The Supreme Court refused this morning to accept an appeal from Project Veritas, the undercover investigative journalism organization founded by James O’Keefe, after an appeals court rejected the group’s First Amendment-based challenge to a Massachusetts law forbidding secret recordings.
The case, Project Veritas Action Fund v. Rollins, court file 20-1598, comes from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit. The unsigned order denying the petition for certiorari, or review, was issued Nov. 22. The respondent, Rachael S. Rollins, a Democrat, was sued in her official capacity as District Attorney for Suffolk County, Massachusetts.
The Massachusetts law makes it a felony to secretly record the oral communications of anyone other than a law enforcement officer.
The law “does great damage to an irreplaceable and important form of newsgathering,” according to the petition filed with the Supreme Court on May 12.
“Project Veritas Action Fund regularly uses secret audio recording to capture newsworthy information and report it to the public. Realizing Massachusetts law banned it from operating in the state, Project Veritas Action Fund challenged the reach of Massachusetts General Laws chapter 272, section 99.”
After acknowledging Project Veritas had plans to make secret recordings, the 1st Circuit found those plans in themselves did not have the legal effect of creating a real and concrete controversy that it could adjudicate. The panel also ruled the law “was not facially overbroad,” the petition stated.
If the justices had granted the petition, it would have been the first time the Supreme Court had addressed the First Amendment implications of secret audio recordings, according to SCOTUSblog.