Current Cases
Case Status: Victory in District Court
Castro v. Doe
August 14th 2023The Center for Individual Rights is defending an anonymous Wikipedia editor’s free speech rights against a baseless $180 million defamation lawsuit brought by a Texas political figure. CIR is fighting to strengthen existing constitutional protections for anonymous commentary on such political figures and matters of public concern. Anonymous political speech is a core First Amendment […]
Case Status: Victory. Settled on Favorable Terms
Mattson v. Guyette, et al.
March 20th 2023Daniel Mattson worked as a performer and adjunct professor at the Western Michigan University School of Music for more than twenty years. In 2017, Mattson wrote an autobiographical book describing his return to Catholicism after having spent most of his adulthood in a homosexual lifestyle. In 2021, an activist colleague at the university discovered Mattson’s […]
Case Status: Victory. Settled on Favorable Terms
Riotte v. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
March 8th 2023Kate Riotte had worked for the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (“Museum”) for six years when she was summarily fired for asking the wrong questions about an equity policy that the museum was developing. In February 2021, she volunteered to serve on a cross-level Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion Working Group, which was formed to […]
Case Status: Pending
Norman Wang v. University of Pittsburgh, et al.
December 15th 2020CIR is representing Dr. Norman Wang, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, who was disciplined for publishing an article in a scientific journal that analyzed the extent and effect of racial preferences in medical education over the last fifty years. Wang has been on the faculty at the School of Medicine...
Case Status: Victory in District Court
Davi v. Guinn
September 13th 2016Since 2010, Davi has served as a Hearing Officer and an Administrative Law Judge in New York State’s Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance. In this role, Davi hears the appeals of those who are initially denied eligibility for New York’s public assistance programs and then makes recommendations to his superiors on whether or not...
Past Cases
Case Status: Victory. Settled on Favorable Terms.
Rynearson v. Bass
August 27th 2021Together with Christopher Day, Esq., CIR is representing Richard Rynearson, a retired Air Force command pilot and field grade officer, whose right to free speech was violated when Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne Bass banned him from an official Air Force Facebook page because he criticized one of her posts...
Case Status: Loss
Jeffrey Barke et. al v. Eric Banks et al.
February 21st 2020CIR represented seven California elected officials in an effort stop the enforcement of Section 3550, a California law that prohibits public employers from criticizing public employee unions...
Case Status: Petition for Certiorari denied October 7, 2019.
Seeberger v. Davenport Civil Rights Commission et al.
May 28th 2019Seeberger rented a room in a single family house that she owned to Michelle Schreurs and her then fifteen-year-old daughter for $300 per month. Upon hearing that Schreurs’ daughter was pregnant, Seeberger evicted Schruers and explained that it was because her daughter was pregnant. An Administrative Law Judge found that Seeberger had made discriminatory statements regarding familial status...
Case Status: Case dismissed in wake of decision in Janus v. AFSCME
Yohn v. California Teachers Association
February 6th 2017On February 6, The Center for Individual Rights filed a lawsuit against the state of California and the California Teachers Association on behalf of eight California public school teachers and the Association of American Educators. The teachers are challenging California’s “agency shop” law, which violates the First Amendment by forcing them to pay annual fees to the union – even if they are not a member...
Case Status: Victory
Desmond v. Harris et. al.
August 16th 2016CIR represented Timothy Desmond, an artist, author, and retired school-teacher from Fresno, California, who was denied the right to display his painting in an art competition at a county fair because his depiction of the civil war featured an image of the confederate flag, supposedly in violation of a state law prohibiting the government from displaying confederate flags in public spaces...
Case Status: Victory
Burke v. Doe
February 19th 2014CIR is representing an anonymous Wikipedia editor in a precedent-seeting case designed to establish the First Amendment right of anonymous internet authors to remain anonymous...
