Later today, a Tennessee House subcommittee is scheduled to consider a bill that would take away university police departments unless those institutions permit religious student organizations to engage in anti-gay discrimination. The bill arises from a conflict between Vanderbilt University and anti-gay lawmakers led by state Rep. Mark Pody (R), who object to Vanderbilt’s policy which requires student organizations to accept “all comers” if they wish to be subsidized by the school.

Last week, however, Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper (D) threw cold water on Pody’s efforts with an official opinion explaining that the bill is unconstitutional, at least as-applied to private universities such as Vanderbilt. As Cooper’s opinion explains, private universities generally have a right to decide which student organizations they wish to be associated with, and that includes the right to take a stand against discrimination:

It is well established that the State may not condition continued receipt of a valuable state benefit (here, the exercise of the State’s police power to commission and maintain a police force) on a private institution’s compliance with an unconstitutional condition. . . .

As previously discussed SB1241 impacts a private university’s First Amendment right of free association and distinguishes between those universities that organize their student groups in conformity with SB1241 and those that do not. This classification thus impacts a fundamental right – a private university’s First Amendment right to free association – and would be reviewed under the strict scrutiny standard. The General Assembly has an interest in how the State delegates its police power to a private university. Even if that interest is compelling, the General Assembly cannot assert that interest through an unrelated requirement that a private university abandon its right of free association.

Cooper also concludes that Pody’s anti-gay law would be constitutional as-applied to public universities, because Tennessee is allowed to decide that it does want to associate itself and its universities with anti-gay discrimination. This conclusion, however, is likely not correct. Just as the federal government cannot discriminate against gay couples when it doles out marriage benefits — that’s why the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional — a state government also cannot form official groups that engage in anti-gay discrimination. Thus, to the extent that a student group at a Tennessee university is an arm of the state itself, such as group is not permitted to engage in anti-gay discrimination.

Last year, the Supreme Court struck down much of Arizona’s harsh immigration law SB 1070, and stripped its “show me your papers” provision of many of its teeth. Earlier this week, another provision of this anti-immigrant law bit the dust. A bipartisan panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit blocked SB 1070′s restrictions on drivers seeking to hire day laborers:

Two provisions in Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070 make it unlawful for a motor vehicle occupant to hire or attempt to hire a person for work at another location from a stopped car that impedes traffic, or for a person to be hired in such a manner. These provisions raise First Amendment concerns because they restrict and penalize the commercial speech of day laborers and those who would hire them. Arizona defends the provisions as traffic safety measures, designed to promote the safe and orderly flow of traffic. We acknowledge that Arizona has a real and substantial interest in traffic safety. Arizona, however, has failed to justify a need to serve that interest through targeting and penalizing day labor solicitation that blocks traffic, rather than directly targeting those who create traffic hazards without reference to their speech, as currently proscribed under the State’s preexisting traffic laws. Laws like this one that restrict more protected speech than is necessary violate the First Amendment.

As the court notes, the day laborer provisions had at least as much to do with discouraging immigration as it did with any concerns over traffic. The provisions’ lead sponsor claimed the provision would “discourage the ‘shadow economy’ of day labor and address illegal immigration because ‘[a] large number of these people are illegal immigrants and this is the way they get work, and this work is one of the anchors that keeps them in the country.’”

A San Diego couple is suing the area’s school district for allegedly violating their children’s religious freedom by offering yoga classes for physical education.

Stephen and Jennifer Sedlock actually have the option to opt their children out of taking the classes, which the school’s superintendent describes as, “stretching, moving, breathing.” But their lawyer, a part of the conservative National Center for Law and Policy, still believes there is a strong case for why yoga classes are an unconstitutional violation religious freedom:

In a press release issued by Escondido-based National Center for Law and Policy, attorney Dean Broyles said the Encinitas yoga program was a “breach of public trust” that sets a “dangerous precedent.”

“This is frankly the clearest case of the state trampling on the religious freedom rights of citizens that I have personally witnessed in my 18 years of practice as a constitutional attorney,” Broyles said.

The lawsuit, which alleges civil rights violations, was filed in San Diego Superior Court. It ultimately seeks to suspend the yoga program indefinitely and “restore traditional physical education to the district.”

