If It Doesn't Offend Anybody, It's Not Free Speech

Because if all you're going to do is praise motherhood and apple pie, you don't need the First Amendment.

So good on the conservative Sixth Circuit for slapping down the Kentucky Bar Association.

From Andrew Wolfson at the Courier:

In a nationally watched case on lawyers’ free-speech rights, a federal appeals court has ruled that the Kentucky Bar Association violated the First Amendment when it threatened to sanction an attorney for criticizing the state Legislative Ethics Commission.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Friday that the bar association chilled the free-speech rights of Henry County lawyer John M. Berry Jr. when it warned him he could be punished for challenging the integrity of a ruling dismissing an ethics complaint against Senate President David Williams.


The appeals court said a rule barring lawyers from making reckless or false statements regarding the integrity of judges or legal officers was unconstitutionally applied against Berry because everything he had said about the Ethics Commission was true or protected opinion.

Berry is the brother of noted Kentucky farmer, author and activist Wendell Berry.  No political cowards in that family.

Read the whole inspiring thing.