Format: IN-PERSON

Description
Social media platforms have transformed the ways in which Americans get their news, form and sustain relationships, participate in their communities, and interact with representatives and candidates for office. Some have argued that the platforms have also distorted our national discourse by amplifying sensationalist content or ushered in a new era of government censorship by serving as attractive targets for official pressure campaigns. These concerns underlie a blockbuster set of cases before the Supreme Court this term that provide guidance on the First Amendment frameworks that apply to governmental efforts to regulate the platforms and also on the procedural requirements that litigants who wish to challenge these efforts will have to satisfy. This panel will discuss those cases and the future of platform regulation.

Speakers:
Alex Abdo is the inaugural litigation director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. He has been involved in the conception and litigation of most of the Institute’s legal challenges, including its challenges to the use of spyware to intimidate journalists, the secrecy of the Office of Legal Counsel’s legal opinions, the digitization of mail in jails and prisons, and the legal threats issued by social media platforms to researchers hoping to illuminate the influence that the platforms are having on society. He was also involved in the Institute’s prior challenges to the government’s system of “prepublication review,” which requires millions of former employees of the intelligence agencies to submit their manuscripts to government censors prior to publication; the Institute’s challenge to the constitutionality of President Trump’s blocking of critics from his @realDonaldTrump Twitter account; and the Institute’s and the ACLU’s challenge to the constitutionality of the NSA’s program of “upstream surveillance.” He worked on the Institute’s amicus briefs in Moody v. NetChoice (link) and Murthy v. Missouri (link).

Prior to joining the Institute, Abdo worked for eight years at the ACLU, where he was at the forefront of litigation relating to NSA surveillance, encryption, anonymous speech online, government transparency, and the post-9/11 abuse of detainees in U.S. custody. He graduated from Yale College and Harvard Law School. After law school, he clerked for Judge Barbara M.G. Lynn, U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Texas, and for Judge Rosemary Barkett, U.S. Circuit Judge for the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

Ester Murdukhayeva is Deputy Solicitor General in the Office of the New York Attorney General. Ester represents the State of New York before federal and state appellate courts and counsels the Attorney General on trial litigation and legislation. Her experience includes matters of constitutional law, consumer protection, reproductive rights, public safety, telecommunications, and housing. She has argued dozens of cases before the New York Court of Appeals, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and the New York Appellate Divisions, and regularly briefs cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and federal courts of appeal and district courts nationwide. Ester submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of New York and 23 other States in support of neither party in Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton.

Prior to her work at the New York Attorney General’s Office, Ester served as a law clerk to Judge Barrington D. Parker, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Judge Shira A. Scheindlin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Ester was also a litigation associate in private practice. She is a graduate of Columbia University and Yale Law School.

Who Should Attend: This discussion is of general interest since Social Media platforms are consolidated into a few large players and are an integral part of what information is promulgated to the public.

Click Here to View Program Agenda & Faculty