Case Background: Bill Osmulski was a seasoned Capitol news reporter for the John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization and news service based in Madison, Wisconsin.
As credentialed members of the Capitol press corps, Osmulski and other MacIver News Service reporters regularly have access to state legislators and other Capitol officials. However, once Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers took office in 2019, their media access became limited.
In January 2019, Osmulski and a former MacIver colleague, Matt Kittle, asked the Governor’s Office to add them to their media distribution list. The reporters soon realized something was amiss when they did not receive a response nor a single media advisory.
As a result of this exclusion over the past seven months, it became practically impossible for the MacIver journalists to attend the vast majority of the Governor’s public events and press conferences. For example, on February 28, 2019, Osmulski and Kittle were denied access to the Governor’s “budget briefing for the media,” which was open to 26 other members of the Capitol press corps.
The MacIver Institute and Mr. Osmulski alleged that the Governor’s targeted exclusion of MacIver journalists amounted to viewpoint discrimination and was a violation of the right of equal access fundamental to freedom of the press. Additionally, the Equal Protection Clause requires that a state government grant equal treatment to its citizens. In this context, it requires that all journalists have equal access to information generally available to the news media.
Attorneys at the Liberty Justice Center represented the John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy and Mr. Osmulski in a lawsuit which asserted their First Amendment rights to free speech and freedom of the press, as well as their Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection of the laws.
The District Court ruled against the Liberty Justice Center and our clients on April 14, 2020. The Liberty Justice Center appealed this case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which affirmed the decision of the District Court.
Jeffrey M. Schwab serves as Senior Counsel and Interim Director of Litigation at the Liberty Justice Center, where he litigates cases to protect the rights to free speech, economic liberty, private property and other Constitutional rights in both federal and state courts across the country.
(Courthouse News)—Wisconsin’s governor is unfairly barring a conservative think tank’s journalists from attending press events because of the group’s political views, its attorney argued in the Seventh Circuit on Friday. The Madison-based John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy, which refers to itself as “the free market voice of Wisconsin,”...
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