Visits: 18

Winning at the 9th. James O’Keefe Wins HUGE Lawsuit in Oregon: Court Rules Anti-Recording Law Unconstitutional. This article was originally posted at the GP.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the law that prohibits recording in the state of Oregon. James O’Keefe and Project Veritas filed the lawsuit in Portland, Oregon back in 2020.

In Project Veritas vs Schmidt, the organization argued it had a right to engage in undercover journalism and record people without their consent. “WON in Ninth Circuit – Federal Appeals Court STRIKES DOWN Oregon criminal recording law” James O’Keefe said boasting about his win.

“It violates the 1st amendment right to free speech, INVALID ON ITS FACE” – the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said in its ruling.

“Oregon Revised Statute 165.540(1)(c). This law prohibited anyone from making an audio recording unless that person “specifically informed” others they were recording. But the law also included special permissions from the government to allow for non-notified recording of the police, but not any other government employee,” O’Keefe said.

“That just leaves the government putting its thumb on the lens of newsgathering, deciding which news is easiest to get and skewing reporting. Like the Ninth Circuit has explained before, whatever concerns Oregon has over shoddy reporting or “fake news,” the remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true and not the suppression of speech.” O’Keefe added.

Circuit Judge Sandra S. Ikuta out of the 9th circuit in Pasadena, California authored the opinion. Ikuta 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.”