Over the past two weeks, Minneapolis has given the country a crash course in the First Amendment.
The actions of protesters and politicians, during and in response to protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), have become real-world lessons in the law of speech. The clashes have demonstrated which types of speech aren’t protected, along with passionate, angry, and unsettling speech that is protected. We’ve also gotten a chilling reminder of what goes wrong when the government pretends not to know the difference.
For starters, the Justice Department has issued grand jury subpoenas to Minnesota governor Tim Walz, Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, and at least three other Democratic officials in the state, as part of an investigation into whether state and local officials obstructed federal immigration enforcement. Grand jury matters are secret, so we may never see the subpoenas themselves. But the public justification keeps circling back to speech. Federal officials have portrayed Walz’s and Frey’s criticisms of ICE as incitement, which is not protected by the First Amendment.
