Court Upholds African People's Socialist Party Convictions for Being Unregistered Russian Foreign Agents

Romain by Eleventh Circuit Chief Judge William Pryor, joined by Judges Jill Pryor and Andrew Brasher:

Because section 951 is content neutral, we "subject [it] to an intermediate level of scrutiny." Under intermediate scrutiny, "we will sustain a content-neutral law if it advances important governmental interests unrelated to the suppression of free speech and does not burden substantially more speech than necessary to further those interests."

"[T]he Government has an interest in knowing the identity of those acting on behalf of a foreign government within the United States, whether the action is legal or not." "That rationale is decidedly content agnostic" because it "neither references the content of speech [of agents] nor reflects disagreement with the message … [they] convey[]." And by requiring agents only to notify the attorney general before acting, section 951 advances that interest as narrowly as possible.

Indeed, after notifying the attorney general about his status, an agent may engage in any speech or expressive conduct on any topic.

Bold News stores the normalized extraction for evidence and analysis. This public wrapper shows a limited excerpt; use the original link for the publisher's complete presentation.