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The First Amendment claim seems awfully difficult. Actually, all three do; I have no idea what the Fourth is doing there. There are a few possibilities other t
by Bartweiss 8y ago
The First Amendment claim seems awfully difficult. Actually, all three do; I have no idea what the Fourth is doing there.
There are a few possibilities other than the gag order; in particular, it could be a reference to a privacy/free-association claim that answering this subpoena would be injurious to people other than Manning or Wikileaks. NAACP v. Alabama accepted that, but this would be an enormous stretch from those circumstances. Connecting it to the closed nature of the hearing would be even harder, but you might get there by arguing that it could close information which wouldn't be revealed by later actions taking place in secret courts. It could also be an argument in the alternative, ignoring the private/public aspect.
As for the gag order, that might stick if it's not simply binding Manning to secrecy as a grand jury witness? If she's received a National Security Letter or something of the sort, there might be an argument that she's being compelled to speak in private in a way that collides with other restrictions the government has placed on her.