for which they write, but also the public at large have an interest protected by the [F]irst [A]mendment in assuring . . . that individual newsmen not be arbitrarily excluded from sources of information.”). Courts thus recognize that equal access of the press is necessary in order to prevent government officials from “affect[ing] the content or tenor of the news by choreographing which news organizations have access to relevant information.” Id. (quoting Anderson, 805 F.2d at 9).

Because of the nature of the First Amendment interest—both as regards the public and as regards the news-gatherer—the protection for press access exists whether an exclusion is “based upon the content of the journalist’s publications” or “arbitrarily impose[d]. ” Stevens v. N.Y. Racing Ass’n, Inc., 665 F. Supp. 164, 175 (E.D.N.Y. 1987).

If the court requires proof that Esrati.com is a regular attendee of school board meetings, and reporter of news about the school board, it is all available here https://esrati.com/category/dayton-public-schools [2]

But you already knew that.

 

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David Jones

You are not media.

Bob Ward

What defines media then? Just because there are not call letters or a publishing company behind it does not mean it’s not media.