James O'Keefe Gets A Major Victory In Court: Ninth Circuit Throws Out Progressive State Rules That Restricted Investigative Journalism

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has thrown out an Oregon law banning the surreptitious recording of conversations, according to a ruling published Wednesday from the panel of Judge Sandra Ikuta, joined by Judge Carlos Bea. The case in question found Project Veritas suing the Multnomah County District Attorney Michael Schmidt and Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum.

In the text of the ruling, the panel, which included dissenting Judge Morgan Christen, found:

"The panel reversed the district court’s dismissal of a complaint challenging, as an unconstitutional restriction of protected speech, Section 165.540(1)(c) of the Oregon Revised Code, which generally prohibits unannounced recordings of conversations, subject to several exceptions."

"As a content-based restriction, the rule fails strict scrutiny review because the law is not narrowly tailored to achieving a compelling governmental interest in protecting conversational privacy with respect to each activity within the proscription’s scope, which necessarily includes its regulation of protected speech in places open to the public."

James O'Keefe, formerly of Project Veritas, said in a statement posted to Twitter, "Oregon has no power to protect the conversational privacy of some people in a public place from the First Amendment protected newsgathering of other individuals. Because the law lets government distort the newsgathering(sic) process and bans entirely too much effective journalism, it violated the First Amendment on its face."

O'Keefe, who founded the O'Keefe Media Group (OMG) earlier this year, cited the ruling from Judge Ikuta who wrote, “Oregon does not have a compelling interest in protecting individuals’ conversational privacy from other individuals’ protected speech in places open to the public, even if that protected speech consists of creating audio or visual recordings of other people.”

Speaking to The Post Millennial, O'Keefe said, "I knew this law was unconstitutional when my masterful free speech attorneys Barr, Klein and I entered the Marc O. Hatfield courthouse in 2020 with heavy security under threat of violence. Journalism is alive and well in the state of Oregon, expect to see more of OMG in the beaver state."

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