I was traveling yesterday (and I’m continuing the trip today), so I didn’t have the time to put something of my own together on this, but I highly recommend this thread from Adam Steinbaugh (FIRE). The opening paragraph:
Wow: The City of Clarksdale, Mississippi, got a court order yesterday directing a newspaper to delete an editorial criticizing city officials — without a hearing. Here’s the TRO issuing the prior restraint: …
I will add one possibly clarifying detail: Many courts have in recent decades allowed anti-libel injunctions requiring the removal of material after it has been found to be libelous after trial (or after a default judgment), and barring the reposting of the specific statements found to be libelous. But the First Amendment continues to forbid pre-trial injunctions, and especially “ex parte” ones such as this one, which were issued without even a preliminary adversary hearing. And that’s true even if the order is issued after the article is published; under modern First Amendment law, a “prior restraint” is one issued prior to a trial on the merits, rather than prior to publication:
The special vice of a prior restraint is that communication will be suppressed … before an adequate determination that it is unprotected by the First Amendment.
That, though, is just one of the many apparent defects of this injunction; read Steinbaugh’s thread for much more.
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