June 18, 2002

Seattle First Amendment Case Update - UPDATED!

Good news: The Seattle judge who imprisoned an old man for refusing to remove stuff he legally published on his website has let the old man out of jail after 3.5 months. Bad news: Paul Trummel is still under a court order to take down the information, which the judge finds offensive. The judge has ruled that Trummel has no First Amendment rights because he is not a paid journalist, though First Amendment scholars agree the rights of free speech are for everyone. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which has endorsed the judge for re-election, covers the Trummel case today, apparently for the first time (based on a search of the paper's online archives.) For more information on the Trummel case, Click Here and Click Here.

UPDATE! You gotta love the subversive ingenuity of this: Someone has posted on the judge's campaign website the very same information that the judge has given Paul Trummel until Friday to remove from Trummel's site if he wishes to avoid being returned to jail. Just visit the judge's "guestbook" and scroll down to the post by "Digital Angel" listing names and contact info for the administratiors and board of directors of the government-subsidized retirement home where Trummel lived before the judge tossed him into the slammer. That's the information the judge wants removed from the site. Now it's on his own site (for now...)