If the couple’s lawyer thinks that this is “the clearest case of the state trampling on [religious] freedoms” that he has witnessed, he may want to look a little harder. The First Amendment does not simply protect against legitimate threats to the free exercise of faith, it also forbids the government from endorsing religious views or forcing religion upon others — most often non-Christians. So when an Indiana lawmaker proposes requiring “the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of each school day,” that’s a violation of religious freedom. When a conservative judges places a massive Ten Commandments monument in the middle of the Alabama Judicial Building, that’s a violation of religious freedom.

When a child does a yoga pose, on the other hand, that’s just a good way to stay in shape.

In a remarkable blow to freedom of information, a federal trial judge ruled this summer that a company could sue a product safety agency anonymously for posting an improper report about the company, sealed the opinion entirely for several months and then released it in heavily redacted form. According to consumer groups now challenging the decision, this is the first known example of a court both allowing a corporation to sue anonymously, and agreeing to seal a case, all so the company could protect its reputation.

The lawsuit was also the first-ever legal challenge to the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s database, launched in 2011 to provide access to consumer safety complaints before potentially hazardous products are recalled. The redacted opinion removes any facts about the case, leaving visible only the court’s conclusion that the commission improperly posted a report about the company that it held was inaccurate and would damage the company’s reputation.

Weighing the fundamental First Amendment interest in transparency of government decisions against the economic interest of the corporation, U.S. District Judge Alexander Williams Jr. found that the corporation’s interest prevailed, writing that “although the law favors access to judicial records, the facts of this case overcome this presumption.” The “facts” include that the court deemed the information “materially inaccurate” (a determination which no one but the court can assess, since all relevant information has been redacted), “injurious to Plaintiff’s reputation, and risks harm to Plaintiff’s economic interests.”

The court went on to use similar reasoning to allow the company to remain entirely anonymous in the litigation, even though decision after decision has denied anonymity to individual litigants who faced reputation damage. The brief by Public Citizen, Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union provides several examples:

[W]hen a doctor sued to enjoin state medical board disciplinary proceedings against him, the Tenth Circuit held that the risk to the doctor’s professional reputation did not justify the use of a pseudonym. The Fifth Circuit refused to allow a group of law students to litigate Title VII claims under pseudonyms despite their contention that revealing their identities would jeopardize their future employment prospects. Numerous district courts, including one in this circuit, have likewise rejected pleas for pseudonymity based on potential threats to professional reputation.

But Judge Williams declined to apply the same rigorous analysis to the corporation that is typically applied to individual people because several of the factors, aimed at protecting personal privacy, did not easily apply to corporations, and, “Like a square peg in a round hole, the … factors do not easily graft onto this case, and the Court refuses to force them to fit.” Incredibly, Williams added, “To do so would be to manufacture a miscarriage of justice.”

As the consumer groups point out in their filing, the court’s unredacted ruling, if made public, would in fact vindicate the corporation’s reputation, since the court entirely sides with the corporation and the inaccuracy of the report. What’s more, while the court ruled that the commission was enjoined from posting the report, its decision does not bar any other public discussion of the topic, and any attempt to censor public statements about a corporation’s product would be anathema to First Amendment free expression principles and encourage even more secret litigation:

The district court’s leap from enjoining publication of the report in the database to imposing a broad cloak of secrecy on the entire litigation seems to be rooted in a troubling assumption about the undesirability of public debate. The court envisioned that if the facts of the case were public, Company Doe would be powerless to protect itself against the report’s charge that its product caused harm: “although Plaintiff could publicly comment on the report’s inaccuracy, ordinary consumers would likely dismiss this measure as disingenuous damage control.”

The First Amendment rejects precisely this attitude of distrust toward the marketplace of ideas. As Justice Brandeis explained, the possibility of “falsehood and fallacies” in our discourse does not justify prior restraint; rather, our Constitution teaches that “the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

Welcome to Justiceline, ThinkProgress Justice’s morning round-up of the latest legal news and developments. Remember to follow us on Twitter at @TPJustice

• The Senate lost its longest-serving member yesterday. Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) was 88, and third in the line of presidential succession. He was the first Japanese-American senator and the second-longest-serving senator in U.S. history. 
• Three days after the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, the National Rifle Association has remained silent.
• The Associated Press documents how mass shootings around the world have spurred gun control in other countries.
• The ACLU is challenging a California law passed by ballot initiative that requires registered sex offenders to turn over all Internet identifiers, including their Facebook, Twitter and email account information. The law was temporarily blocked by a federal judge the day after it passed.
• Ohio Gov. John R. Kasich granted clemency to a death row inmate Monday who had argued he was too obese to be humanely executed.